ES version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.
Advertisement
Advertisement
⚡ Community Insights
Discussion Sentiment
50% Positive
Analyzed from 8096 words in the discussion.
Trending Topics
#more#beef#eat#feed#food#grass#calories#cattle#land#cows
Discussion (268 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
The paper opens with "to feed a growing population" without asking is that what we need? want? where we are actually heading to?
Is feeding the world a real problem? I've yet to see compelling evidence that it really is except as a secondary effect of logistics, energy supply, and war.
edit: I understand the environmental impacts. I think we should solve our energy problems first.
Yes, but it is not a production capacity problem. The constraints on food are mostly in the logistics chain, often having to do with corruption or distribution targets (food goes where the money is), or regulation (did you know that cherry growers in the Upper Midwest are required --_by Federal law_-- to destroy unsold crops?).
A huge amount of food goes to waste simply because of regulation or subsidies, at least within the United States.
Surplus tart cherry crops are rarely destroyed. In the event of a surplus, they are often exported, diverted to secondary markets, donated, or carried-over into next-season's stock.
One thing people often don't figure or realize is food takes time to grow. It requires long term thinking to make sure supplies are sufficient. Left to their own devices, farmers will often chase after last season's cash crop. That is bad. It's far better for farmers to stick to more predictable growing and for more dedicated incentives to be issued.
You will see vast areas of cattle ranching, soybeans plantation used for cattle feed, and other crops that can be used as cattle feed. All that area used to be the Pantanal and Amazon, now transformed to grow beef.
If we would reduce the calories wasted on beef, this area could still have a lot more native vegetation. Of course, it's purely wishful thinking because this ship has sailed, beef consumption will take a long time to stop growing, these farms will fight for their lives to keep producing, and we've lost a huge area of incredible nature to eat some steaks and burgers.
It's all to grow profitable luxury food.
What is really upsetting, the speed with which jundles are replaced with oil palm.
Humans have mastered exploitation of everything: the nature, the livestock and other humans.
Isn't this something to care about?
Not saying people have to go vegetarian, but reducing meat consumption or using more efficiently produced meats (in terms of land use) would overall make the world a nicer and more interesting place.
And, really, with the whole neu5gc thing, it might be that humans would be better off focusing on chickens and seafood anyway (clams being a pretty good option for seafood that is relatively environmentally friendly).
They don't tend to "bulk up" as much as conventional (grain fed and/or finished) options though, so are more expensive to produce... the gas emissions are another issue that is largely different for grass fed, where the off gases are roughly the same as the grass's natural breakdown would release anyway.
In terms of water use, naturally grass fed cattle are mostly using water that fell on the land as rain in terms of how much water they use. It's not much from municipal sources, unlike vegetation farming.
Of course there are other ruminant options that are more efficient than cattle, such as goats and sheep, with similar benefits to the soil.
It just bugs me that cattle gets such a bad repuation... especially in that it's one of the few things I can eat without issue.
I’ve vegan for 20+ years and find weird the obsession people have with meat that without even talking about milk. Literally there are hundreds of alternatives better for health, for the environment and for the animals yet we keep looking for justifications to consume them.
I've seen articles and threads like this for decades at this point. And the only thing any of you have convinced me of is that I must start securing my own production of meat. This is, I think, the exact opposite of "more efficiently" at least from your point of view. I will be unlikely to reach the feed-to-gain ratios that professionals regularly achieve.
Swine and poultry already in progress, beef and more exotic stuff within the next 2 years.
The market has decided, ant it decided that the well off are more important than the rest so they get what they want at everyone elses expense.
Maybe we should stop thinking market forces are in any way right or moral. At least saying 'I got mine, fuck you' would be honest.
If India and Bangladesh hadn’t fucked around with socialism for decades after independence, we could have reached the same point many years ago. Millions of children would have been saved. Talk about immorality.
But yeah, we can keep focusing on the farting cows, that’s the problem.
We drain the land in Iowa otherwise the north half of it would be a swamp. Complaining about water usage for all but the western edge of Iowa is much the same as complaining about how solar panels use up the sunlight.
That's not the only one; there's lots of other ways in which food is wasted or used inefficiently. Although the situation has improved tremendously over the past half century, there are still a lot of people suffering from malnutrition.
There's no "first." There's not a queue of problems that the people of the world work on one by one. It's not a matter of limited labor/money either, we're talking about policies to change allocation. If anything is limited here it's political will, but that doesn't really work like money or physical limitations, it's more abstract and nonlinear. It's quite possible that a platform containing more changes earns more will than one with fewer, so budgeting is the wrong impulse.
- Nearly 90% of Americans eat red meat [1].
- Environmental activity against meat has led a lot of people (26% of Americans) to believe that there is a push to ban red meat. This issue does not poll well [1].
- Despite the above, Americans are eating less red meat than we used to [2].
- The vast majority of people who choose to reduce their meat intake do so for cost or health reasons, not environmental [3].
Putting all that together... studies like this do not help the environmental cause. Sure, they find something that's vaguely interesting, and can possibly be a bullet point on an environmentalist slide. However, a far better research study would be one focusing on human health impacts of red meat, or demonstrating economic benefits to red meat alternatives.
tl;ld - This study is not useful, and is probably damaging to it's own cause.
[1]: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/nearly-nine-ten-ameri...
[2]: https://www.pcrm.org/news/news-releases/new-survey-reveals-r...
[3]: https://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/two-thirds-of-a...
I eat mostly meat and eggs, because there isn't much else I can eat that doesn't cause a number of digestive or inflammation issues for me.
That said, it's very, very funny that you responded to an article about energy inefficiency (calorie -> calorie) and said we should solve our energy problems. Beef is an energy problem! We're putting 30x the energy into the product against the energy we get out! Thats wasted energy!
This is how a LOT of beef is produced and how most of it SHOULD BE.
They're not "lost calories" if they're produced on large swaths of semi-arid land that don't support any other kind of agriculture.
And on the opposite side... a LOT of those "lost calories" are corn. Corn is substantially more productive than other crops and people don't want to replace large portions of their diet with cereal grains or corn syrup so much of those "lost calories" would also be lost to much less efficient crops.
You don’t think the two are related at all? When you say “solve” energy problems, do you mean from supply-side solutions or demand-side solutions?
is there a rational argument in here or is this just a cheap psychological reflex to keep eating beef? Because it's not clear to me how solving our energy problems and the consumption of beef even intersect so that we couldn't do both at the same time.
You might as well have said "man I really should stop drinking and smoking, but we gotta solve the energy problems first"
People aren’t going to stop eating beef, full stop. Won’t happen, full stop. It’s akin to suggesting we need to stop eating eggs, also will never happen.
These threads pop up on here every so often and it amuses me in a morose way. Nothing will ever change in the beef industry, not even in places like California, who are actively causing a water shortage in order to grow crops. That is a much bigger problem than farting cows, the whole region is aware of the problem, and no movement has been made to create a fix.
Give it up on the cows, there are bigger fish to fry.
There's a world coming where automation means electrified heavy equipment stops using diesel entirely, already happening in mine sites in Australia.
but it is an actual problem. The beef industry has a large ecological impact. You yourself bring up the water shortages as a result of crop production... who do you think are the crops grown for?
You're just yelling "lalala I'm not listening" basically. The world doesn't consist of "real" and "fake" problems depending on how much you're offended by the topic, the world has a million problems, the more we tackle of them the better.
Sure you can say nothing will ever change, I don't care, but that's not an actual argument, that's just screaming like a kid who doesn't want his toys taken away, how is that an adult conversation. If you can't even tackle the cows how are you going to tackle bigger fish? Are the bigger fish being dealt with?
The only people who ever pretend you can ignore an ostensibly small regional problem, to fix the world are people who literally fix neither because in reality they're nihilists who don't want to solve anything because they never want to take any personal responsibility.
You are completely right, who the fuck cares?
There's plenty of obvious reasons we shouldn't be wasting land, energy, water and labor on producing things that don't get utilized. Even in the most selfish capitalist sensibility, we are wasting money. Yes the energy issue is much bigger than this but wasted energy utilization is part of that problem. I know this is politically fraught, but that should not have any bearing on scholarship. This is just data to add to our understanding.
And also that this study is global, not purely applicable to America. Republicans can exploit outrage with lies to their base, but that isn't such a slam dunk everywhere in the world
In light of recent, uhm, "challenges" to fertilizer supply chains?
Congratulations on being overly flippant without trying. Evidently a lot of people care, and environmental impacts and energy problems are closely related.
Yes.
> I've yet to see compelling evidence that it really is except as a secondary effect of logistics, energy supply, and war.
I don't know how to respond to this. It's like saying you don't think breathing underwater is difficult, except for the secondary effects of water. War is a problem. Energy supply is a problem. Logistics is a problem. All these problems lead to starvation. People starving is a real problem.
Another reason people starve is economics and market forces. The market decides it wants to use up more water and grain to feed cows. That grain and water is now not available for purchase as human food. That means it is more scarce on the human-feeding market. Scarcity drives up prices. So livestock feed makes grain more expensive, making it harder to purchase, for people to eat.
(I'm using "starve" as a euphemism for "malnutrition that not only severely impacts bodily health, reduces quality of life, and increases mortality, but also decreases economic productivity")
Now, if the point you're trying to make is "we could solve world hunger", then absolutely the answer is yes, humans produce more than enough grain to feed everyone in the world, and we have the money to transport it everywhere, even assist with cooking fuel. But because of all the categories you think don't apply, and markets, and economics, we are not fixing it. We are choosing to let people starve.
None of these are logistics, energy supply, or war. The paper is specifically talking about increasing efficiency in food production, the originally commenter is saying that efficiency of production is not the main driver for undernourishment and your comment doesn't address that.
There is huge capacity for food production in the world, and no reason anyone should go hungry
Keeping people hungry is deliberate economic policy.
In New Zealand where I live we make enough food for millions more than live here, yet many face food insecurity.
As I say, it is deliberate, calculated, government policy to keep people on the edge of hunger.
It keeps wages low - our idiot business people think every dollar paid in wages is a dollar of profit lost
Idiotic and cruel, and widespread
It's really impressive how efficient chickens are compared to beef. Obviously thinks like legumes are way more efficient, but we've really bred chickens to be meat machines in a way we haven't with cows.
Soy is pretty good, but corn is insane.
When you feed those 36M calories to chickens, you get back 12M calories of chicken, which is actually less than 6 x 3 = 18M calories for the soybeans, so I'm misremembering something (maybe it's just an equivalent amount of protein? maybe chicken feed is a 3:1 corn:soy ratio?) or was just wrong.
The impact of non-natural feeds on the overall nutrition profile for chickens and pork are larger than with ruminant animals. Chickens have been bred and changed a lot through environmental manipulation to grow much faster than in nature.
There are a few breeds of cows that are producing more muscle mass than most, they've gotten quite a bit larger through breeding as well, though the difference in time to maturation doesn't come close to what we've done with chickens... I'm not sure it's for the better though.
I am unable to find this diet. It's likely referring to something called Planetary Health Diet [0]
[0] https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet/the-planetary-health-diet/
They did note though, that it wouldn't cost that much, relatively, to give chickens pretty good lives. That really we're doing this just to drive the price down by pretty small amounts.
I'm sure most medieval people survived (without food types being a detriment to their health/lifespan) on vastly less meat than most of us eat nowadays.
I don't want to live a "medieval peasant" lifestyle, obviously, but I don't think the food part of it would be unhealthy (assuming enough food).
Btw- the average male and female height adjusted for location keeps increasing which points to protein deficit: https://ourworldindata.org/human-height
(In the world graph towards the end the height seems to decrease since 1990s-this is because countries with shorter people have a higher birth rate. Within the same population the height is still increasing)
We’d be healthier, and the reduction of water use from all of the crops grown for feed would eliminate all water shortages in the west
It's really not. Efficiency is the enemy of redundancy. Countries want food security, so they must therefore produce excess calories.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cropland-per-person-over-...
And there are places in the world where growing human food would destroy the land. Semi-deserts like Texas and Montana. Grazing cattle there is a good idea. Bison would be even better because the native prairie there is adapted to bison, but cattle are a close substitute.
But we eat a lot more cattle than Texas & Montana can support.
It's all a pretty delicate balance, but ultimately what happens is you end up growing a bunch of things humans can't eat so that cows can shit solid gold all over the fields and chop it into the soil with their hooves.
We eat because there's six inches of earth on the ground, it rains, clover grows, and cows (and pigs) shit solid gold.
you need to plant, fertilize and apply pesticides to maintain grass! or do you think grass with sometimes 60% of protein per gram grows out of nowhere? or that the global grain production, which more than 85% goes into feeding livestock that it's sometimes 20 times less efficient to produce the same quantity of protein, can't be distributed to the population?
its in the paper....and some of us on this site grew up working for commercial beef ranchers.....for instance me!
If the market demands more chicken over beef, producers are perfectly capable of making a switch.
Cows are able to make delicious beef from grass and thistles; that they are often fed other things is not a proof that eating cows is bad.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802...
https://extension.colostate.edu/resource/managing-cattle-imp...
https://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/em-9694-ponding-pl...
Depends on local laws. In Canada, you cannot simply switch to chicken. It is supply managed.
https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertif...
Penn State University Extension says "...approximately 95% of the cattle in the United States continue to be finished, or fattened, on grain for the last 160 to 180 days of life (~25 to 30% of their life), on average."[1]
Oklahoma State University Extension also cites a study that compares "growth and carcass attributes of calves finished for 98 to 105 days in a grass system or a legume system"[2]
That puts us between 3 to 6 times longer than you stated, and gives us the context for how much of the average cattle's life that is. (USDA Prime, Choice, and Standard are all 30 to 42 months. Select is under 30 months.[3])
1: https://extension.psu.edu/grass-fed-beef-production 2: https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/finishing-beef-cat... 3: https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/slaughter-cattle-g...
Yup, that's grass they're eating.
Look at this figure of corn yields per acre (1). Yellow is the "old age" where yields were stagnant. Red is when fertilizer began to be used. Now the huge slope change, has been in exploiting genetic hybrids. GMO allows protection of desirable hybrid traits that might be lost in breeding, introduction of traits to to other strains. Traits of interest are primarily around lessening usage of fertilizer, lessening usage of insecticides, as these are all input costs the farmer would rather not pay especially if they can get the same yield without paying. Thank you GMOs for keeping this linear change in yield even over the last 15 years! Could you believe we improved our corn yields substantially over these 15 years? Remarkable the work biologists do in the quiet of their field.
But of course, lay people just think it is a big conspiracy. They don't understand any of this. They think GMOs are copyright but that belies a lack of education of the last century of agriculture development, since that doesn't make sense as farmers have been using hybrids and ordering new seed some 70 years now in certain crops. It is the nations who have to resort to reusing seed and these inferior strains that are suffering poor yields and food insecurity. Over here, we feed far more with far less land under the plow every year. Their yields are still stagnant at historical levels. And climate change is coming for them, while we are understanding the very genetic basis of our yield improvement. They will be using seeds we engineer for them to be high yield in their changing environment to survive widespread famine in the coming decades. GMO is the greatest human invention, more important than even computers.
1. https://extension.entm.purdue.edu/newsletters/pestandcrop/wp...
It's no exaggeration to say we can support feeding 100x the human population with current agricultural land and techniques (assuming you can modify their diets). Largely due to GMO, fertilizers, and industrial farming.
... and? I read it so far down. Now could you please kindly explain why this is "garbage"?
But anyway, legumes are much more efficient source of protein than beef. I don't understand why you decided to compare against broccoli.
Or the annoying cowbells :)
you always have to pay to continue the process, and sometimes to put it on hold.
Transfer of Energy between Trophic Levels:
https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_Gene...
Ecological efficiency:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency
Fat and carbs are energy, properly treated as calories. Protein is not (in a non-starving person) used for energy, and it should be measured in grams not calories. The input calories weren't lost, they were converted to protein for use building body structure instead of energetic use.
If the authors wanted to make an honest argument here, they would show the relative conversion of feed calories to animal protein across different livestock.
> population doubles
> we need the calories to feed a growing population
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2024/december/ers-data-...
and
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feed-gr...
Let me surface a more direct article: https://insideanimalag.org/land-use-for-animal-ag/#:~:text=1...
Of the total land area of the contiguous 48 states, ~45% is used for animal ag. This includes: Land for grazing livestock at ~35%. Land for crops going specifically to animal feed at ~9%. Animal ag farmsteads at <1%.[1-3]
So yes, most cows are eating grass like a wandering herd.
Most cows do eat grass and other stuff we can't eat.
"Hard feed" is made from crops grown as part of a rotation cycle, or from things like soya where 80% of it is only suitable for cattle feed.
Food waste is another kind of "slack" in the food supply chain that would help. Imagine how the world would look if food supply was as optimized as e.g. microchips and then we got any kind of disruption... except now you starve rather than not being able to upgrade your car.
Here in the UK, we use silage because the weather is a bit too variable to trust with letting hay dry out. It feels like it's probably more energy-dense and has more nutrition in it, you certainly don't need to feed as much.
Other things that work well are sugar beet (grows well as part of a cycle of crop rotation, clears weeds pretty well) and all that barley left over from brewing beer and making whisky.
Even soya-based cattle feed is made from the tough cellulosey bits that humans can't eat. If you want to try, I'm sure I can get you some - but maybe have something on hand for the inevitable constipation because it is all fibre.
The stronger arguments are:
- Local air, water, and soil pollution.
- Climate change 16±2% contribution.
- Antibiotic resistant bacteria evolution because the antibiotics over used in livestock are typically used in humans through the mostly different veterinary supply chain but they're the same fundamental molecules.
- Pandemic virus evolution due to both wildlife and (human, for now) workers getting very, very close to animals and animal waste crowded together creating a Petri dish. It's already happened several times throughout history.
An alternate take: if calorie efficiency is so important we should focus on consumption more than production.
Since about 2019 I have been anemic. My iron levels were just a hair above being low enough to require an immediate infusion, and my doctor kept pushing me to eat more iron. She would often ask if I was a vegetarian or vegan, presumably she was assuming I was bad at it. I would always tell her the same thing. "I don't eat much beef but I do eat it"
Last summer I was diagnosed with celiac. Suddenly it all makes sense. I'm low on iron because my gut cannot absorb it.
So I start eating gluten free, and I start eating way more red meat than I used to, because building your iron levels takes a lot more iron intake than maintaining it. Now, about 8-9 months later I'm finally starting to feel better and my blood tests are showing my iron slowly creeping out of the danger zone
My nutritionist tells me that recovering this quickly would have probably been just about impossible for a vegetarian or vegan, without having an iron infusion done.
Anyways. Beef is kind of an important thing in our diets, that's all. Now that I'm back to a more normal level I'll go back to eating less of it, but I am now very conscious how important red meat is in a rounded diet
Edit: I guess my point is that calories are only part of the picture when it comes to food and there are a lot of other concerns as well, which are arguably more important to being healthy. You get calories from basically anything food you eat (assuming it's not some kind of engineered zero calorie diet food) but other minerals and vitamins are harder to source.
"probably been just about impossible" doesn't mean "impossible", it more likely means changing your eating habits to a point where you'd have to be really conscious and careful of what you eat iron-wise unlike someone without Celiacs (vegan or not) or someone who likes and can afford beef and can eat as much of it as they want.
There are lentils, beans, tofu, dark leafy greens and other sources of iron. There are iron-fortified foods. IIRC there are other considerations that might prevent careless or food-addicted people from getting enough iron like vitamin C to help with the iron absorption or not eating foods that decrease it.
There are plenty of vegans with Celiacs who manage their iron adequately. But even if you're one of those cases where iron needs to be supplemented, even IV - why not? If you disregard all the arguments against beef or animal products in general it's easy to make the argument that beef would be the best solution.
This reads like appeal to authority (the nutritionist) but a lot of nutritionists take the easy road ("just eat beef") or aren't good at all (haven't kept up with research). That's true of the majority of doctors and the majority of programmers (something people here will be able to relate to in case they haven't realized how useless most doctors are). I've been in and out of hospitals for several relatives for years and have heard doctors tell me outright falsehoods that show they have a only basic understanding of something. That makes sense since those doctors must know about so much more than the patient (thousands of diseases, lots of scientific knowledge about biology) but with a depth-first search into a topic you can spot how most of them have either stopped reading new studies or have lost their motivation to explore all option or have just stopped caring for providing the best kind of care. I hope people here don't have to go through what I have. That was a bit of a tangent, but I already wrote it so I'll keep it as a mini-rant.
> Beef is kind of an important thing in our diets, that's all. Now that I'm back to a more normal level I'll go back to eating less of it, but I am now very conscious how important red meat is in a rounded diet.
That's not really true. I'm sure you could ask vegans or vegetarians or Hindus or anyone who doesn't eat beef but has Celiacs and you'd get a whole bunch of options for managing it. Sure, you'll find ignorant people who think eating fruits all the time is enough but that's the same kind of carelessness that leads to non-vegans eating the standard Western diet all the time or doing other basic mistakes.
The same is true for almost everything. Almost nothing is "an important thing in our diets". People live without nuts or fruits or vegetables or legumes or meat or eggs or dairy (not all at once, of course, although I wouldn't be surprised if someone managed to avoid all these) and are able to manage pretty much any disease other groups of people can manage.
> calories are only part of the picture when it comes to food
True, people should care about the macros and micros. But with the internet it's trivial to do so both wrt learning what does what and how much is needed, and to track how much one eats from each.
Dude cites study after study pretty much all with the same conclusion: Eating animal products is bad for your health.
Obviously not all land is good for crops, but a lot of land used for animals or animal feed could be used for crops.
What we need is nutrient density. 0% of those feed calories have, eg, creatine. 100% of the beef calories do.
The calories cows eat are ... useless to humans. We cannot digest cullulose (grass) and most of the rest of the things we feed to cows. Anyone throwing this number around has an agenda, and is not objective
Other crops that humans can digest can be produced on land currently used for grass.
Other animal species that eat grass require fewer feed cal per calorie produced.
In India, for instance, dairy cattle are fed almost exclusively on crop residues and by-products. Crop residues being what's left over in the field after you harvest and by-products being what would otherwise be waste left over after you process for human use.
Elsewhere, in addition to crop residues/by-products, you also have natural grasslands that aren't planted or irrigated, legume feed grown between major crop seasons when you can't grow anything else that also replenishes the soil and feed grown on otherwise marginal land or barely managed land.
Certainly some crops grown for cows would be edible by humans or the land repurposed for growing crops edible for people, but there's often a cost involved like heavier fertilizer requirements, pesticide use, water requirements, added infrastructure and/or labor.
Specifically, they can eat stuff that doesn't require constant fertiliser inputs, where as people-food generally does need a lot of fertiliser inputs and needs more intensive herbicide/pesticide application.
A balanced approach is to go, "Hmm, it's probably a good idea to raise cattle, chickens, and other animals, and also to grow all kinds of produce and staple crops as well."
I'm not a vegan or whatever, but get real with the impact of meat production.
>> We apologize for the inconvenience...
To ensure we keep this website safe, please can you confirm you are a human by ticking the box below.
If you are unable to complete the above request please contact us using the below link, providing a screenshot of your experience.
https://ioppublishing.org/contacts/