This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Animals don't turn sunlight and rain into meat. You need to feed them plants. Which you have to grow first. Possibly on vertical farms run by hippy vegans.
Some animals can graze but I think this could sustain only than a small fraction of current meat production (after a quick googling, I saw the figures of 10% of beef production and 30% of sheep and goat meat production being sustained by grazing).
Most cows don't eat cultivated plants for their entire diet. They graze on "free" grasslands.
Is that actually true? The cows in the fields by the side of the highways of middle America, yes. sure. But what percentage of our meat comes from them and what percentage comes from the shoulder to shoulder cows in factory farms?
The US department of agriculture tends to be biased in a pro farming direction right? So this should be a reasonable source.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/sector-at-a-glance/
Now... you may be wondering- what's a specialized feedlot? Do these cows really never graze? My searches indicate that feedlots generally aim to rapidly fatten cows on cultivated grains, but sometimes, cows are started in their youth on grazing, before being moved to concentrated feed lots for grain-finishing.
I'm not quite invested enough to do a full research essay quantifying the number of calories that come from "free" grass. But it seems safe to say that-
Is just false or misleading... At least in the United States. If your country's industry is a pastoral utopia then power to you.
Ok yes. The grain finished ones are starting on grasslands, you may well be the best kind of correct (technically correct). But then they bulk up on grains. What we really care about is how much non-free grain we use per cow and how many people we could feed with that land and labor. In fact... the 'free' grasslands also have opportunity costs, since land is a finite and often fungible resource for farming.
No, we don't, not really. We don't have a food shortage in the US, nor a lack of land (we have a lack of land in some spots desirable for humans to live, but there aren't many cattle in SF or NYC. Some in Newark, NJ but that's much less desirable. Nor are there cornfields there.) Worrying overmuch about those is optimizing for something that is, at this time, not much of a constraint.
Artificially-grown meat isn't free either. Sure, you eliminate the labor of some number of cowhands and slaughterhouse workers (and they won't thank you for it), but you're going to need meat factory workers, some of whom are probably more expensive labor than the cowhands and slaughterhouse workers. And all those calories which went into the cow in the form of grain to fatten it? You still need them; there's no free lunch here. Either you're still getting the energy from grain (which means you need to process the grain further, since the ruminant won't be doing it for you), or you're getting it from some other source such as natural gas.
More options
Context Copy link
This was my primary point. That most cows use mediocre land for much of their lives. Some probably do not. Its a big country. There are weird rents all over the place. But pure grain fed beef is way above average market price by 2-3x from what I see.
More options
Context Copy link
Factory farms for beef basically do not exist, especially not in the united states -- the feedlots that you mention take cows that have lived on grasslands their entire lives and fatten them up a bit. This makes them, well, fattier which humans prefer, and finishes them a little faster, but you could absolutely feed the demand for beef on grass alone with minimal cost impact. (particularly compared to artificial meat)
The free grasslands look like forest/scrub -- farming other things there is not economically viable, otherwise they wouldn't be free grasslands.
You have been grievously, grievously misinformed -- please don't spread it here.
Um. Ok. I've updated.
Having updated, I yield to anti-dan that they are more than just technichally correct. They are also correct. I'll also yield to you, for now- that the grazing fields can't be repurposed. I'm skeptical of this but I don't have the means to do a counterfactual analysis on every field at this time.
But as for factory farms, clearly you have a much stricter definition. I acknowledge that most cattle are not factory farmed their whole lives, and that the cattle in feedlots have more elbow room than in chicken factory farms.
but whatever you want to call these things: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Five+Rivers+Cattle+Feeding-+Interstate+Feeders/@42.2862795,-113.3138525,1875m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x80aaf6984afed193:0x249cafeffb8a8530!8m2!3d42.2831921!4d-113.3150227!16s%2Fg%2F1thkxj9_?entry=ttu
definitely exist, and are representative of the largest cattle finishing operations. In fact this is one of them. Now. the number of months spent here vary.
This company for instance claims that their cattle spend spring and summer grazing, then they spend 120 days in the feed lot. https://www.lazyt.com/the-story-of-your-beef
That's still over a third of their lives. And these numbers are fairly standard. 97% of cattle are grain finished, and that typically means something in the range of 6-15 months grazing followed by 4-6 months finishing. Depending on breed and operation.
Not all feed lots are the same, but the highest volume ones do look like this.
There. Is that accurate?
Sure, it's pretty much how it's done in the US.
But it needs to be super clear that this is not in any way instrumental to the production of large amounts of beef -- if those cattle stayed on the range for four months instead of going to the feedlot, they would still constitute a lot of beef. Somewhat less, and quite a bit less marketable (to US tastes) -- but if you banned feedlots tomorrow you would still be able to afford a burger.
On this part I guess you just need to spend some time out west? Most of the time when you run across ranging beef cattle it's not even anywhere you might call a 'field' -- it's like literal woods where I am, and in other parts borderline desert. You don't need to believe me, but you could maybe cross-reference BLM leases (in the US) with Google Earth or something? Working ranches will keep some self-owned pasture around that's more fertile, and grow some hay and stuff for winter feed -- but water is a problem out here. Hay will grow a crop a year with ~zero inputs and no irrigation -- I don't know too many crops for human consumption like that.
If you wanna talk about high-impact use of fertile land, I'd turn your gaze towards dairy cattle. Their lives seem pretty pleasant, but goddamn they eat a lot of corn and produce a lot of shit. The footprint of the cows isn't that much, but the acres and acres of silage and alfalfa could be better used if you ask me. People seem to like milk for some reason though.
There are startups working on synthetic milk. Seems like it would be easier to make than synthetic meat. At least nobody should complain about texture.
Like I say I'm not the hugest fan of intensive dairying, so fine if true -- but I do think they will run into trouble with energy inputs. One cow can generate a truly shocking amount of milk, and they don't really eat that much. The problem (to me) is that the demand for milk products is also truly shocking -- so anyway you slice it there's going to be some shocking resource usage going on.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Can you link a study on that from any group that isn't openly pushing to abolish meat? Because I'm familiar with the propaganda tricks: classifying all rain that falls on grazing lands as "water used for animals", etc.
I know what my inputs and outputs are, and the inputs are extremely minimal. It's likely that the US wastes a lot of grain fattening up cows and even sheep (US carcass weights for "lambs" are double the UK's, which hurts quality for zero benefit), but those are inefficiencies due to our historically cheap feed prices and lack of innovation in decaying markets.
If you have specific counterfactuals that you want considered, I think we'll be better off doing the study ourselves. We should be able to get numbers on acreage and on gross industry input and output and run napkin math.
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Reports_By_Date/
Hmm. Yep ok. I can see why most people just let someone else do the several days of data science this is going to take. I still think gwerning it yourself is going to be your best bet at coming to a reasoned opinion you can trust though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link