AIBU to think most people don’t realise reducing meat will not save the planet and may in fact cause more climate issues.

[TreeLoverr]

I’m a farmer, but before you dismiss this as bias, I don’t have any livestock so do not sell meat.

We own a purely arable based farm and pretty much exclusively grow grain and cereals.

My family had beef cattle on the farm , but they’re sold the heard years before I was born due to lack of profits.

The reason why I say this is due to a few reasons. The soils on our farm are suffering. Especially due to lack of organic content. The soil must be replaced with actual organic matter (like in a garden, it erodes over time and you have to put compost on)

When most farms operated by rotating grazing animals this happens naturally. The grass putting roots down also stops soil erosion, and the dung from the animals too. There are other things that we are just beginning to understand like the important impact of hooves trampling and the delicate micro biome that the cows eating and pooping replenishes.

Just putting dung onto the fields is not enough. Firstly the nutritional balance gets off kilter very quickly (in a way that doesn’t really happen with livestock rotation) and secondly it is difficult to get hold of when you don’t have your own animals.

The alternative to this is fertiliser. Fertilisers are made using fossil fuels. This is far worse for the environment than animals on grassland.

Many farmland is not suitable for cropping. Too hilly/steep, rocky etc. but it is suitable for raising animals, turning otherwise wasted land into human food.

When we have a bad harvest, it often means the crops are not suitable for human consumption. This is then sold for animal feed, turning this into food further down the line as we can then eat the animals. This crop would otherwise have to be destroyed or just left in the field.

But what about greenhouse gases you might be wondering? Animals are PART of the natural cycle. They are not the same as greenhouse gasses released during fossil fuels being burned. Greenhouse gasses are trapped in the soil and plants that they eat, they release and the plants absorb again. plants literally live off carbon dioxide and methane.

How we farm can absolutely negatively affect climate change, but grass fed British beef and lamb is actually important to our ecology and an important food source in order to maximise our environment without destroying it.

as much as i disagree with the OP and her blinkered views on soil erosion as a proof of need for continued cattle farming - this is an oversimplification and distortion of that paper @Iris2020

The paper found 34 genes associated with strict vegetarianism in a large observational dataset with only 3 reaching proper statistical significance. The lipid synthesis interpretation was the authors' own speculation, flagged as such in the paper.

Biologist here - really interested in your comment about plants using methane? I think there’s some limited evidence about tree bark absorbing it/wetlands potentially too. But not grassland?

Here’s how much water it takes to make a serving of beef – and why where it comes from is so important https://share.google/qxfeuuDctC9LMlBDR

I agree. I only buy locally raised meat. It’s expensive, so I only eat it about once a week.
I think that supporting local farms where the animals live a decent quality of life and where the meat doesn’t have to be transported across the globe is very important and helps animal welfare and the environment almost as much as, if not in some ways more than, going full veggie.

If everyone who cared about animals and the environment were to stop buying meat altogether, the only profitable market would be mass factory farming and smaller more ecologically friendly and higher welfare local farms would disappear. By buying local, there continues to be a market for local, sustainable meat that comes from happier animals living life on a hillside, not horribly mass-farmed meat from the Americas.

According to Defra "grass-fed" just means at least 51% of the diet is grass. The number of purely grass fed cattle in the UK is tiny.

Almost all livestock is supplemented with grain to varying degrees so you have the same issues as you do with crop farming except worse as it's less efficient to feed a cow and eat it than to just feed a human.

@TreeLoverr You should probably send your research in for peer review since it disproves pretty much all the published studies on this subject.

The science community will be more than happy to updated the narrative based on your findings if true 😊

Why am I antagonising people? I’m just sharing something they might not realise.

i don’t care if someone is vegetarian, I’m just pointing out that if you’re vegetarian for entertainment all reasons, it’s not necessarily the planet saving solution a lot of people think it is.

What do you think should be done to address my points?

Absolutely which is why I eat meat. And British meat specifically

Problem is it only works sustainably when they aren’t importing millions of people a year. And we are already over the limit I think. I last did the calculation pre Brexit. So yes we are 100% over it now actually.

Methane is broken down into co2 and water after approx a decade co2 is absorbed by plants.

Can you refute my points?

What. This is well known in the science community 🤣

You are wasting your time OP. MN is full of posters who don't know the first thing about farming and think doing a bit of research on the internet makes them experts!

And how does that involve plants as you inferred? That’s what happens to it in the atmosphere.. you said in your original post that plants live off methane??

Maybe there are some posters with better scientific knowledge than the OP?

My thoughts too

government budget and trade deals. Some remain.

I'm really curious as to how you think modern agriculture in any way approaches that complex ecosystem.

We do not have the land or resources to feed everyone locally produced organic lamb chop.

If more people realised that the “vegan” label often means “heavily processed” “completely unnatural” or even “petroleum based”

Horseshit. I've been vegan for decades and my diet is no more unnatural or heavily processed than yours. Argue properly, not with straw men. I guess you mean you've seen heavily processed vegan foods on shop shelves. I've seen lots of heavily processed meat and dairy foods on shop shelves too. That does not mean that either diet HAS to be heavily processed.

I am vegetarian and this is never going to change. I don't consume dairy products and only eat free range eggs.

It is about animal welfare and also because I think it is better for my health.

I was born in the countryside so I have sympathy for farmers but you can still be a farmer without livestock.

And maybe there are some posters who would like us to believe that they have better scientific knowledge.

Really? I am not a farmer. And MN can vouch that I am a long time poster. I have spoken about this before because I don’t think I have ever actually seen anyone else talk about this. I studied ecology and landscape. Dual degrees to masters. Not ecology only which is obsessed with having no humans. But the ecology + the interaction part. And the man is right. Soil depletion is scary stuff. It’s not our children will die. It’s we will die. It takes 20 years on average to completely kill a soil with two harvests a year and that’s with modern fertilisers / chemicals to reduce hydrophobia. Many farms are already there.

Maybe if the OP hadn’t put scientifically dubious statements in the original post, there wouldn’t be this discussion.

Because they absorb it once it breaks down. Sorry I didn’t word it perfectly, just writing points down.

Do you have any issues with the rest of the points in my post?

I am a farmer without livestock. I’m saying it’s ruining the soils despite all the work we do to make that not the case.

I’m a woman but thanks 🙏