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.

Thank you, lovey!

There’s a huge amount of investment going into Lab grown meat including from the meat industry itself so I think that’s maybe an option in the future. It’s already been developed for the pet food market.

🫠

And how will that help any of my points about the soil?

The anti-vegan crowd are absolutely relentless, so many threads.

Folks, there aren't all that many vegans anyway, how about you stop the endless preaching and accept that some people have different diets?

Obviously. But I am not idiot and can read a sentence. PP clearly is taking a jab at non vegans for eating meat thinking they are superior.

What 😂

Vegans are a tiny percentage of the population. No one cares about vegans. The point of this thread is OP pointing out that we need livestock to farm sustainably from an environmental point of view and as you can tell from the thread - vegan or not - most people do not understand this because the public messaging is not designed to accurately portray truth but to engineer a desired outcome.

Will we need as much pasture land if the animals aren’t being bred for slaughter? If lab grown meat replaces all need for live animals over the next generation or so won’t the land be able to regenerate itself? Genuine question as I’m not a farmer or a vegan.

My post is talking about the soil being depleted of nutrients after decades of no livestock being on them. Just cropping drains the soil of nutrients.

Also ruined crops are given to livestock, turning otherwise inedible food into animal feed, that we can then eat when we eat the animals.

The grown meat industry is nowhere near the point of being viable.

Thanks for asking kindly :)

Ah I see. Thanks.

Your talking sense but a lot of people dont like it i saw a program once where they laid it out to vegans the actual cost of "vegan leather" they didn't seem to believe them

Haven't RTFT but this seems like a very selective take OP.

A third of beef is imported for a start.

About 60% of the pork we eat is imported.

And what about the 1 billion chickens eaten in the UK per year, a third of which are imported again, who don't graze on grass and many raised unethically?

We eat way more chicken than any other meat as a nation. Almost all of UK chicken is factory farmed. And fed on grain and soy.

Hang on, do you think vegans are the main consumers of "vegan leather"? 😂😂😂

Yes, I'm saying dont import meat if we can.

I give up. Literally biggest waste of my time ever. Trying to have a grown up conversation with someone, but that’s impossible when they’re not willing to engage meaningfully. Like why did you start this thread? It’s not an AIBU , because on an AIBU people are generally open to hearing others ideas and open to changing opinions. If you just want to platform your poorly articulated thoughts, start a blog or write an Instagram post.

Weirdly enough, this gives me a little hope, as the problem with CO2 emissions is that they hang around for a long long time, so even if we massively reduced our CO2 emissions today, we'd still be somewhat fucked.

But if we reduced all our methane emissions- used every means at our disposal to stop all the methane leaks from fossil fuel drilling everywhere, got rid of all the bloody cows- right now, would that mean that the methane would dissipate and the planet start to cool relatively quickly?

The undesirable effects of meat and dairy production are well established.

A few things:

Meat and dairy production has a similar effect on climate change to all transport.

Meat and dairy are not necessary - we can all live very well without it.

Meat and dairy production is a leading cause of deforestation - the bulk of soya produced globally is used for animal feed.

Taking the UK as a closed system, switching to a plant-based diet would render approximately 70% of existing agricultural land redundant.

UK-produced beef may well be mainly grass fed, but that is not the case globally - the days of the family pig/cow are long gone, with the sheer scale of the industry causing most of the problems.

Out of interest, if rotation of cattle and crops would be better for your land/soil quality and require less use of expensive fertiliser to grow your crops, why don't you move to having livestock again as well? Would it still be a net loss with the increased cost of fertiliser?

Yes I’m sure I know the difference 🙄. Wheat Barley and oats are not very similar and anyway none of of them nitrogen fixers (unless genetically modified), which are needed in crop rotation so if a farmer is only rotating those grains they’re missing the point.

Interested … what do you think about autumn ploughing? My understanding is that it is a relatively modern practice and far more damaging to soil and wildlife than spring ploughing.

I was curious enough to do a little research to see if does really made a difference.....doesn't seem so!
Soil erosion is mostly caused by monocrops, overtilling and excessive use of fertilisers.
What helps is crop rotation, cover cropping (planting something between growing seasons) and reduced tilling.
So not cows basically!😆

No, they aren’t enough alone, we use cover cropping and reduced tilling.

what about the other points (spoiled crops, unsuitable land, micro biome and the rest)

I’m sure 5 mins of googling is superior to a farmers lived experience

Interesting post. Thank you.

It's not designed to make you feel anything, it's just factually accurate.

Nothing about rearing animals for slaughter can be compared to the natural world, unless you are a very clever lion with access to the internet?

This 'local meat is happy meat' is rubbish - but not the point of this thread, just irritating.

Why do even we need science?

We've got the OP's "lived experience", thank you very much.