Worried about cow farts? Several people switch to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle due to a compassion for the environment and its inhabitants. While this is honorable, is it truly helping the planet? Or is carnivore the most "vegan" (less cruel) way of eating?
Let's compare ways of eating...
There’s no question that growing grain for cattle is stupid and destructive. Taking down trees to make pastures is also horrible. CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) are incredibly cruel.
Also, eating plant foods from fossil-fuel dependent farming that result in the habitat loss of the small creatures, the death of numerous creatures that live in the soil, and crazy amounts of water, is also not “green.” People often forget that numerous species are killed in crop production, and CO2 is released during the tilling and the food production process. My dad recently visited some areas in central America that he hadn’t seen for 40 years. Where there once were forests, there are now massive areas of coconut groves and coffee plantations. This is not “green” and it’s incredibly cruel and destructive to the animal kingdom that lived in those forests. Our love of avocados is currently destroying Mexico’s pine forests, devastating ecosystems, wiping out the monarch butterflies, and contributing to climate change.
No matter how we eat, the goal should be to avoid destructive farming, whether it’s for meat or crops. It’s largely not about what we farm, it’s about how and where. Livestock farming on grasslands that require no external resources and regenerate the land should never be compared to animals raised in grain-dependent farming. It’s like comparing apples to oranges.
I have personally found that it’s easier to be kind to the earth and animals when I eat meat. Fewer deaths result when I eat meat. I’m more in harmony with nature and the natural workings of this planet. My smaller environmental footprint from this way of eating is greatly reduced.
When I was plant-based eating, I tried to be low impact. I’d bring my mesh reusable vegetable bags to the farmers market to buy much of my produce locally, but this wasn’t good enough. Looking back, I see how destructive I was:
I would eat avocados, coconuts, nuts, grains, and some produce shipped from all over the world… shipping is not green.
Much of the food came in a package or container of some sort.
I ate processed foods. (Foods assembled with more than one ingredient… breads, crackers, chips, treats, etc) This means that multiple ingredients had to come together from far and wide.
At home I’d buy organic, but when dining out I was likely eating food that used herbicides and pesticides, poisoning not only myself, but the earth and any creature living from that land.
The land where each ingredient was grown displaced or killed multiple creatures… birds, insects, amphibians, small mammals, and even large mammals.
Human farts releases methane. (Fun fact: eating plants causes this. Humans don’t fart if they only eat meat). I wonder how this compares to cow emissions?
Produce and food creates an incredible amount of waste; Farmers can’t sell “ugly” produce. Spoilage occurs during transport. Spoilage occurs in the household. Peeling/coring/chopping up produce produces waste. Americans loose up to 40% of their food. Landfills are the 3rd largest source of methane emissions in the US, and food creates methane. Food makes up 20% of waste in the US.
Crops withdraw nutrients from the soil, and very few farms replenish it properly. Conventional farming uses chemical fertilizers that do a poor job on replenishing these nutrients in the soil.
Scientists say there is more carbon in the soil than in the atmosphere and all plant life combined. Greenhouse gas is released from tilling soil. Typically, each site loses about 30% of a 20-year period of continued tilling and row-crop production. Most agricultural soils have lost 30%-70% of their soil organic carbon (SOC).
Poor agricultural contributes to soil erosion through wind, water, and tillage erosion. Sediments from eroded soils emit greenhouse gasses when organic matter sediments enter anaerobic waterways. The dead anoxic zone of the Gulf of Mexico is an example of this. These dead zones are often created by runoff of fertilizers.
Compared to carnivore (I mainly eat beef. This beef has been grass-fed and finished, and I know where is comes from, so I understand the farm.)
Close to zero food waste. Nothing goes bad. Every bite is eaten.
Very little packaging. No containers. Just some butcher paper or shrink-wrap.
Cows urinate and poop, adding microorganisms to the soil, increasing biodiversity underground. This helps sequester carbon.
Cattle grazing stimulates grass growth, which helps sequester carbon. Cattle farms that use regenerative technics can actually be carbon positive even after factoring in the farming. See this farm as an example: www.whiteoakpastures.com
Cattle walking on the ground allows for rain to pocket and seeds to germinate, which is good for the health of the pasture.
Regenerative grazing can produce a 30-40% improvement in soil carbon compared to where there is no grazing. Much of the earths extremely brittle land can be healed with properly managed grazing livestock.
Increasing the total organic carbon in soil can decrease atmospheric CO2.
Water: Uses less water than most crops. Ignore the stats about water usage and cattle… they include “blue water” which is actually rain water!
Beyond food, I’ve found other ways to use animal products to help the environment. Soap: I use soap that is 100% grass-fed tallow. This is a great way to use the entire animal. Shampoo & Conditioner: This is also tallow. It’s a bar, so I don’t have plastic waste from a bottle. Lotion: Again, no container. I simply use lard or tallow. No ingredients that damaged the land, and no packaging. And my skin is better than ever. Since the nutrients in fat are bio-available, it’s amazing for skin.
I’m perplexed on how making consumer products “vegan” is green. For example, Tesla advertised that its seats will now be vegan, rather than leather. How is plastic better?! We often raise a cow on my dad’s property to eat. He is in Northern California with 5 acres, and the cow grazes on the abundant grass. Beats using fossil fuel to mow! The biggest issue we find with this, is that there is nothing to do the hide. We must get a backhoe to make a big hole to bury it in the ground. The butcher doesn’t want it, because there isn’t demand. Instead, we are manufacturing plastics. This is madness.
Sources
Carnivore creates very little food waste. Produce waste rates are around 50%. Source
Crops use pesticides that often run into nearby lakes, rivers, streams, and canals from irrigating crops. There are giant dead zones in the ocean from pesticide runoff.Source
Chemicals used on crops kill bees, insects, etc. Source
People who are carnivores rarely have gas. This is because the body no longer has to ferment plant food. The average person who eats plants produces 0.6–1.8 liters of intestinal gas each day. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that methane production from livestock (essentially cow farts) makes up about 36 percent of the methane pollution that human activity generates.
Studies show that when well managed, grazing livestock can be carbon neutral in the long run. This can be done with rotational grazing. Source
About 392 million acres in the US are used to grow crops. Source
85% of the land used for grazing ruminants cannot be used to grow crops. It is either too wet, too stony, too high, too steep, too poor, too dry, too cold, too hot, or anything else that prevents anything other than grass and native flora to grow.
Cows eat grass, hay, or some form of plant matter, which constitutes 87 - 90% of most cattle diets. It's 100% for some. The other 10-13% is feed made up of human inedible grains and byproducts, and a very small amount is direct grown feed.
In the early 1800s there were roughly 60 million buffalo in the US. There are currently roughly 9.4 million diary and 31.7 million beef cows in the US.
The human toll from overwork and pesticide exposure during crop production
Upwards of 70 million children used for agricultural labor. Source
20,000 deaths a year for pesticide use, mostly in third world countries. Source
The graphic below should include methane produced by human flatulence
Don’t eat a certain way because “they” tell you a certain way is better for the planet. Figure it out on your own.
Take a look in YOUR pantry and cabinets
How many single use plastics and packaging do you see?
Where were these products produced (how far were they transported)?
Where were each of the ingredients within those products grown?
How much power and water was used to produce each of those ingredients?
How was each of these products grown? Did it take machinery or human power?
Where is this machinery from and what did it take to produce it?
If humans were used, how are they treated? Were children involved in the labor?
Were herbicides or pesticides used to make any of your products?
Do you know about the land were the ingredients grown on? What kind of birds, insects, amphibians, small mammals, and possible large mammals may have been impacted from the tilling of the soil?
If the land is near a stream or ocean, was there runoff?
Do you know where the water came from? Do you know how much power was used to move the water to the farm?
What is the carbon footprint of the distributor for this product?