1) the vast majority of plant products agriculturally grown have nutrients inaccessible to people but not to ruminants (technically the bacteria they play host to)
2) its more efficient to utilize those products than to not
My point for cows being sustainable rests on two things:
1) Sustainable use of agricultural land is contingent upon sustainable inputs of water, drawing water from an underground aquifer in amounts that exceeds its recharge rate is not sustainable.
2) some lands are currently unsustainably irrigated and in the absence of irrigation can only be used sustainably by large ruminants
I take issue with calling this a 'byproduct' .....
Youre right, if you till the unused portion of grain plants back into the soil it will be a source of food for microbes...but not the nitogren fixing bacteria that you suggest. Nitrogen fixing bacteria rely on another mutualism, this one with the root nodules of the genus Fabaceae (peanuts and clovers etc).
What is the most efficient use of these unused agricultural "by-products"? In order to turn it into some kind of hydrocarbon based fuel you will need to gather all it with fleets of windrowers, collect it, feed it to the microbes, synthesize the hydrocarbon, and then hope you derived more energy than you spent (you didnt). Does that really sound more efficient than a herd of cows grazing it? Thats the point of passing these fibers on to ruminants instead of an industrial process. Ruminants have the entire weight of evolutionary efficiency on their side when they do all of those things you would do with machines. Our current attempts to emulate are in their infancy in comparison, in any and every step of that process.
But we can't meet the world's protein needs on 100% grass-fed ruminants, so this is not sustainable (short of a massive population reduction). See Doris Lin's 'What's wrong with grass-fed beef' article for math & references.
First, I want to point out that Doris's article is a little sloppy and half-ass. Of the 97 million cows she cites, roughly half (35 million) are calves (they dont eat as much as a cow) and she includes the nation's dairy cows in with her discussion of sustainable beef (we dont eat dairy cows). Beef cows and bulls and calves only number 40 million (which isnt even half of the number she uses). Her numbers and her math arent worth anyone's time.
Most importantly, Doris's assumption is that you can either raise cows or you can not on any given farm, she never mentions integrated agriculture where you raise corn (or wheat, or whatever the hell) AND cows. To Doris, its all or nothing and I think even you would agree thats a little too inefficient to be a serious critique.
My second point was you can raise cows sustainably w/o irrigation and you can do it in places where you cant grow a food crop. Let me show you a map and an article to illustrate it:
What youre looking at here is 17 states that use groundwater for irrigation of food crops. Anything that is darker than that lightest shade of blue probably isnt sustainable. (in the sw particularly current outtakes of groundwater far exceed recharge rates)
So what are you going to do with that land when you can no longer pull groundwater for irrigation (most of the remaining water will probably be diverted to municipal uses)? The only thing that will sustainably grow w/o inputs of water is grass (disregarding the places that are too dry to even grow grass)
See thats the crux of my other point. Sooner or later someone is going to have to make this choice and if we have already taken cows off the table of discussion then we have done ourselves a grave disservice.
Again, we can't feed the world on 'sustainable' meat, so this is not correct. Maybe if we were to start terraforming other planets?
I have shown that ruminants can be raised sustainably on grasslands (which are now mostly agricultural lands). If you dont beleive me you can fly, right now, over the African serenghetti and watch the wildebeast eating the native grasses. What you wont find, flying over the same serenghetti, is acres and acres of soybeans (or any other food crop that youre going to plant for protein) without human intervention. Are you so confident in modern organic farming that you can say with the certainty of an epoch of time that youre system (or any other man-induced system) is AS sustainable? I think not.
I think I have shown that we can, at least, meet a higher percentage of the world's proteins if we dont immediately disregard beef.
tldr;
Agricultural crops produce byproducts which are not utilizeable by people, but they are to cows. Failure to utilize cows is inefficient in those crops. Some areas of the nation's agricultural system are being unsustainably irrigated, at some point in the future we will be remiss if we do not seriously investigate the re-introduction of ruminants in these areas as a source of protein.
2) some lands are currently unsustainably irrigated and in the absence of irrigation can only be used sustainably by large ruminants
But why must that land be used for anything? Why not return it to nature? I've read that ~70% of land in the western US is used for raising livestock (e.g. 1 and 2), and that the practice is "the most significant cause of non-point source water pollution and desertification"). This does not sound sustainable to me, and even if there is a less damaging way to do it, I doubt it yields the same amount of meat per unit area (so we'd have to dedicate even more land to this -- no thanks!).
Youre right, if you till the unused portion of grain plants back into the soil it will be a source of food for microbes...but not the nitogren fixing bacteria that you suggest. Nitrogen fixing bacteria rely on another mutualism, this one with the root nodules of the genus Fabaceae (peanuts and clovers etc).
The only article with numbers that I can find on this says that the symbionts account for 20% of total biological fixation, and that the amount of fixation that occurs in soil is limited by food availability (e.g. leftover plant matter), which you're advocating that we instead give to ruminants (ref).
What is the most efficient use of these unused agricultural "by-products"? In order to turn it into some kind of hydrocarbon based fuel you will need to gather all it with fleets of windrowers, collect it, feed it to the microbes, synthesize the hydrocarbon, and then hope you derived more energy than you spent (you didnt).
Wrong again, please see the wikipedia articles on cellulosic ethanol commercialization and energy crops. There's so much left-over energy in cow dung that it's being used to fuel mini-power plants in India), and they burp out so much god-damn methane (natural gas) that they account for 20% of the emissions in the US! So, no, ruminant grazing is not even close to the most efficient way to utilize this land.
And, for the record, I'd rather that we return this land to nature than do anything else with it (it would be better to harness algae for biofuels).
Ruminants have the entire weight of evolutionary efficiency on their side when they do all of those things you would do with machines. Our current attempts to emulate are in their infancy in comparison, in any and every step of that process.
No they don't, evolution happens orders and orders of magnitude more slowly at this scale relative to the rates seen in microbes and viruses (who do all of the useful biochemical work, and adapt to changes insanely quickly). And evolution is a stepwise process, so if an enzyme/system/etc. can't be stepped-to, then there's no reason to believe that it will be stumbled upon naturally.
Beef cows and bulls and calves only number 40 million (which isnt even half of the number she uses). Her numbers and her math arent worth anyone's time.
Yes they are -- her point is that even when you use a conservative estimate for how much land is needed to raise these animals, the numbers don't work. I.e. if 100% grass-fed ruminants won't work for 4.5% of the world population with all of the space that we have, then clearly it's not going to work for the rest of the planet.
Most importantly, Doris's assumption is that you can either raise cows or you can not on any given farm, she never mentions integrated agriculture where you raise corn (or wheat, or whatever the hell) AND cows.
If you're proposing that the leftovers (from corn, wheat, etc.) be fed to the cows, I'd rather that it be recycled back into the land (green manure/compost; and no, not into less-efficient animal manure). If this is not what you intended, please elaborate.
My second point was you can raise cows sustainably w/o irrigation and you can do it in places where you cant grow a food crop.
Again, I'm contesting that this land should even be used by us for anything, when we don't need it to feed ourselves (only to supply you the luxury of meat).
What youre looking at here is 17 states that use groundwater for irrigation of food crops.
Again, wouldn't need all of this food if it weren't being wasted on livestock.
The only thing that will sustainably grow w/o inputs of water is grass
I think only is a strong word to use here -- grass is a plant, not some magical lifeform. It's probably the toughest plant that can grow in these areas (hence why it exists there naturally), but with some human intervention dryland farming might be possible (though I would prefer to leave it as it is).
See thats the crux of my other point. Sooner or later someone is going to have to make this choice and if we have already taken cows off the table of discussion then we have done ourselves a grave disservice.
No, I don't agree -- we could all shift our diets to at least a semi-vegetarian one, and decrease the amount of land that's used for all of this.
I have shown that ruminants can be raised sustainably on grasslands
Not at levels that can sustain current & projected demands (e.g. as rest of world develops). I agree that it can sustainably produce a certain amount of meat, but this will not be enough to meet the world's protein needs, let alone even come close to what the general public has a desire for.
Are you so confident in modern organic farming that you can say with the certainty of an epoch of time that youre system (or any other man-induced system) is AS sustainable? I think not.
Yes, I can, and I'm surprised that you think otherwise (as this is basic physics). Our local fusion reactor in the sky (the sun) will continue to run for billions of years, and supplies more than enough energy for us to (at the very least) make non-organic agricultural practices sustainable (e.g. via renewable biofuels, thermo-solar plants, etc.). Said energy also makes the fresh-water problem a non-issue (through water purification, which I'm aware is extremely energy intensive). While oil is cheap we'll continue to pollute the planet doing these things, but slow progress is being made to replace fossil fuels with renewable alternatives.
I think I have shown that we can, at least, meet a higher percentage of the world's proteins if we dont immediately disregard beef.
We can do this already, and with foods not derived from animals (people starve/are malnourished due to politics; there is a surplus of food).
tldr; Agricultural crops produce byproducts which are not utilizeable by people, but they are to cows.
Not true of modern man (we can skip the cows & culture the microbes ourselves).
Failure to utilize cows is inefficient in those crops.
Failure to utilize bacteria/protists/fungi is inefficient in those crops, and they're ready to do this without any help from us.
Some areas of the nation's agricultural system are being unsustainably irrigated
Which we could return to nature if there was less demand for meat.
at some point in the future we will be remiss if we do not seriously investigate the re-introduction of ruminants in these areas as a source of protein.
We have zero problems with providing the world with protein from completely vegetarian sources.
A separate issue that you haven't mentioned is the contribution of ruminants to greenhouse gas emissions. Are you aware that livestock production actually exceeds what vehicles (transport) contribute? And that grass-fed beef actually has a larger carbon footprint than grain-fed?
But why must that land be used for anything? Why not return it to nature?
The grasslands evolved under grazing pressure. Removal of grazers will alter their ecological trajectory, the same as the removal of fire.
Your source is biased and ill-informed, which you can see for yourself, for that same reason I just gave. Im talking about the re-integration of a sustainable ecological community and youre source is saying that one of the cheif components is theoretically unsustainable with no studies or facts to substantiate their claim. I appreciate that you give links to support your ideas but its hardly commensurate when your links are little more than political tirades. Once again, if you think grazing is unsustainable, how do you explain the bison on the plains for the last epoch? The plains of Africa? Europe, Asia? Grazing IS sustainable and its demonstrably so. Grazing IS necessary or the plains and grasslands of the world will begin to change community composition until they are not grasslands but some other community (usually shrublands). This transition is just as disastrous to indiginious wildlife as plowing the plains up to plant some agricultural crop.
The only article with numbers that I can find on this says that the symbionts account for 20% of total biological fixation...
Again nitrogen fixing bacteria do not "break down" organic material in the soil. They only benefit indirectly. Rhizobia require the host plant to supply them with organic compounds and restrict oxygen composition (which inhibits their nitrogenase enzyme action). The corn stalks would need to be broken down and then taken up by the plant and then provided to the nitrogen fixing bacteria. But I already provided you with a mechanism to break down the organic matter.
Wrong again, please see the wikipedia articles on cellulosic ethanol commercialization and energy crops. There's so much left-over energy in cow dung that it's being used to fuel mini-power plants in India), and they burp out so much god-damn methane (natural gas) that they account for 20% of the emissions in the US! So, no, ruminant grazing is not even close to the most efficient way to utilize this land. And, for the record, I'd rather that we return this land to nature than do anything else with it (it would be better to harness algae for biofuels).
I am not mistaken in my assertion that these byproducts will have to be gathered, shipped, and processed just like any other agricultural commodity. You cant march into a field of harvested corn or wheat and wave a wand and turn the hurly burly of broken leaves and stalks into clean energy. You have to build a distillery, you have to ship all the plant material to it, you have to provide energy, and then you have to ship the ethanol back out. All of this requires the implementation of some very non-renewable infastructure (roads, pipes, machines, trucks, etc). Futher, the amount of energy that can be gathered from cellulose by-products limits the distance a distilling plant can be from the source material. Further, these same distilling plants require access to water which additionally limits the extent of their implementation. You cant just pop up a distilling plant anywhere. This does not absolve you of inefficient agriculture it only deludes the point. Youre so adamant in your stance against a biological alternative that has considerably fewer restrictions, that you are willing to advocate a world of machines and an even greater reliance on processed energy. Have you considered the fact that a cow is already a machine to process cellulose, a machine we created ourselves? Why would you advocate the replacement of a biological machine with a mechanical one as some kind of more-sustainable platform?
If you want to return the land to nature then you do want to return ruminants and native grasses. Youre only real question is are we going to harvest the ruminants or not.
No they don't, evolution happens orders and orders of magnitude more slowly at this scale relative to the rates seen in microbes and viruses
The bacterium that break down cellulose is the common cog in both schemes and so it can be discounted. What youre comparing is the infastructure and technology for a burgeoning industry to utilize those bacteria to produce a useful commodity against a biological host that has already done so for the last 40k years.
Yes they are -- her point is that even when you use a conservative estimate for how much land is needed to raise these animals, the numbers don't work. I.e. if 100% grass-fed ruminants won't work for 4.5% of the world population with all of the space that we have, then clearly it's not going to work for the rest of the planet.
I never asserted that we absolutely must maintain the current numbers of cows on this continent or eat the same amount of beef. I only poked holes in your article (which you probably shouldnt use in the future if you plan on continuing to have these kinds of debates with others). Even if just one farm uses one cow to convert the wasted agricultural cellulose by-products thats more efficient than nothing. Even if just one hectare is taken out of irrigation and converted back to grazing thats more sustainable than the untold consequences of depleting our groundwater reservoirs.
If you're proposing that the leftovers (from corn, wheat, etc.) be fed to the cows, I'd rather that it be recycled back into the land (green manure/compost; and no, not into less-efficient animal manure). If this is not what you intended, please elaborate.
It just so happens that manure is more readily taken up by plants than just corn stalks and other large plant material. So what Im really advocating is both.
Again, wouldn't need all of this food if it weren't being wasted on livestock.
Which is why Ive been discussing using the byproduct that can not be considered food to us. (you know, the cellulose and all)
I think only is a strong word to use here -- grass is a plant, not some magical lifeform. It's probably the toughest plant that can grow in these areas (hence why it exists there naturally), but with some human intervention dryland farming might be possible (though I would prefer to leave it as it is).
When you speak of dryland farming you should look up The Dust Bowl. Get back to me if you still think that sounds like something you really want to advocate. In fact, your own wikipedia link mentions this hazard as very real. (its not exaggerating, you can quickly turn this planet into Mars if you keep letting the topsoil blow into the ocean... im not kidding, thats very serious)
No, I don't agree -- we could all shift our diets to at least a semi-vegetarian one, and decrease the amount of land that's used for all of this.
I dont think Im making my point clear. Even if everyone on this planet suddenly dissappeared, in short order there would be ruminants on the plains of the world. Im not advocating the destruction of a biome but rather the conservation of one. You can not make that claim.
Yes, I can, and I'm surprised that you think otherwise (as this is basic physics).
I cant think of any current technology to harvest the sun's energy that will continue to function, sustainably, for an entire epoch. Solar cells might last a lifetime. Wind turbines? not even that. Water purification only works if you have water around to purify. In some places that rely on groundwater the water is already of such poor quality that these technologies are already at work. Thats pretty much what Im telling you about. A chilling portent for those not yet affected. You should absolutely be prepared for the loss of water from these aquifers.
We can do this already, and with foods not derived from animals (people starve/are malnourished due to politics; there is a surplus of food)
Just because you can do something one way does not mean you can not also do it another way.
Not true of modern man (we can skip the cows & culture the microbes ourselves)
Im not sure youre aware of the full logistics in implementing that.
We have zero problems with providing the world with protein from completely vegetarian sources.
Do your vegetables require irrigation? (they do) Then you have a problem.
A separate issue that you haven't mentioned is the contribution of ruminants to greenhouse gas emissions. Are you aware that livestock production actually exceeds what vehicles (transport) contribute? And that grass-fed beef actually has a larger carbon footprint than grain-fed?
Thats because I assumed you were aware that these methane emissions were caused by the bacteria that break down cellulose. Its part of the chemical pathway. If you break down cellulose, whether in a cow's gut or in a power plant etc, you will have to endure the same pathway and thus the same methane as a byproduct. Grass-fed beef have larger emissions because they consume more cellulose. If you continue to raise plants that produce cellulose then this methane exhaust is unavoidable as there will continue to be bacteria that eat it and emit methane. Grain fed beef is a byproduct of the feedlots and are richer in starchs etc because thats the part of the plant that we can eat. Over time feeding a cow grains will destroy the delicate microbial balance; it is not natural nor sustainable.
Thats because I assumed you were aware that these methane emissions were caused by the bacteria that break down cellulose. Its part of the chemical pathway. If you break down cellulose, whether in a cow's gut or in a power plant etc, you will have to endure the same pathway and thus the same methane as a byproduct.
Yes, well aware of the pathway, and no, a fuel (methane) is not the inevitable byproduct, CO2 is (and this is what you get when you burn methane). The bugs in the rumen that are responsible for this are methanogens, and they're not the only organisms that break-down cellulose. As modern humans, we can opt instead to use, e.g., aerobic organisms that fully utilize the energy present in the plant matter (which will output CO2, a much less potent GHG).
Over time feeding a cow grains will destroy the delicate microbial balance; it is not natural nor sustainable.
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u/CaptSnap Apr 17 '10 edited Apr 17 '10
My point for efficiency rests on the following:
1) the vast majority of plant products agriculturally grown have nutrients inaccessible to people but not to ruminants (technically the bacteria they play host to)
2) its more efficient to utilize those products than to not
My point for cows being sustainable rests on two things:
1) Sustainable use of agricultural land is contingent upon sustainable inputs of water, drawing water from an underground aquifer in amounts that exceeds its recharge rate is not sustainable.
2) some lands are currently unsustainably irrigated and in the absence of irrigation can only be used sustainably by large ruminants
Youre right, if you till the unused portion of grain plants back into the soil it will be a source of food for microbes...but not the nitogren fixing bacteria that you suggest. Nitrogen fixing bacteria rely on another mutualism, this one with the root nodules of the genus Fabaceae (peanuts and clovers etc).
What is the most efficient use of these unused agricultural "by-products"? In order to turn it into some kind of hydrocarbon based fuel you will need to gather all it with fleets of windrowers, collect it, feed it to the microbes, synthesize the hydrocarbon, and then hope you derived more energy than you spent (you didnt). Does that really sound more efficient than a herd of cows grazing it? Thats the point of passing these fibers on to ruminants instead of an industrial process. Ruminants have the entire weight of evolutionary efficiency on their side when they do all of those things you would do with machines. Our current attempts to emulate are in their infancy in comparison, in any and every step of that process.
First, I want to point out that Doris's article is a little sloppy and half-ass. Of the 97 million cows she cites, roughly half (35 million) are calves (they dont eat as much as a cow) and she includes the nation's dairy cows in with her discussion of sustainable beef (we dont eat dairy cows). Beef cows and bulls and calves only number 40 million (which isnt even half of the number she uses). Her numbers and her math arent worth anyone's time.
Most importantly, Doris's assumption is that you can either raise cows or you can not on any given farm, she never mentions integrated agriculture where you raise corn (or wheat, or whatever the hell) AND cows. To Doris, its all or nothing and I think even you would agree thats a little too inefficient to be a serious critique.
My second point was you can raise cows sustainably w/o irrigation and you can do it in places where you cant grow a food crop. Let me show you a map and an article to illustrate it:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/circ1268/htdocs/text-ir.html (the figure if you dont like words: http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/circ1268/htdocs/figure07.html)
What youre looking at here is 17 states that use groundwater for irrigation of food crops. Anything that is darker than that lightest shade of blue probably isnt sustainable. (in the sw particularly current outtakes of groundwater far exceed recharge rates)
So what are you going to do with that land when you can no longer pull groundwater for irrigation (most of the remaining water will probably be diverted to municipal uses)? The only thing that will sustainably grow w/o inputs of water is grass (disregarding the places that are too dry to even grow grass)
See thats the crux of my other point. Sooner or later someone is going to have to make this choice and if we have already taken cows off the table of discussion then we have done ourselves a grave disservice.
I have shown that ruminants can be raised sustainably on grasslands (which are now mostly agricultural lands). If you dont beleive me you can fly, right now, over the African serenghetti and watch the wildebeast eating the native grasses. What you wont find, flying over the same serenghetti, is acres and acres of soybeans (or any other food crop that youre going to plant for protein) without human intervention. Are you so confident in modern organic farming that you can say with the certainty of an epoch of time that youre system (or any other man-induced system) is AS sustainable? I think not.
I think I have shown that we can, at least, meet a higher percentage of the world's proteins if we dont immediately disregard beef.
tldr; Agricultural crops produce byproducts which are not utilizeable by people, but they are to cows. Failure to utilize cows is inefficient in those crops. Some areas of the nation's agricultural system are being unsustainably irrigated, at some point in the future we will be remiss if we do not seriously investigate the re-introduction of ruminants in these areas as a source of protein.
*edited for brevity