The stat GP is alluding to isn’t even about drinking water, it’s mostly about the water required to grow feed.
back
1 comments
Thanks, I may have just misread that. I have the same argument though. For our cattle we give very little feed, depending on the time of year their diet will only have 5-10% supplemental feed, and that's just enough to keep them trained to come when called.
We've kept stock density at a rate that our cattle can eat almost entirely from our pastures and woods. If we absolutely do have to buy hay, we buy it from a local guy who has a field he doesn't spray or irrigate. Its effectively a field behind his house that he otherwise doesn't use for hay, most people around here want sprayed and fertilized fields that are monocropped fescue or bahia.
We aren't doing everything right by any means, but cows absolutely can be raised without causing so many of the problems that industrial lots cause. Its too easy to see those problems and demonize everything about raising cattle.
Totally, I think we're making the same point. The average water intensity of livestock does not matter; what does matter is how much of that demand is met by water that could otherwise be withdrawn for human use.
Analyzing the industry is tricky, though - do you sell to a feedlot, or raise on pasture to slaughter? (Most cow/calf operations sell to a feedlot, but you sound like you may be keeping them all the way?)
The drawback to fully pasture-raised is more methane, of course, but.. I've got no idea how to put that on a reasonable comparison to water use.
That's correct, we raise them here from breeding to slaughter. In an ideal world we would slaughter and process on site as well, more for animal welfare and quality of the final meat. Today that is only possible when selling cow shares though, we can't legally process on site and sell cuts of meat locally.
The methane question has always been an interesting one to me. I've honestly never been able to fin compelling research that I felt confident in the unbiased approach to both the study itself and the interpretation of results. Climate change has been a political debate for so long that I really don't know what studies there to trust.
St the end of the day cows do in fact fart. Is that a problem? Is it a problem only under certain conditions, like high stock density? Is the problem that we have outgrown our cage and the planet can't sustain 8 billion humans, regardless of what they eat? I don't know the answer there and doubt anyone who claims to, but I do know that our cattle and pastures are extremely healthy with very little input.
That's cool and rare. (And yes, the centralization of meatpacking is a big challenge. It makes sense economically and simultaneously has some bad effects.)
I think the amount of methane produced on forage is reasonably well-quantified, though there's definitely a question of how you "bill" the methane in terms of contribution to climate change in terms of CO2e given the different breakdown times. In general, it's probably a problem -- but other ruminants burp as well, and if it's not cattle grazing, it was bison. Arguably, we'd be much better off if we reduced our beef consumption to the level we could manage pasture-raised, which would hold pasture methane constant and reduce the feedlot co2 (and nitrogen runoff).
> Arguably, we'd be much better off if we reduced our beef consumption to the level we could manage pasture-raised, which would hold pasture methane constant and reduce the feedlot co2 (and nitrogen runoff).
I'd love to see more locally raised meat, and I assume that would also have a side effect of reduced meat consumption. We've heavily subsidized the industry and so few people are involved at all with the meat industry that we've lost an understanding of what it even takes to raise animals or process them for meat. Farming in general is not a viable business today, anyone doing it to make a living eeks by primarily on government subsidies.
When you can truly know your farmer and can even go see how the animals are raise it changes the whole situation. Its a ton of work no matter how the animals are raised or processed, when done in the centralized feedlot way its also largely a disgusting process that most people would consider immoral and akin to torture.
When you can know your farmer because the meat you do eat is raised primarily on local pasture, I can only assume the risks of methane would be drastically reduced. Lower stocking density, plant life among the animals, and microbial activity decomposing waste in place has to make a huge dent in emissions caused today, from methane gas to fuel emissions used in a larger operation.