| ▲ | manvillej 15 hours ago |
| I am very conflicted on a carbon tax for the agriculture industry. It is going to sidle a cost to an industry of razor thin margins. The transition from regenerative agriculture is expensive & rising food costs has a destabilizing effect. There need to be changes, but I am not convinced that this will have the desired effects. Its quite possible this leads to a net conversion of farmland to residential or commercial property rather than nature. |
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| ▲ | mmooss 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Currently the public subsidizes the agriculture industry by paying for the consequences of the industry's carbon emissions. Also, that subsidy distorts industry choices in favor of carbon. The industry might be accustomed to profiting from the subsidy, but that doesn't make them entitled to it! And certainly the industry has had plenty of time to anticipate and adjust to the problems of carbon emissions. |
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| ▲ | manvillej 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Governments pay to keep food at the cheapest point possible to ensure stability. a fed population doesn't kill their governments. Agriculture is not a regular industry; its a national security issue Farming is not a profitable endeavor. There would be a lot less financial advisors in the world otherwise. A carbon tax will either drive up prices or reduce suppliers, increasing prices. Reducing farmland will require more efficient methods which will also drive up prices The result will be the public pays more for food, not the agriculture industry makes any more or less money. It will require more imports which will come from countries with less regulation and more exploitable resources. We've seen the story of disruptions to the food supply play out before. The reality is this is a more dangerous gamble than most people realize. | | |
| ▲ | danlitt 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I am not sure how this responds to the comment you are actually responding to. You say, > Governments pay to keep food cheap
> A carbon tax will either drive up prices or [drive up prices] So, this is just number rearranging. The public pays either way. Ok. The comment you replied to says > Currently the public subsidizes the agriculture industry by paying for the consequences of the industry's carbon emissions. So the public pays in this case too. More number rearranging. Not at all clear why this makes prices increase. So why do you think this implies prices increase? Do you think the price of carbon determined by the government is too high? Or do you just want to ignore this externality until we pay it all at once? | |
| ▲ | mtsr 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Denmark has a population of 5.8 million and currently produces enough to feed 15 million. There’s no need for imports because of 15% less farmland. Besides, all this export only contributes about 1% of GDP. So it’s not economically important either. One can even argue that the reduction in environmental and climate impact will create room for other industries that already are carbon-taxed. | |
| ▲ | Ma8ee 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | As you point out, there are several valid reasons to subsidise farming. But then subsidise farming, not carbon emissions! And while you are at it, use those subsidies to encourage farming that is sustainable, both for the climate as well as biodiversity. | | |
| ▲ | usrusr 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | And that can be sustained in international crisis: farming that is a house of cards highly dependent on international supply chains of fertilizer, feedstock and fuel won't help you all that much under blockade. | | |
| ▲ | radicalbyte 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | No-one mentions this when food security is discussed. The farmers here in NL use the security excuse too but absolutely no-one mentions that their food production is directly dependant upon the import of magnitudes higher tonnage of feedstock - soya from Brazil - than the meat / dairy it produces. Then I'm not even looking at the fertilizers / chemicals which are also imported. | | |
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| ▲ | spacemanspiff01 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Isn't that what they are doing? They subsidize the farmers separately, and charge a carbon tax separately. Even if those are initially the same amount you would think that the incentive structure would encourage farmers to shift to less c02 methods, as that improves profit? | |
| ▲ | jdenning 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What's the point of a carbon tax if it's balanced by a government subsidy? Edit: Genuinely curious what I'm missing.. | | |
| ▲ | addcommitpush 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Low carbon farms balance would be: "low carbon" profit + subsidy - small carbon tax High carbon farms balance would be: "high carbon" profit + subsidy - high carbon tax If ["low carbon" profit - small carbon tax] > ["high carbon" profit - high carbon tax] (e.g. if the carbon tax is high enough), farms have an incentive to lower their carbon emissions. The subsidy is here to make sure ["low carbon" profit + subsidy - small carbon tax] > 0 | | | |
| ▲ | dukeyukey an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You tax the carbon (something you want less of) and you subsidise something else you want more of. So you might end up with the average farmer not having a change of costs, but still disincentivising stuff we don't want e.g. carbon emissions. | |
| ▲ | bramblerose 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The subsidy could be independent from the carbon emissions (e.g. by subsidies on the produced goods) while the carbon tax isn't, effectively creating an incentive to produce in a less carbon intensive manner. | |
| ▲ | chgs 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If I can make 1 unit of food for €50 and use 50 tons of carbon, or make it for €60 and use 10 tons of carbon, a carbon tax and food subsidy would allow me to sell that €60 low carbon food for €50 and force me to sell the high carbon food for €60 This gives an economic incentive to use the lower carbon method, funded by those who use more carbon, while not changing the end price or output. | | |
| ▲ | JacobJeppesen 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Just to provide the numbers: in 2030, a tax will be introduced of 120 DKK (~16€) / ton CO2e, which linearly increases each year until it reaches 300 DKK (~40€) / ton CO2e in 2035. However, the farmers can get subsidies for changing their practices and adopting new technologies, in order to reduce their emissions. I.e., the government will give you money to change your production, so you can minimize the carbon taxes you have to pay. There are more technicalities to how it works, but that's the gist of it. The important part is that the goal is to transition to new technologies and production methods, which reduces emissions per unit food produced. There will be no food subsidy, however, and a rough estimate of the increase of food cost is something like 1.5%, with beef having the highest increase. Take this estimate with a grain of salt though, as it's difficult to estimate. An increase in food cost is expected though. |
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| ▲ | vuxie 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Specifically on reducing farmland. Denmark is intensly cultivated, and the reduction targets the lowest yield land that for various reasons were reclaimed over the last two centuries. Using the high yield land more efficiently is intended. | |
| ▲ | wqaatwt 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > A carbon tax will either drive up prices or reduce suppliers, increasing prices Of if there is an equivalent subsidy (i.e. the tax is basically redistributed) it would encourage to produce less carbon/methane intensive production | |
| ▲ | rob74 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So, what are you proposing? Just do nothing about climate change, as we have done before, and have worse social consequences in the near future rather than now? Denmark is more at risk from rising sea levels than other countries (https://cphpost.dk/2023-02-17/news/rising-sea-levels-threate...), so they want to do something about it. | | |
| ▲ | kvgr 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The food needs to be produced somewhere. If denmark exports, then the food will be missing somewhere. So you do not fix "climate change". You only fix local effects of agriculture. I am not saying it is good or bad. But it def makes denmark poorer. | |
| ▲ | motohagiography 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | not OP, but how about some technology innovation instead of governance and taxation? the effect of taxing farmers as though they were some kind of vanity industry will be similar to what nationalizing farms has done in prior schemes like this. it creates a national dependency on imported food from countries that do not bankrupt their farmers, and suddenly (shocked!) the entire Danish food supply crosses the borders to arrive and is then subject to federal management. this latter case is of course the purpose, and climate change is merely a pretext. I hope european farmers are able to organize a revolt. | | |
| ▲ | ZeroGravitas 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > how about some technology innovation instead of governance and taxation The history of solar, EVs, batteries etc. show these work hand in hand. Why invent a way to capture methane from slurry, or form a business to sell that idea to farmers if they're allowed to pollute for free? | |
| ▲ | shakna 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What technological innovation do you think farming could adopt, that it hasn't already...? They don't operate with simple machinery. They regularly use some of the most complicated systems that mankind can build, such as satellite systems, chemical analyses, etc. Governance is needed, where progress does not occur naturally. |
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| ▲ | roenxi 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How will converting farmland to forests help with climate change? It seems like it would have no particular impact or make the situation worse w.r.t. climate change for Denmark. If it is a good idea I'd imagine it would also be a good idea if the climate was not changing. Denmark has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions at all. In fact nobody does except ironically the Chinese and their industrial-growth-at-any-cost coal based approach from the 90s and 00s. | | |
| ▲ | ZeroGravitas 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Land use is one of the big topics covered by the IPCC: https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/ | |
| ▲ | geysersam 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > how will converting farmland to forest Farming is very carbon emission intensive if the farmland is reclaimed wetland. Converting the farmland to forest and stopping draining (making it more wet again) can definitely reduce carbon emissions significantly. > Denmark has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions This is such a tiresome and logically hollow argument. Denmark has the ability to reduce a fraction of the worlds emissions. The size of the fraction is proportional to the size of their emissions. Every country has a responsibility to reduce it's per capita emissions to sustainable levels. China has lower per capita emissions than most richer countries. | | |
| ▲ | addcommitpush 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Note that China has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions either. Let’s split China population in k Denmark-sized groups, plus one smaller-than-Denmark reminder. None of the k groups has any ability to impact global CO2 emissions (same as Denmark). We can reasonably assume that a smaller group has even less ability to impact global CO2 emissions than a bigger group. Hence the smaller-than-Denmark reminder has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions either. Thus China is made of groups that have no ability to impact global CO2 emissions either. And therefore China as a whole has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions. (Otherwise at least one group within China would have to impact global emissions and we just saw that it isn’t possible). This is known as the CO2 impossibility theorem, loosely based on Arrow’s concept of “(in)decisive” set. | | |
| ▲ | roenxi 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Your logic is wrong - a Denmark sized group of Chinese people is probably all it takes to operate their solar panel producing factories. The reason Denmark can't do anything isn't because there are few of them, it is because Denmark isn't a significant industrial cluster for energy technology and innovation. For example, India has more people than China and they aren't in a position to do much unless there is some sort of tech breakthrough that hasn't made it to my notice. | | |
| ▲ | ZeroGravitas 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Denmark basically invented modern wind power and still makes a big chunk of it (though China has caught up in that area recently). |
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| ▲ | oezi 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Certainly you are just demonstrating the opposite. Everyone has the ability to impact global CO2 emmissions. We certainly need international coordination or actors with a minimal set of morals to achieve it. | | |
| ▲ | addcommitpush 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Everyone has the ability to impact global CO2 emmissions. I'm afraid most people are smaller-than-Denmark groups, and thus unable whatsoever to impact global emissions. It's just math. | | |
| ▲ | geysersam 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | 1e-10 is reeeallly close to zero, therefore 1e10 * 1e-10 is also close to zero. That's what your math sounds like to me. | | |
| ▲ | oezi 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | His math is x ~ 0, hence x / 10 = 0, hence x = NaN. The starting point is just wrong that Denmark can't play a role when it comes to climate change. Denmark can make a change. It is like saying that when voting that no individual vote or county matters, when the opposite is true: every vote matters in the same way. Every kg CO2 saved is good... (obviously we should strive for the most economic way to save CO2). | |
| ▲ | addcommitpush 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Isn't it true? f = lambda x: (1/x) * x
f(1e309)
yields NaN, not 1.(So I guess Denmark is at least 1e309-sized in some metric). |
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| ▲ | chaostheory 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I wouldn’t be surprised if the masses interpret these changes as “let them eat cake” given that inflation is already hammering the middle and lower classes. | | |
| ▲ | RayVR 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | in Denmark, inflation is currently running at a 1.6% annualized rate, as of the most recent reading[0]. This is the full basket inflation rate, including volatile categories (food and energy). Core inflation is even lower, with the latest reading at 1.3% (annualized) in October 2024. Food inflation is, of course, volatile. It currently sits at a moderately elevated level of 3.9% (October 2024, annualized). Food prices declined earlier this year for two consecutive months, though that will be a minor consolation after the significant food price inflation in 2022 and persisting, though at a slower pace, through 2023. All of that to say, "let them eat cake" mentality is unlikely in a country where they have consistently ranked at the top of a world happiness index. Additionally, while I'm not well versed in Danish politics, I am under the impression that the Social Democrats have responded much better to the mass immigration that has been an ongoing issue for many parties throughout Europe. I think this is indicative of a party that adapts rather more quickly to the consequences of their previous policies and is less ideologically stubborn - at least on some issues. 0: https://ycharts.com/indicators/denmark_inflation_rate | | |
| ▲ | lowkey an hour ago | parent [-] | | Economists look at inflation on a month/month or year/year basis. This is not an accident as it purposely ignores the destructive cumulative effect of inflation. Individuals, by contrast look at the cumulative effect of inflation. If inflation runs hot for several years and then comes back to a moderate level, prices don’t go down regardless of what economists would have you believe. The effect of inflation has memory. |
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| ▲ | chairmansteve 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Denmark is a net exporter of food. In other words a net importer of agricultural pollution. So they could refice food exports without domestic political consequences. In theory. |
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| ▲ | RayVR 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It’s also important to note that, at least in this specific situation, the effects of those hidden subsidies are extremely regressive. | |
| ▲ | space_oddity 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That said, the transition requires thoughtful implementation | |
| ▲ | mp05 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We can debate the role of subsidies and carbon emissions, but framing agriculture as if it's uniquely nefarious misses the critical point that we all need to eat. The industry isn't "choosing carbon" but rather it's responding to the immense challenge of feeding billions affordably while dealing with slim margins and unpredictable conditions. Adjustments require viable, scalable alternatives, not just finger-wagging. I think we focus on supporting innovation rather than vilifying an essential industry. | | |
| ▲ | chgs 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If I can spend 100k on a tractor cause 100t of pollution or 200k on a tractor causing 50t of pollution I will obviously choose the firmer tractor as the rest of the world pays the price of the extra 50t of pollution. If the externalities of that carbon generation are priced in I end up paying more for the polluting tractor so I choose the less polluting tractor and make more money. | |
| ▲ | mmooss 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Who vilified it? |
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| ▲ | benmanns 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think we should start doing more taxes combined with subsidies. Give everyone a $1/t carbon tax. Give everyone a ~$1/t farming subsidy based on current carbon production. Nobody loses, but everyone is incentivized to decrease carbon production and the faster ones profit more. Phase out the subsidy over X years if you like. Otherwise, you’re right. We’re upsetting the balance of a very complex, very important system and causing a regressive tax in the form of price increases. |
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| ▲ | manvillej 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | a combined tax and subsidy to try to drive farmers into more sustainable practices in a fiscally neutral way isn't a bad idea, but I think it is just a very risky and necessary roll of the dice. I think inevitably, there will be price increases. The questions is just how bad and how many farms survive the transition. | | |
| ▲ | account42 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | You misunderstand, driving small farms out of businness so they can be taken over by Gates and other big farming monopolies is the real goal not an unwanted side effect. | | |
| ▲ | mistrial9 an hour ago | parent [-] | | a casual American perspective here -- it is easy to mistake the cause when an effect is obvious. Yes, coordinated market regulation ends up increasing consolidation (with capital). Not everyone thinks this is a bad thing. No, it is not a plot by a few powerful individuals (easy to imagine, convenient emotional target). Rather there are "policy levers" and economic forces that operate at once, and interact in complicated ways. |
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| ▲ | Scoundreller 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > It is going to sidle a cost to an industry of razor thin margins. Will it or will farmland value take a dump but remain unchanged in use? I always thought of farmland these days as a use of last resort and if it could be marketable for buildings, it’s already not economically worth it as a farm except speculatively |
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| ▲ | chgs 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | In the U.K. farmland has a rental value of about £100 an acre but a purchase price over £10k an acre. The value in the land isn’t in its use (which is getting 1% ROI), but in speculation it may be granted permission to be converted to housing, or because of tax loopholes. | | |
| ▲ | blitzar 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The owner also get capital appreciation / depreciation of the land - ~5.7 per cent per annum over the last 100 years bring the total return to a 6.7% ROI. Land at the edge of cities and towns where there is a reasonable chance of development happening costs orders of magnitude more than the average. The person renting that land then farms it (presumably for a profit) for additional ROI. | |
| ▲ | pjc50 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, this came up in the recently closed inheritance tax loophole; people were buying "family farms" purely to leave to their children while doing the minimum of farming. |
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| ▲ | lovemenot 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It should be fine, I believe. Just in terms of land-use, livestock is several times less efficient than other kinds of agriculture for the same food output. So a shift from meat to other food crops would be a net win, even as it frees up land for other purposes. Many farmers will receive a one-time payment on land sales and some will use this windfall to subsidise their transition from growing livestock to more environmentally-friendly food. |
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| ▲ | shiroiushi 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | >Just in terms of land-use, livestock is several times less efficient than other kinds of agriculture for the same food output. This assumes that the land is equally usable for both activities. Many times, it isn't: a lot of land that's good enough for grazing cows doesn't have enough water available for growing plants that people want to (or can) eat. People can't eat grass. This probably isn't an issue in Denmark, but in many other places it is. | | |
| ▲ | hombre_fatal an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Cows are extremely inefficient (2% conversion) at converting calories to meat, so putting cows on that land is also an inefficient use of that land. And land with bad yield for crops also has bad yield for cows and the grass they eat and the water they need. I don't see the proposition being made in these claims. Cows are so inefficient that we don't need to use marginal land at all to grow food. The majority of arable land is already used for cows yet they produce a disproportionately small amount of food. Weening off cows is a good thing. | |
| ▲ | jamil7 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Cows still need water from somewhere in those areas you’re talking about. If the land is particularly poor it also won’t produce enough feed and will have to be supplemented with feed that requires water and energy to grow somewhere else. | |
| ▲ | bluefirebrand 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It also ignores that animals produce the manure that is used to fertilize soil to grow crops in. | | |
| ▲ | hombre_fatal an hour ago | parent [-] | | We use manure because it's coming out of the gills of the animal ag industry, not because it's necessary to enrich crop soil. Just because plastic bags are ubiquitous doesn't mean it's the only nor best way to carry items around, nor that we'd lose the ability to transport goods if they were phased out, nor that they don't come at a cost despite perceiving them as free. | | |
| ▲ | bluefirebrand 18 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > We use manure because it's coming out of the gills of the animal ag industry, not because it's necessary to enrich crop soil Crop soil needs fertilizer somehow What is your alternative to manure? Bonus points if it uses less energy to produce than animals, produces less CO2 than animals, takes up less space than animals, or also produces food at the same time |
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| ▲ | space_oddity 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It’s a bold move, but like you, I’m not sure the potential consequences have been fully addressed |
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| ▲ | teekert 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Depends on the type of agriculture? If it make veggies cheaper in comparison to meat, I'm all for it. Hopefully it spurs development of sustainable nice tasting protein sources ;) (like synthetic meat etc.) |
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| ▲ | madmask 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is exactly what should not happen. Meat is great, especially when grass fed. | | |
| ▲ | shafyy 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Meat from grass-fed cows emit more GHG per kg than industry-framed meat. Industry farming is efficient. | |
| ▲ | perlgeek 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | ... unless the "meat" being grass-fed is actually cows, which produce lots of methane. Not so good for climate change, at least if done at scale. It's never that easy as "Meat is great". | | |
| ▲ | madmask 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I can’t believe this is a real problem. Refineries are bombed and stay on fire for days, some places in the world light on fire rubbish all the time, plenty of inefficiencies in heating, transportation, etc.. and the problem is.. cow farts.. yes sure | | |
| ▲ | pjc50 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you actually measure it, then yes. https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/492... "Total GHG emissions from livestock supply
chains are estimated at 7.1 gigatonnes CO2
-eq per
annum for the 2005 reference period. They repre-
sent 14.5 percent of all human-induced emissions
using the most recent IPCC estimates for total an-
thropogenic emissions (49 gigatonnes CO 2
-eq for
the year 2004; IPCC, 2007)" Surprisingly there are fewer cows than people, but there's still a billion cows, and a billion of anything adds up quickly. That's not to say that the other things aren't important as well. Gas flaring from refineries is a pure waste that should be drastically curtailed. |
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| ▲ | blitzar 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | We should slaughter everything that produces metheane to save the planet. | |
| ▲ | valval 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Cow farts being harmful for the environment is the silliest hoax I see repeated over and over. Spending two minutes reading about the biogenic carbon cycle destroys this misconception. | | |
| ▲ | shafyy 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I read about the Biogenic Carbon Cycle on the UC Davis website: "As a by-product of consuming cellulose, cattle belch out methane, there-by returning that carbon sequestered by plants back into the atmosphere. After about ten years, that methane is broken down and converted back to CO2. Once converted to CO2, plants can again perform photosynthesis and fix that carbon back into cellulose. From here, cattle can eat the plants and the cycle begins once again. In essence, the methane belched from cattle is not adding new carbon to the atmosphere. Rather it is part of the natural cycling of carbon through the biogenic carbon cycle." According to that logic, burning fossil fuels also is not harmful for the environment, because the CO2 eventually gets consumed by plants. | | |
| ▲ | shkkmo 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > According to that logic, burning fossil fuels also is not harmful for the environment, because the CO2 eventually gets consumed by plants. No, the difference in logic is based on the source of the CO2. Fossile fuels are burried in the ground and are not part of the carbon cycle. By removing them from the ground, we are adding new carbon to the carbon cycle rather. Coversely, if you burn wood, that carbon was (mostly) going to end back up in the carbon cycle and you've just sped up it's cycle and increased the portion of the cycling carbon that is in the atmosphere. There are changes we can make to the cycle that do affect global warming (cutting down all the forests and killing all the kelp would greatly decrease the capacity of the cycle). Conversely, we can expand the carbon cycle by planting trees (that actually survive and form forests.) However, you can't fix global warming by expanding the carbon cycle because you can't scale the natural cycle to match all the new carbon that is being added to it by buring fossile fuels. There are only two solutions, adding less carbon to the cycle by burning fewer fossile fuels and finding ways to remove carbon from the cycle by sequeresting it in long term ways. Carbon taxes can fail to actually cause change if they allow fossil fuel burning to be offset by temporary bumps to the carbons cycle capacity because this doesn't really solve the problem and at best slightly delay it. Cow "farts" (actually burps) are kinda the opposite, the methane is already part of the carbon cycle. However methane is a way more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 so by increasing amount of carbon cycle that is amospheric methane you are accelerating global warming until the methane decays into CO2. | |
| ▲ | pjc50 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This also ignores the different GHG effects of methane vs CO2. | |
| ▲ | blitzar 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Unfortunately powerplants dont graze on a field of grass | | |
| ▲ | shafyy 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | A few of things: 1) Even if cows would only eat the grass that was there (and we would not have converted any forest or other vegetation into grazing lands), the methane and CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a long time before being used by plants again, contributing to the greenhouse effect in that time. The reality is, we can only cover a very small percentage of the demand with this "3 happy cows on a vast pasture" phantasy. Most cow feed is planted additionally, often in countries like Brazil, and then fed to the cows. 2) The carbon impact is not the only negative impact of the scale of livestock agriculture we run these days. As it says in the article, another big impact is eutrophication of water bodies. 3) Just basic physics: Livestock agriculture, especially beef, is a very inefficient way of producing protein and calories. Have a look at this data: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore So, please don't come at me with your cute comments. The reality is that we have too much livestock agriculture. It's not sustainable to feed 8 billion people like this. The scientific consesus is clear on this. | | |
| ▲ | valval 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | The data you present again doesn't take the lifecycle into account. Also worth pointing out that protein bioavailability and amino acid profiles are ignored. Unrelated but since you brought the topic up, it would of course make sense that releasing vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere that took millions of years to bind into the earth in mere decades might be a bad idea. Then again, we're only guessing there as well. We have no clue if the world will be better or worse for us to live in 50 years, and how much of it will be attributable to CO2. But I digress -- this comment thread was about cow farts and the utter silliness of grasping at such straws when speaking about an otherwise serious subject like the futures of our children. | | |
| ▲ | shafyy 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Then again, we're only guessing there as well. Umm, no, we are not guessing. But I see where this will end, so let's stop this discussion right here. |
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