I heard something to do with Nitrogen and …cow farts(?) I am really unsure of this and would like to learn more.

Answer -

4 Parts

  • Ethical reason for consuming animals
  • Methane produced by cows are a harmful greenhouse gas which is contributing to our current climate crisis
  • Health Reasons - there is convincing evidence that processed meats cause cancer
  • it takes a lot more calories of plant food to produce the calories we would consume from the meat.

Details about the answers are in the comments

  • Cynicivity@lemmy.world
    29·
    1 year ago

    Unless you are a small hobby farm, you’re not putting your cows out on pasture alone to raise them for meat. Most grasses are deficient in one or more vital nutrients that the cows need to grow. Most cows today are fed TMR (Total Mixed Rations). These are diets carefully mixed with different grasses, grains, hays, and mineral supplements. There are different metabolic diseases that cows can get when eating diets deficient in different nutrients. Cows that are sick don’t want to eat, and cows that don’t eat don’t grow. To a farmer, that’s like burning money.

    • roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
      6·
      1 year ago

      that’s true in a few parts of the world. it may not be valid at all, depending where op is from. in general livestock is the most sustainable land use food.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
          6·
          1 year ago

          I’d also like to know, but I imagine that at a small enough scale, it’s mostly letting a few animals live on otherwise unused land, and mostly just protect them. This imagined ideal would disappear extremely quickly, scaling even to village level, and not relevant to modern farming

          • roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
            2·
            1 year ago

            This is exactly what happens. The highest quality land in a country is used for tillage. The less productive parts are used for grazing. This is how farmers make the most money. They’d be fools to use productive land for grazing and grow crops on poor land.

      • KitsuneHaiku@ttrpg.network
        5·
        1 year ago

        This is so wrong. I don’t even know where to begin. We grow so much alfalfa (huge waste of water) and soybeans in the US to support our own and other countries’ meat farming, then we ship it across the world. You could find this out with a simple Google search. This is willful ignorance.

        Greenhouse gas emissions - Meat accounts for nearly 60% of all greenhouse gases from food production

        Water usage - it takes over 1800 gallons of water to produce e just one pound of beef.

        In order to help, you don’t even have to go vegan. Reducing meat consumption is helpful too with something like “meatless Monday”