When i eat beef or other kinds of meat, i don't really think about the ecological impact, though i do eat just about the amount of 1 hamburger patty a week, the rest is vegetarian substitutes (like vegetarian meatballs).
I love beef. I will not have children and do not travel. An eye for an eye. Plus, I plant trees in my tropical home country and move mostly by bicycle. Burger guy forever.
No such thing as "green friendly" meat unless it's cultured lab meat from tissue, not from animals, and that's not even available yet. Meat takes enormous amounts of resources, from water usage to waste produced to the high amounts of methane produced. I find it odd DW is even doing a video like this to be honest. I'm sure someone will find a way to greenwash meat though.
The biggest issue this video misses is that beef production is heavily subsidized by the fact that grain production is heavily subsidized in the US. In fact, the entire system of feeding grain to ruminant livestock came about because of the massive surplus of grain produced in the US as a result of industrialization, monoculture farming, and crop subsidies. Eliminate the crop subsidies, and the confined animal feedlot operation will no longer be profitable or even possible.
One fun fact is that antibiotic use in feeding cattle is not to avoid infections but because the animals will grow more and faster. So basically they are doing it to produce more meat.
@@johnbash-on-ger it's kinda hard because you need to kill gut bacteria so maybe research might find another way but I think it's probably very hard. I would focus more on using manure for biogas as that procesd would probably get rid of a lot of bacteria while producing energy
No, that is wrong. Antibiotics are used to avoid infections, which I guess would make for leas deadstock and more livestock. Growth hormones are used to produce more meat though
@@tomkelly8827 nope by killing gut microbes cows and other animals including humans get more weighr and more fat. They discovered it and that's why they use it, look it up it's really interesting
I'm sorry but rotational grazing has been a staple of European farming for generations. The idea that this is new is silly when it's all we ever do. I personally own 2 donkeys and I rotate their grazing area every 2 months just out of custom. Here in Ireland, our beef & lamb are free range but unfortunately, our obsession with pork means with have "pig factories" and you will never see pigs roaming in our countryside. We have a relatively small population and a huge amount of very fertile land per person compared to anywhere else in Europe and we are still net importers of food. It's sickening when you really look at it. Reducing meat consumption is the only way to combat this. Rotational farming is greenwashing and not enough for even the luckiest of countries to sustain themselves...
@@sixtus9559 In Ireland we have very very little beef factories. Like I said in the comment. Ireland is a very large island for 6.8m people. The UK, next door has twice the land and 10x the population. All you see is cows in fields and sheep in mountains and very acidic areas. We grow close to no crops because of it (the acidity that is). My point was we are still net importers of food, though we are a rainy island where it almost never snows or have droughts and we still can't sustain ourselves. What hope does the rest of the world have once they get wealthy enough to eat meat more often.
I don't know the exact details but what I know about holistic grazing is that they move the cows every day to a fresh piece of land (smaller ones). Maybe that's why it's more effective. Also the grass is stimulated in root growth this way and thus stores carbon in the ground. I guess that's different when one big piece of land is eaten off at the about same height (of the grass plant) for 2 months.
The difference between grain-fed and grass-fed is not simply that grass-fed ruminants produce more methane per head, but that grain-fed animals produce meat that has an unhealthy balance of omega-6 to omega-3 essential fatty acids for human consumption, and therefore the practice of feeding grain to cattle should be banned, and the concentration of cattle per acre should be strictly regulated to effectively eliminate the confined animal feedlot operation (CAFO) practice. This will of course raise the price of meat, but raising the price of meat is the number one tool we have to curb consumption and waste.
It's not just first world problem, it's also happening in developing countries. I live in indonesia and back in the day people only ate beef during special occasions like wedding party or eid mubarak, it was considered luxury back then. Nowadays you can easily find street vendors selling roasted beef for 5$. Suddenly everyone can afford beef. Sure it's easy to blame the west for their beef consumption but it's a fact that consumption in developing countries is rising very rapidly
To be fair though, us in the west (EU for me), we ARE responsible for this, let's not beat around the bush. This doesn't mean we have all past, present and future blame (I myself predominantly eat greens on a daily level, and meat for special occasions for example), but we have had a very large responsibility in this area.
The difference is however, developing countries see a rise in spending due to a stronger economy, this isn't a phenomena specific to eating habits. The people there have greater spending power than before. In first world countries its essentially the opposite, once great spending power that is steadily dwindling thanks to rising inflation and other underlying systematic issues, forcing people to make do with less. That is undoubtedly going to have an impact as people by necessity cut back on beef in favor of more affordable options that also happen to be more sustainable.
Data speaks louder than what you feel... We have special days but people in the west also have lots of special days... And people there either really like beef or care about their protein intake, so they almost consume it at least 3 times a week
Yep, and it also needs to be talked way more about how different meat types compare with EACH OTHER in terms of environmentalism. All plant based may be "best", but not a valid alternative for everyone. And where is really the saving land/resource benefit when you either way eat like 10 times more (my experience with vegan diet) from the food not satisfying you? And just feel terrible and lose all your spare time and have no energy. I get its still better for the animals themself and their treatment needs to get better. But far from a valid thing to live with.
I think rotational grazing is great for grasslands where its really hard to do anything else but grow grass. However, if the land can be used for crops (or a rainforest) we should do that instead
This, right here. The United States once tried to grow crops on land that was only suitable for grass, and we created the Dustbowl. We lost so much topsoil that it traveled halfway across the continent from western Nebraska to Washington, DC in a giant dust storm. That land west of the hundredth meridian should be used for grazing ruminants and creating pastures. I will eat meat from there without guilt, but I never want to taste Brazilian beef.
@@someguy2135 yes, I know about the soy problem. And as for meat, I can look into any groceries I buy while avoiding beef in restaurants. It's really not that hard at all, especially if you use farmers' markets.
If the land is a forest or rainforest initially, it should remain as it is without changing to pasture. If it has been changed to a pasture, there is still the option of letting it return to forest or rainforest instead of keeping it as a pasture.
@@lowify1 I agree. My point is that there are some huge biomes that naturally are pasture, and we can use those to raise ruminants because we cannot sustainably cultivate any other food sources on pastureland. I believe that was Thijmstickman's point too.
Rotational grazing better than normal, but not enough. Many people engage in animal husbandry are already doing rotational grazing all around world. If it is really desired to use the pastures efficiently, animals must be migrated. For thousands of years, peoples such as Turkic, Hunnic and Mongolic, who lived a nomadic life, grazed their animals in this way. In the past, Turks migrated their animals from lands where more grass could grow in summer to more temperate regions in winter. The reason why the ancient people who control huge geography in Central Asia despite the small population is that millions of people together with their tents and animals and they migrated a distance from Spain to Estonia every year. They can do this by making short-distance migration from high places to low places every 4 months in places like Anatolia, where all four seasons are experienced in one place. In rotational grazing, if animals are grazed in areas with similar climates both in summer and winter, in a hot time when the grass will not be green enough, animals have to expend more energy to digest, consume more grass and they eat glass when grass in growing period not eating period. The meat of the migrated animals is of the highest quality. It is impossible to apply this in every country in Europe because mostly there is only one season in the same period all over the country, but Countries pass livestock laws among themselves and this is applicable if it is determined in which season the animals will graze on which country's pastures. Animals that are happy and healthy, less harmful to the environment, and need less land to graze can be raised with this method, in the wild these animals already live this lifestyle. Also there is no need for a huge investment to implement it, all that needs to be done is to make these agreements in EU and to determine the regions where the farmers graze animals in what seasons. In Mongolia, you can consume the world's highest quality lamb meat for extremely cheap. Meat is so cheap that people consume meat even for breakfast because grain products such more expensive than meat. Of course, it should be noted that the population of Mongolia is 3 million and it can be used free anyone who wants in its huge territory.
The grass-fed cows look so much happier and healthier. By taste, beef is my favorite meat product. But I buy it the least to reduce it's impact. I'm well under the 1.5 weekly burgers range.
One of the biggest issues I see with your video is that you don’t address the question of “what if this land was dedicated to growing plants instead of farming cattle?” Unfortunately, the answer is that you typically need to feed animals 10X the amount of calories that you get from them so it’s always going to be much more wasteful than eating plants. While I don’t think everyone needs to go vegan, I do think that we need to drastically overhaul how we farm our food. Animal farming should be kept to terrain that is unsuitable for plant farming or we should only farm animals in instances where they assist in the plant farming. I’ve heard of some cool examples where ducks are kept in rice paddies because they help control the pest and weed populations. Edit: ok I wrote this comment a little early cause the second half of the video talked a lot about the land use issue. Guess I should have known better than to doubt your investigative skills! Whoops!
Not all the calories cows eat (like grass and crop waste) are calories that humans could eat anyway, so they are providing some new calories into human consumption that would be absent if we didn't farm cattle. Obviously this can go too far by converting fertile farmland into grazing land or feeding cows actual crops grown for them instead of crop waste.
@@Jason821821 that is the vast minority. cause over 1/3 of all food is specifically grown for livestock. and like 99.9% of cows do not eat grass. also 80% of ALL agricultural land is used for livestock. im not saying anyone should stop eating meat, i just think we should all slightly reduce the amount, and replace most of the beef in our diets with chicken and pork, with beef being an occasional thing.
@@Jason821821 I think ignored in this discussion is that in a lot of places in the Global South like the Sahel, Somalia, the Congo, East Africa, Zimbabwe, Siberia, Pakistan, etc there are rural populations that trade in livestock and use livestock as a store of wealth. This is because their financial systems have been destroyed by corruption and colonialism, and their currencies are vulnerable to devaluation and hyperinflation. I don't think their traditional form of trade and wealth generation should be fully discounted. These rural populations should be invested in to improve their efficiency and productivity.
"Animal farming should be kept to terrain that is unsuitable for plant farming" All they will do then is say that the land is unsuitable for ethical uses, or make it so that it is. Wouldn't it just be better to crawl out of our caves and stop deluding ourselves?
@@-opus we've created some massive environmental disasters trying to grow crops on dry grasslands, while the populations indigenous to those places lived off of animal proteins for centuries. Trying to force the land to be more fertile than it naturally is will always end in failure.
Overall interesting video. However I think the efficiency comparison is a bit too superficial. Granted, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations CAFOs are more efficient in terms of meat produced. However, they are less efficient at producing overall calories per unit of space (as traditional farms produce more than just meat): - CAFOs only produce meat (besides require an external input - food; and produce and undesirable output: cow manure which gets toxic when they are not fed properly). - On the other hand, traditional farms usually produce other animals and plants besides cows (and require no external inputs - the cows eat the grass; and produce no undesirable outputs: the manure is used as fertiliser for the plants). Further reading: - The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Polyface Farms
Rotational grazing better than normal, but not enough. Many people engage in animal husbandry are already doing rotational grazing all around world. If it is really desired to use the pastures efficiently, animals must be migrated. For thousands of years, peoples such as Turkic, Hunnic and Mongolic, who lived a nomadic life, grazed their animals in this way. In the past, Turks migrated their animals from lands where more grass could grow in summer to more temperate regions in winter. The reason why the ancient people who control huge geography in Central Asia despite the small population is that millions of people together with their tents and animals and they migrated a distance from Spain to Estonia every year. They can do this by making short-distance migration from high places to low places every 4 months in places like Anatolia, where all four seasons are experienced in one place. In rotational grazing, if animals are grazed in areas with similar climates both in summer and winter, in a hot time when the grass will not be green enough, animals have to expend more energy to digest, consume more grass and they eat glass when grass in growing period not eating period. The meat of the migrated animals is of the highest quality. It is impossible to apply this in every country in Europe because mostly there is only one season in the same period all over the country, but Countries pass livestock laws among themselves and this is applicable if it is determined in which season the animals will graze on which country's pastures. Animals that are happy and healthy, less harmful to the environment, and need less land to graze can be raised with this method, in the wild these animals already live this lifestyle. Also there is no need for a huge investment to implement it, all that needs to be done is to make these agreements in EU and to determine the regions where the farmers graze animals in what seasons.
Friend or dinner? Both? I miss almost completely the following aspects: 1) Human health: red meat was demonized by the WHO, ranked as promoting cancer based on epidemiologic studies. This is only good to find correlations, and no proof at all for a theory. Meat and eggs are the best source of nutrients. Vegetarians, but certainly vegans often will miss essential vitamins and minerals (amino acids, zinc, iodine, iron, Vit D3 and K2 to mention a few so there's more to say than that you have to take your Vit B12). You really have to eat like your great grand parents did. Fake meat, like "Beyond Meat" is ultra processed, and not food. It will give energy, but not health. All these products are prepared with cheap, ultra processed "vegetable oils", study the ingredients list. They are only good to be profitable for "big food") 2) "Healthy plants" often are from monocultures, and prone to insects, fungi and weeds, so amazing amounts of organisms are killed by fungicides, pesticides, herbicides. A nice example is round-up, but the chemical industry is not limited to that. 3) The monoculture fields have to be ploughed every year, disturbing natural life. Minerals are not from the manure from animals, but often a mixture of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. These days your plant food contains some 30% less of essential minerals than 50 years ago. 4) Air pollution. Yes, live stock produces methane and nitrous pollutants. Compare the amount with pollution produced by us people, industry and traffic on air, sea and land... Ok, I am moving away from the idea that vegetables and fruit are very healthy. I prefer grass fed meat.
Just trying to offer a little constructive feedback - I think y'all do great work overall with your videos, and this had a great first half to it. You did piecemeal out the problems with land use, emissions, water, etc with grain feedlots vs grass-fed, even going into the problems with animal farming and land use and that's definitely worth pointing out. The part after though was a little bit of a headscratcher. Rotational grazing is a pretty controversial topic that's only marginally better than the other methods. Its also not super clear just how bad the methane and nitrous oxide emissions are from the video either. Mentioning that's 80x and 300x worse than carbon emissions respectively (and saying how much of it actually gets emitted) I think would go a long way to motivate people to research more into the topic, and maybe even go vegan. That said, it was interesting! Honestly, I'd love to see a video on plant-based beef/meat as a follow up to it. Have a good day, and much love!
Hi Chara, thank you for your comment. We did an exploratory video on plant-based meet alternatives! 🙌🍔 You can watch it here 🎞: ua-cam.com/video/6TvNjOrC9lM/v-deo.html. Hope you will find it interesting.
@@DWPlanetA Oh thank you! That's a great video. My mistake, then - I think you've done a great job covering the topic already and this is just an extension of that.
@@DemPilafian Im really not sure who this comment is targeted towards. If its targeted towards me, I already corrected myself in a previous reply and said this is a good extension of their other work on plant-based meat (though admittedly they could do a better job of mentioning stuff like that). If its targeted towards Planet A, they have *absolutely no love* towards fossil fuels, so I don't think that's really fair. They shouldnt have to make 100% of their content about fossil fuels. That and it's like a 12 minute video and they have a ton of vids like that already, like really - where were they going to put it in the runtime? Agriculture accounts for 21% of climate change, so it's good to look into this stuff.
Overall, good video. I think the answer is indeed to just eat less meat because it’s the only real choice we can make starting today. I don’t think you’ll ever convince McDonald’s or large beef producers, and manufactures to cut their profits, without massive protest which will result in more corrupt funding, or politicians to not do anything about the problems!
Of course we can, and a lot of farmers are not only doing it already, a lot of farmers have been doing it for millennia, just not the "beef industry". There's nothing inherently destructive about raising cattle for beef; to the contrary, ruminant animals turn plants that grow without irrigation and which humans cannot digest into food, and in so doing, improve the soil and the environment, when these practices are conducted in balance with local ecosystems. The problem is mostly the scale at which industrialized farming takes place, but that is not a problem exclusive to animal-sourced foods. People in wealthy nations simply eat too much food and waste too much food. We need to eat less food, waste less food, and this applies especially to meat production and consumption.
The problem is your style of farming. Imagine someone owning 2000 cattle in a ranch or inclosed space? Obviously the land and environmental will not cope with the pressure. Im from Botswana and we do communal farming which means livestock roam freely eating vegetation available in the area, which means that they also contribute to land recovery by spreading seeds and manure, so the environment isn't actually affected severely like in a ranch or inclosed space where there is dangerous accumulation of manure and animals eat one kind of vegetation. Our livestock already know which plant to eat to heal certain illnesses or discomfort like constipation or indigestion and they know places in the wild where they can lick minerals if they feel they are lacking something . Unfortunately with the new farming style the intention is to make an animal grow fast and fat.
In the capitalist system, where there is the concept of property, they do not apply what your say. What's we needs to be is to do what wild animals do like American bison or Africa Antilopes, migrate! Rotational grazing better than normal, but not enough. Many people engage in animal husbandry are already doing rotational grazing all around world. If it is really desired to use the pastures efficiently, animals must be migrated. For thousands of years, peoples such as Turkic, Hunnic and Mongolic, who lived a nomadic life, grazed their animals in this way. In the past, Turks migrated their animals from lands where more grass could grow in summer to more temperate regions in winter. The reason why the ancient people who control huge geography in Central Asia despite the small population is that millions of people together with their tents and animals and they migrated a distance from Spain to Estonia every year. They can do this by making short-distance migration from high places to low places every 4 months in places like Anatolia, where all four seasons are experienced in one place. In rotational grazing, if animals are grazed in areas with similar climates in a hot time when the grass will not be green enough, animals have to expend more energy to digest, consume more grass and they eat glass when grass in growing period not eating period. The meat of the migrated animals is of the highest quality. It is impossible to apply this in every country in Europe because mostly there is only one season in the same period all over the country, but US pass livestock laws among themselves and this is applicable if it is determined in which season the animals will graze on which states pastures. Animals that are happy and healthy, less harmful to the environment, and need less land to graze can be raised with this method, in the wild these animals already live this lifestyle. Also there is no need for a huge investment to implement it, all that needs to be done is to make these laws in central govermend and to determine the regions where the farmers graze animals in what seasons. In Mongolia, you can consume the world's highest quality lamb meat for extremely cheap. Meat is so cheap that people consume meat even for breakfast because grain products such more expensive than meat. With the right planning, they can produce the cheapest and same time highest quality meat in the world in the USA, only by planning and opening the land for grazing to farmers. But if they do, it's likely that the incomes of factory animal produsers and people like Bill Gates working on synthetic meat will make low income, so I don't think it will ever happen. In some African countries, this may be applicable, but here there are nothing but stupid solutions such as lab created synthetic meat. 🤦♂
This is one of the better videos I’ve seen doing this cross comparison but it still didn’t consider all the qualities I consider key to regenerative agriculture. That grass fed operation the video showed didn’t do half the environmental aspects I’m used to seeing on regenerative homesteads like landscaping to conserve water and sylvopasture, food forests, multiple species grazing intermittently, or even just rotating grazing pasture to crop field.
I grew up on meat and still like the taste of it, but I stopped eating beef many years ago because its production is destructive and unsustainable. There are other food alternatives which I enjoy very much and I'd rather eat healthier and more conscious without missing out on enjoyment.
I think going vegan is still the best thing to do for the environment. Depending on circumstances it may not be the easiest thing to do, but if you can, I think you should go vegan.
I recommend trying Ikea's new meatless "meatballs" I as a regular meateater cannot tell them apart from the ikea normal meatballs. It gives me hope we can find ways to use meat in some food involving minced meat
Meat alternatives can taste really similar! One of our reporters did a whole video on blind taste testing vegan "meats". Here's a link if you're interested 🙃: ua-cam.com/video/6TvNjOrC9lM/v-deo.html
Better hope it also satisfies hunger as well as normal meat even when you have been a few days with only eating vegan food. I was almost constantly hungry despite eating all day when I tried a vegan diet. But I guess just getting the meat flavor could help many people who dont have those same problems to eat more plant based
Before man became involved, there were huge herds of large herbivores grazing grasslands so nature clearly feels these animals have a place. Cutting consumption is definitely key, at most I consume 200g per week of red meat which also includes lamb/sheep, venison, etc. So even if it became more expensive most people in the western world could afford the small amounts they should be consuming.
My husband and I have been vegetarian for 50 years. But we do drink milk and eat cheese. I've seen on Flexitarian Times youtubes that some people are fermenting real cow's milk in tanks using things like beets. It uses a lot less water, no methane, no antibiotics, etc. I'm waiting for this to be available and not expensive. I'll switch to it in a heartbeat. I would be vegan but the vegan cheese has no protein. As a side note: I used to have a lot of gas until I started taking probiotics. I wonder if they gave cows probiotics if it would reduce their belching and farting.
I'm waiting for fermented cheddar and mozzarella. I know one company is working on the mozzarella. I've had Brave Robot Ice cream made from fermented milk. It has too much sugar, but it did taste good.
Vegan cheese has its issues but protein isn't one of them and you can get your protein from so many other plants. It's quite easy to get protein but being vegetarian for 50 years that's for sure an achievement in itself.
Hi Catalina, thank you for your comment! We made a video on dairy cheese 🧀 and its vegan alternatives: ua-cam.com/video/_u_sLantkq4/v-deo.html. Environmentally speaking, vegan alternatives are always better and at the moment, oat alternatives seem to be the most sustainable option. 🧀
The feedlot cows grow faster and thus emit less methane during their shorter life. Their shorter lives also means their beef costs less. But the cheaper cost means it will sell more than grass fed beef so the inrease in sales may outweigh their shorter lives and they could emit as much or more methane than grass fed cows. The higher price of grass fed cows may be their biggest advantage because it reduces beef consumption.
mass production beef, cow vomit after chewing and swallowing for a second time, releasing gases burp, etc, a grass-fed is understandable, but grain? all those cows may suffer constipation
This. Transportation as in movement of people and goods alone is responsible around 20-30% of the pollution around the world. Food production is around 3%. USA is worse with 66% of its pollution came from transportation.
@@rzpogi Not to mention Germany shutting down nuclear power plants in favor of more polluting natural gas and coal powered ones. Then these journalist are asking Brazil and Columbia should have better grazing practices. Hypocrisy at it's finest.
@@rzpogi Do you have a source for that? According to the EPA 36% of all Methane emissions are from livestock in the US. Across the globe, livestock account for about 14% of all GHG emissions. By comparison, the airline industry is responsible for only 2.4% of total GHG emissions in the world. I'll post links in my next comment, I don't want this deleted.
Indeed, Ever since I started looking into the IPCC reports, I can confirm the 6th chapter (by preference from the 2021 version or any after this one) concerning the charts per "short lived climate forcers", clearly shows that the fossil fuel production and distribution accounts from something around 40% of all Methane emissions and agriculture around 30% + waste management around 20%. Regardless how the IPCC treats about the carbon cycle and their charts about how potently different are natural CH4 and fossil CH4. I'm surprised DW didn't speak about the carbon cycle for CH4 and he 10years ish life span bc those in defense of meat eating & co commonly bring this up. The production of Ammonia was omitted in this video, currently I'm seeing in these charts it accounts for 75% in agriculture, I think it's the second most produced molecule on the planet and we need oil to make it. I won't try to imagine how much power it requires to make NH3 from electrolysis divided from other molecules thanks to membranes, because I have no idea how it's done and maybe the research is at it's beginnings...So industrial food isn't green after all since haber bosch became a thing. The seaweed that was briefly shown over here is Asparagopsis, it's from autralia, dunno much about it either. Anyways, watch out for oil.
@@thijmstickman8349 Even though NOx are heavily potent than C02. Meanwhile there is still a debate between the use for GWP100 and GWP20 for plenty of reasons like gas lifespan for instance.
Short answer, yes. Eventually, better standards, efficiency and alternatives will exist. But for the most part, we should just eat as much as we need, train ourselves to finish our food and not buy food in excess. That's a solution, if you don't want a significant lifestyle change like going vegan or vegetarian or buying ethical food products.
There was also the discovery of how Brominata works with the cow's digestive system to reduce methane production. It's a feed additive derived from Red seaweed and a study done at a Dairy farm in California saw ranges from 52 to 92 percent reduction in methane production from the cows when Brominata was added to their feed. Now the problem is scaling up production to meet the demand of Dairy farms all over the world.
But the cows will still eat seven pounds of grain (plus some seaweed) to produce one pound of beef. We won't be able to feed 10 billion people if so much of the grain is going to cows. And the cows use lots of water. Down with cows.
Hi Kevin, indeed we did! :) When macroalgae called asparagopsis taxiformis is added to animal feed is can help to reduce the methane emissions by up to 82%! 🎉Watch "Why the world needs more algae, not less" here: ua-cam.com/video/bcyIbq3NhI0/v-deo.html.
"Sustainable beef" is a lot like "clean coal", isn't it? So my question to the creators of this video is would you make a similar, "balanced" video for clean coal? Probably not right? I think you gotta be more realistic with your viewers, even if the reality is uncomfortable. And the reality is that the most efficient beef burger on the planet will still be many times more destructive than an average plant based burger, at least from a land use perspective. And when there are some people calling for global population reduction, maybe you should remind them that there is plenty of more space on the planet for vegetarians. Further, hasn't that rotational grazing tedtalk been debunked by the scientific community? Cmon now.
Hi there, thank you for your comment. 🍔 Have you already seen our video on vegan meat? You can watch it here: "ua-cam.com/video/6TvNjOrC9lM/v-deo.html". Hope you find it interesting. 🌱
Thanks for the reply. I did see that video. The messaging in your videos is just too subtle for my taste, especially when the literature is so clear that trends for beef consumption dont math with nature preservation. They are mutually exclusive. As a scientist I respect where your journalism lands on the spectrum of knowledge, and that you're just trying to introduce these topics to the masses. I know the science favours one side of the debate, but it's not really presented that way in your videos. If you're taking suggestions, do a video on beef and dairy subsidies and show what the true $ cost of a burger actually is. If plant based burgers were subsidized to the same extent, they'd practically be free. Maybe ask the question your audience about how true costs would influence their decisions for meat.
@@qwueicjas What's we needs to be is to do what American bisons to do, migrate animals. Rotational grazing better than normal, but not enough. Many people engage in animal husbandry are already doing rotational grazing all around world. If it is really desired to use the pastures efficiently, animals must be migrated. For thousands of years, peoples such as Turkic, Hunnic and Mongolic, who lived a nomadic life, grazed their animals in this way. In the past, Turks migrated their animals from lands where more grass could grow in summer to more temperate regions in winter. The reason why the ancient people who control huge geography in Central Asia despite the small population is that millions of people together with their tents and animals and they migrated a distance from Spain to Estonia every year. They can do this by making short-distance migration from high places to low places every 4 months in places like Anatolia, where all four seasons are experienced in one place. In rotational grazing, if animals are grazed in areas with similar climates in a hot time when the grass will not be green enough, animals have to expend more energy to digest, consume more grass and they eat glass when grass in growing period not eating period. The meat of the migrated animals is of the highest quality. It is impossible to apply this in every country in Europe because mostly there is only one season in the same period all over the country, but US pass livestock laws among themselves and this is applicable if it is determined in which season the animals will graze on which states pastures. Animals that are happy and healthy, less harmful to the environment, and need less land to graze can be raised with this method, in the wild these animals already live this lifestyle. Also there is no need for a huge investment to implement it, all that needs to be done is to make these laws in central govermend and to determine the regions where the farmers graze animals in what seasons. In Mongolia, you can consume the world's highest quality lamb meat for extremely cheap. Meat is so cheap that people consume meat even for breakfast because grain products such more expensive than meat. With the right planning, they can produce the cheapest and same time highest quality meat in the world in the USA, only by planning and opening the land for grazing to farmers. But if they do, it's likely that the incomes of factory animal produsers and people like Bill Gates working on synthetic meat will make low income, so I don't think it will ever happen.
If history is relevant then ruminants are integral to a balanced ecology. Taste is immaterial, nutrition is paramount. The feeds that livestock eat are essential to healthy landscapes and are usually considered human inedible. We people have a long and mostly honorable symbiosis with livestock.Probably with good reason.
The focus should not be on "better beef", but on better food. The answer is crops. Not only for the environment, but because this environmental movement is critically failing hundreds of billions of sentient, non-human animals per year. Crops are food. Cows should not be food.
Hi Kevin, you could also be keen in watching our video on permaculture. There are some elements that industrial agriculture too could apply from this method in response to soil degradation. 🌱 🎬 ua-cam.com/video/I0rQNYMwzfY/v-deo.html.
I’ve stopped eating beef almost entirely . I’ll have it occasionally , but I encourage people to just stop eating BEEF . It’s hard to quit meat altogether unless u can get a balanced diet, but eliminating beef goes a looong way in reducing, water use, CO2 emissions and deforestation.
Yes. People really need to discuss the whole meat debate as if beef (which is also the absolutely worst meat for environment apparently) is the only meat that exists and not look at and show us how the other meat alternatives compare. Plant based food is maybe still better for the environment all together (but I think that benefit realistically fades a lot when you end up eating way more to compensate for food not being satisfying enough and nutrients not absorbable enough. People got it wrong because they only look at a plain number of calories), but not everyone thrives on it physically even when doing it "the right way", and some again could not do a balanced enough vegan diet due to access and economy. I felt terrible on a plant based diet, that included mostly starches, some seeds, legumes, fruits and vegetables, and a little bit of fortified soy milk and vegan "meat". I ate at least 10 times the volume in a day I would usually do because the food did just not satisfy the hunger. I suspect the thing with only comparing the one "worst" meat with vegan food all together is purposefully skewing the result.
Okay, how come you never ever talk about the important use of dung beetles. Dung beetles have always been used by farmers for hundreds if not thousands of years to improve the quality of soil. Not to mention that they also sequester methane emissions as well
That is a very interesting topic, but to me animals will always be friend not food! 🌱🌱 I also hated how that farmer talked about his cows, as if meat was a plant that can be grown 'slowly' and is not a living, breathing, sentient animal!
@@gbp3616 and how many more animals die for crops that are fed to farmed animals, who are killed eventually too? So if you're worried about crop deaths, you should really stop eating corpses!
@@mel0001 they displace animals from their habitat to build the farm, then they spray the crops to kill insects and rodents, then when the combine comes through it kills more animals. By the way the proper way for farm animals to eat is free range, so your initial arguement is redundant. Wake up and stop falling for the elites plan to have you eating bugs and soy beans. Seed oils mixed with these fake meat products are terrible for you. I know plenty of people who have had "balanced" vegan diets and they are still malnourished in some regard. Also plants are living and breathing too. Its just your simple perception that leads you to believe youre not killing something. Things need to die for us to continue living.. just like the rest of the circle of life
As an omnivore, I will not compromise on eating meat. I don't like how some (but not all) vegan individuals push to stop meat production. However, I am for making meat production more sustainable and humane. I think if some emissions are unavoidable, this is where other sections of the economy need to balance this out with much lower emissions. We all have to eat and for most meat is necessary, cultural, and not up for compromise.
"I don't like how some (but not all) vegan individuals push to stop meat production." But wether you like it or not, it´s the sensible thing to do. I´m sorry, but that´s just how it is. Apart from some areas, which are only suitable for grazing and in which meat is thus the only food source available, stopping meat production, especially industrial one, is the sensible thing to do. "We all have to eat and for most meat is necessary." No it isn´t. It´s not neccessary for ANYONE to eat meat. Most people are not willing to give up meat, but it is not neccessary for anyone to eat it. "I think if some emissions are unavoidable, this is where other sections of the economy need to balance this out with much lower emissions." Well, there is no area, where CO² emissions are more easily avoidable than in the agricultural area. Many people absolutely rely on their car, many countries absolutely rely on coal energy, but as I said, nobody needs to eat meat. We could all just stop tomorrow
Thank you for replying to me! That is really cool someone read what I had to say. As a huge supporter of the environmental movement, I will politely disagree with you on grazing and meat eating. I agree that industrial feed lots have many negative aspects, but pasture grazing can be done at scale and in environmental-friendly ways. Forcing a vegan diet on people is not the correct path, and this is not sensible. There are many benefits to eating more plants and we all should. But I simply do not agree forcing veganism on people, either overtly or covertly.
@@d.boogie3691 "but pasture grazing can be done at scale and in environmental-friendly ways." No it can´t, and no offense to you, but all the people I´ve seen this claim so far, have usually been frauds or ignorant ideologues. Pasture grazing should certainly still exist, but just with pasture grazing we can´t satisfy the current demand for meat, not even closely, we´d still need to eat way, way less meat. And pasture grazing is still not as climate friendly as just eating no meat at all, so we still should try to eat as little as possible. Which in the case of most westerners is none at all. "Forcing a vegan diet on people is not the correct path, and this is not sensible." Well, mother nature itself will sooner or later force a vegan diet on most people, either that or we will have climate disaster and a bunch of deaths. Besides, we force certain diets onto people all the time, simply by putting a certain price tag on foods. I for example can´t afford to buy asparagus, good whiskey or certain mushrooms, they´re just too expensive. I would if I could, cause that stuff´s freaking delicious, and I could, if we as a society would decide to produce more of that stuff, it is easy to produce. But rarer and thus more expensive asparagus, mushrooms or whiskey is better for business, so bad luck for me. Just producing way less meat and putting a much higher price tag on it, wouldn´t be any different. We could lower the price for other food instead. And well, sometimes you just have to force people to do or not to do certain things, that´s just how it is. From 2035 onward, only electric cars will be newly permitted in the EU, people then will be forced to buy electric cars. In France, short-distance fligths are banned and people are forced to use train instead, other countries might have similar laws soon. In Germany, only certain types of heating units will be newly permitted, if your current unit reaches a certain age, or breaks, and has to be replaced, you are forced to buy and install a new, different one. We are already forcing people to do a bunch of stuff in the name of fighting climate change, and it´s still not enough. Force is everywhere, the state itself only exists to force people to follow certain rules. And as long as these rules exist for a good purpose and as long as they are within a sensible frame, I have absolutely no problem with that, so I don´t see, what would be so terrible about forcing a certain diet onto people. Living without meat is easy, I don´t see why this should be such a big deal. The least thing we should do, is make meat so expensive, that it becomes something special again, something we only eat once a week, like it was just a few decades ago. Stuffing 2Kg of animal carcasses per week into one´s face just isn´t feasible anymore.
Have to divide farmland. Some farmland we can grow vegetables humans can eat. On a lot of farmland we can't grow vegetables human eat. All farmland used to feeed cattle can't be used to feed humans. If you want to sustain the global population and not starve people we sort of have to eat some meat. I'm in Sweden a lot of our farmable land etiher the soil is to bad or the weather is too bad to grow anything humans can eat.
What's we needs to be is to do what American bisons to do, migrate animals. Rotational grazing better than normal, but not enough. Many people engage in animal husbandry are already doing rotational grazing all around world. If it is really desired to use the pastures efficiently, animals must be migrated. For thousands of years, peoples such as Turkic, Hunnic and Mongolic, who lived a nomadic life, grazed their animals in this way. In the past, Turks migrated their animals from lands where more grass could grow in summer to more temperate regions in winter. The reason why the ancient people who control huge geography in Central Asia despite the small population is that millions of people together with their tents and animals and they migrated a distance from Spain to Estonia every year. They can do this by making short-distance migration from high places to low places every 4 months in places like Anatolia, where all four seasons are experienced in one place. In rotational grazing, if animals are grazed in areas with similar climates in a hot time when the grass will not be green enough, animals have to expend more energy to digest, consume more grass and they eat glass when grass in growing period not eating period. The meat of the migrated animals is of the highest quality. It is impossible to apply this in every country in Europe because mostly there is only one season in the same period all over the country, but US pass livestock laws among themselves and this is applicable if it is determined in which season the animals will graze on which states pastures. Animals that are happy and healthy, less harmful to the environment, and need less land to graze can be raised with this method, in the wild these animals already live this lifestyle. Also there is no need for a huge investment to implement it, all that needs to be done is to make these laws in central govermend and to determine the regions where the farmers graze animals in what seasons. In Mongolia, you can consume the world's highest quality lamb meat for extremely cheap. Meat is so cheap that people consume meat even for breakfast because grain products such more expensive than meat. With the right planning, they can produce the cheapest and same time highest quality meat in the world in the USA, only by planning and opening the land for grazing to farmers. But if they do, it's likely that the incomes of factory animal produsers and people like Bill Gates working on synthetic meat will make low income, so I don't think it will ever happen.
Hi, indeed Philip! 🌱 Although unfortunately, biogas can be quite problematic. Watch our video on biomass, touching upon anaerobic digestion and biogas: ua-cam.com/video/XXu15NlOuGo/v-deo.html.
I think meat can be produced sustainable but only in countries where it is sustainable todo we need to cut out global meat Production 20% so we can recover the rest of the 80% for nature
maybe make a video about lab-grown steak in a few months the us and Israel should have at least 1 company mass-producing them for a reasonable price so it's not far away from the day we can create one factory in the middle of south America or west Africa for developing nation
The USDA used to teach and subsidize regenerative ag with livestock into the 50s. Livestock isn't the problem. Lobbyists and corrupt, crony capitalism is the problem.
Livestock is the problem. Like 90% of it that has to be produced through factory farming. There is no way everybody can eat meat on a daily basis with grass-fed animals and la-la-land fantasies about regenerative farming. There is a place for it, but as a niche production, not something for the masses. Grow up.
@@TheHonestPeanut What's we needs to be is to do what American bisons to do, migrate animals. Rotational grazing better than normal, but not enough. Many people engage in animal husbandry are already doing rotational grazing all around world. If it is really desired to use the pastures efficiently, animals must be migrated. For thousands of years, peoples such as Turkic, Hunnic and Mongolic, who lived a nomadic life, grazed their animals in this way. In the past, Turks migrated their animals from lands where more grass could grow in summer to more temperate regions in winter. The reason why the ancient people who control huge geography in Central Asia despite the small population is that millions of people together with their tents and animals and they migrated a distance from Spain to Estonia every year. They can do this by making short-distance migration from high places to low places every 4 months in places like Anatolia, where all four seasons are experienced in one place. In rotational grazing, if animals are grazed in areas with similar climates in a hot time when the grass will not be green enough, animals have to expend more energy to digest, consume more grass and they eat glass when grass in growing period not eating period. The meat of the migrated animals is of the highest quality. It is impossible to apply this in every country in Europe because mostly there is only one season in the same period all over the country, but US pass livestock laws among themselves and this is applicable if it is determined in which season the animals will graze on which states pastures. Animals that are happy and healthy, less harmful to the environment, and need less land to graze can be raised with this method, in the wild these animals already live this lifestyle. Also there is no need for a huge investment to implement it, all that needs to be done is to make these laws in central govermend and to determine the regions where the farmers graze animals in what seasons. In Mongolia, you can consume the world's highest quality lamb meat for extremely cheap. Meat is so cheap that people consume meat even for breakfast because grain products such more expensive than meat. With the right planning, they can produce the cheapest and same time highest quality meat in the world in the USA, only by planning and opening the land for grazing to farmers. But if they do, it's likely that the incomes of factory animal produsers and people like Bill Gates working on synthetic meat will make low income, so I don't think it will ever happen.
@@CruWiT what you just did is called a gish gallop so I'm not addressing everything you said. Meat is cheap in the west because it's so heavily subsided and the animals are treated like product instead of animals. Meat in Mongolia is cheap for westerners because of the rate of exchange. The best lamb meat is not cheap for nationals. As for soil health, rotational grazing mimics what bison did over thousands of years but it speeds it up. Instead of inches of healthy soil over thousands of years you can build feet in decades.
Okey so.. my local had this new brand i never really saw before.. it looked like any other processed meat but it was.. expensive? I thought it was odd but it really didnt look out of the ordinary exept for the packaging or the price. Its one of the days where you just see something that seems out of place and because i like being creative in the kitchen i chose to buy it. It was first when i came home i noticed it were a trial of "grown" meat. At first i were sceptical but then i thought that when we eat meat we literally eat cells.m this was the same thing and how right i was, it tasted no different but had a much smoother texture. Usually any meatlover would agree that you can feel the quality of the meat and how well the animal were raised based on its tenderness but in this case it really were just like you would expect a normal quality beef to feel like. Savory, juicy, but with much less bite to it. I was so impressed by it that i got curious of the topic so i guess im a labmeat fanatic now.
Its manufactured to taste like meat, just like any other food that is artificially flavoured to mimic something. What do you think is better for you, something that is orange flavoured or an orange? The same is with artificial meat, one is a man made combination of chemicals to make it seem like something it isn't, the other is meat. It is bad for you.
BBC's "Wartime Farm" series showed the big problems England had a couple/few years after they culled much of their food animals (in an effort to have more food for people) - lack of (natural) fertilizer! I'd love to see a study comparing the planetary impact of creating fertilizer in a lab/factory (energy, chemicals) , put in containers (plastics?), transported (fossil fuel, often long distances), to be used on cows (being fed antibiotics, etc) VS grass fed cows whose manure fertilizes nearby farms and their own food source (while providing greater nutrition). Vegan, vegetarian or meat eater - the land growing our produce requires fertilizers so isn't it better it come from a local "natural" source than chemicals from other countries and all that's entailed in making that happen? Yes, please show me that study. (PS less people on the planet also seems a good idea!)
Hi there, how about algae? You could be interested in watching our video on this natural fertilizer here 👉ua-cam.com/video/bcyIbq3NhI0/v-deo.html. Also, we explored the argument on overpopulation here 🎬 ua-cam.com/video/kUL-q7ptDW4/v-deo.html. Let us know what you make of these in the comments. 🌱
Eating beef does not ruin the planet! Yes, producing beef causes emissions of co2 and ch4, but not to an amount that justifies the use of the term "ruin the planet". In western countries, eating animal products (including beef) causes about 10-15% of annual co2-emissions. However, if we stop eating animal products, we would have to start eating more vegetables and fruits, which also cause co2-emissions. So in short, there are some climate-benefits to a began diet, but they are very limited.
And I think people greatly underestimate just how much more people would eat without meat, its not just a matter of plain number of calories. I probably ate at least 10 times more volume than usual when I tried a vegan diet due to food just not satisfying hunger properly. How much of the nutrients your body actually absorbs and needing to get close to enough of all of them is another issue
@@zakosist "I probably ate at least 10 times more volume than usual when I tried a vegan diet due to food just not satisfying hunger properly." Then you probably ate the wrong food.
"However, if we stop eating animal products, we would have to start eating more vegetables and fruits, which also cause co2-emissions." It causes way,way less emissions though. Insanely less. And the thing is: Currently we produce a bunch of nutrient-dense food (soy, wheat, rape seeds, corn, etc.) and feed it to cows instead of humans. Which is of course a huge waste, only a small portion of the nutrients in a cows food are left in the steak at the end. If we would just stop eating cows, we could eat some of that food instead, we wouldn´t have to grow new food somewhere, overall, we would need to grow LESS food. A plant-based agriculture uses way less space and water and causes way less CO²-pollution. That are just the facts. I have no problem, if we keep cows in areas only suitable for grazing. You can´t grow vegetables in the Alps or the mongolian steppes, so keeping cows, goats or sheep there is the sensible thing to do, and it´s not that problematic for the environment. But the industrial production of meat is among the worst things humanity has ever invented and yes, industrial meat production does definetly ruin the planet, that´s not even an exaggeration. And humanity needs to eat less meat, you can´t satisfy a demand of 1,9 Kilogram of meat per week (average per capita demand in the US) wiht only pasture-raised animals
@@teutonicterror0365 People often compare the co2-footprint of 1 kg meat to the co2-footprint of 1 kg vegetables. This is not correct, because 1kg of meat contains a lot more nutrition than 1 kg of vegetables. So the difference in co2-footprint is a lot smaller than is often suggested. Nevertheless, I allready stated a vegan diet would lead to a decrease of co2-emissions, probably 5-10%. That is not really gonna make a difference.....
I think you need to investigate precision fermentation. This process lets microbes produce the exact same nutrients that animals produce at a fraction of the cost to the planet. It could also produce better nutrients, still at a fraction of the cost. It's already here, and will eliminate the problems you describe.
@@limbodog yeah it isn't. They use some product made from the blood of newly born calfs. Seriously im not joking. I think real science has a video on it lol..
I definitely want my children to get everything to need to grow healthy, and beef is an easy source of iron and protein. That said, we definitely moderate our consumption and only do beef once a week, with chicken and fish being our main sources of protein. I think when my kids are older, I wouldn't mind going to a mostly-vegetarian diet with fish, and only occasionally eat meat. But, yes, I do think of animal welfare and environmental impact with what we eat. It's pretty much tied in to an environment into which my children (and children around the world) will need to grow up and inherit.
@@catalina5382 It won't be families' modest meat (and very little beef) consumption that will make a tangible difference. But yes, I agree that beef and its worldwide environmental implications need to be adressed, far beyond the consumer's choice.
I don't know if I missed it but I didn't hear this video talk about the methane cycle? Where in less than 15 years the methane produced by cattle turns back into carbon dioxide and therefore back into the crops and grass, cows don't magically introduce new carbon into the atmosphere and so are inherently carbon neutral by themselves, what's not carbon neutral is the fossil fuels burned to farm them ofc, a bit misleading to leave that out the video in my opinion..
Hi Patrick, thanks for your comment. 🌱 The methane cycle is an important natural process indeed, but the methane emissions from meat production are so significant that this process does not fix the issue unfortunately. Methane is warming the planet 84 times more than CO2 in a 20 year period. 😐
The thing is, at some point in the process, that methan is in the air and doing damage. That it´ll eventually turn back into CO² is well and good, but before it does this, it has already done damage. And in the last decades we have increased the number of cattle extremely, and thus the amount of methan currently in the atmosphere and currently doing damage to the climate has also been risen. If we would just kill and cattle tomorrow, then yes, much of the methan currently in the atmosphere would be gone in 12-15 years, but we constantly produce new cattle and thus constantly pump new methan in the air, which keeps doing it´s damage
After researching this topic, I've almost entirely stopped eating beef and milk, and very little cheese, and eat mostly vegitables, chicken and veggie milk. Looking forward to lab-produced meats as well.
If we really look at how inefficient beef production is compared to alternatives we see regardless how much we can improve methane production returning the land used to forest and eating meat alternatives is going to win time and time again.
I'm not a beef lover, but neither a vegetarian too. Give me my poultry or fish anytime, though I also enjoy beef and veggies. But to this point about farming beef and its environmental impact, every opponent says that raising cattle is more harmful to the environment than if the farmers had switched to farming plants. I just learnt that one cow feeds about one thousand people! 1000!! Did all these environmentalists factor that one thousand mouths into consideration when calculating the climate costs of farming beef? And what would be the environmental impact of growing enough plants to feed a thousand people for every cow that the vegan diet is suppose to replace? Not championing for either side of the coin, but just putting it out there that before we jump on anything, we should really get the numbers and calculations correct. 1 cow feeds a thousand human adults. How many plants and acres of land do you need to feed that same one thousand human adults? Does that then have the same impact on the environment as raising that one cow?
Hey there! If the whole world would switch to a plant-based diet, global land usefor agriculture would decrease by 75%. This is mainly due to less land needed for grazing and growing crops.
"Did all these environmentalists factor that one thousand mouths into consideration when calculating the climate costs of farming beef?" YES. There are many studies about this. You can feed way more people while producing way less CO² with a mostly plant-based agriculture, that are just the facts. "And what would be the environmental impact of growing enough plants to feed a thousand people for every cow that the vegan diet is suppose to replace?" The impact would be: Less space used for food production, less CO², less water needed. It would be great. "but just putting it out there that before we jump on anything, we should really get the numbers and calculations correct." We already have the correct numbers. As I said, scientists have studied this shit for decades, and there are many studies out there proving, that vegan diet is superior in every aspect. Except maybe taste, gotta admit, there´s nothing (yet) that could replace the taste of a good omelette, but that´s honestly a small sacrifice. Look: modern industrially farmed cows don´t eat much if even any grass anymore. They usually eat some protein super food, mostly a mixture of corn, soy, rape seed and similar shit. And they need a fuck ton of that power food, before they reach their desired weight. So you first need to pump tons and tons of food, food that we humans could eat, into a cow, and the cow needs to digests that food (a process during which a bunch of nutrients are lost) before it can be slaughtered and "feed a thousand people". The food that one cow consumes, before it is slauthered, could feed thousands of people, not just one thousand. And of course all this corn and soy and shit has to be grown somewhere. Do you really think the giant corn fields in the US or the soy fields in south america for which we deforrest the Amazon, do you really think the food there is for humans? No, we feed cows, chickens, pigs, etc. with that stuff. There is no problem with holding cows in areas only suitable for grazing. We humans obviously can´t eat grass, and letting cows graze somewhere in the alps or whatever, is no big deal for the environment, in some areas of the world, grazing animals are the only foodsource available, mongolia or the sahel zone for example, areas with lots of grass land, but not much land suitable for agriculture. But currently, we use the majority of the land that IS suitable for agriculture for the production of high protein animal food, to satisfy the lust of the rich countries for more and more meat. Industrialised meat production is the biggest waste of land and ressources on this planet, and it would be so, so much better for every living thing on this planet, if we would eat and produce way, way less meat. Again, I have nothing against holding cows in areas only suitable for grazing. But this would mean, that beef would be a rarity again, something that we can only eat maybe once every two weeks. Like it should be and has been for most of humanities existence
Hi Douglas, like Jordan mentioned, it is not a fixed value. The exact volume always depends on the conditions in which it is stored or measured. But some approximations can be made under standard temperature and pressure (STP). 🌞
buy meat from grass fed cattle which is the most used system in uk and europe with only a small amount of cereal used in final stage of fattening ,dont buy brazilian or feedlot fed beef and the carbon footprint will be low many beef farms in uk are carbon negative taking into account the woodland on the farm
It is absolutely incorrect that feedlot systems use land more efficiently, since most grass grazing land is land that cannot support other forms of agriculture, while land dedicated to growing grain or alfalfa for cattle feed can be used to grow other food.
Well the only way to produce meet from cattle substantially is to feed them only and only with field where we can't produce crops for us... so it means all the intensive farm where they feed the cattle with soy, corn, barley and whatever they feed them, are gone, history... so it means yes we have to eat less meat... and one more little contratiction with this video is that to stop the starvation worldwide, we don't need to produce more we just need to share it and to stop to waste it...
rewild the land plant or let more trees grow don't over grace the land. we need to ban the intensive farming of animals and crops. Crops use a lot of chemicals to grow plants made from fossil fuels. I think we need to ban cheap meat and replace it with lab-grown meat.
You try to explain everything else problem too and blame people, but you do not even mention how much methane being released each year by oil industry. Very interesting, you can somehow all the time explain why the renewable bad, but you never mention why oil is bad. Your view very selective. Same with battery, you say battery needs cobalt, but you forget to mention the fact oil industry was the biggest cobalt consumer until 2019. Or you forget to mention the meaning of lithium passport, or for example LiPo battery has no cobalt at all which slowly pretty much all electric car use except German manufactures. This channel is just part of the disinformation motor. People want electric car, people want solar panel on their roof....
Hi Krisztián. Have you seen our video "Why Big Oil loves to talk about your carbon footprint" 🎬: ua-cam.com/video/vqZVCEnY-Us/v-deo.html. Here we discuss the dangers of shifting too much of the focus on environmental responsibility to private consumers rather than the bigger players. Let us know what you think in the comments. 🙏
@@DWPlanetA Yep, obviously you have :) no surprise here. You know what would be fair? Rather mention the responsibility of the oil industry in a single video, and mention the problem of renewable in countless videos, why you just don't turn it around. Make video every week about oil and the problems around it and just make a single video about the problem of battery? or alternatively you could discuss both side in each video but keep the balance of two party. Like oil makes the 90% the problem, EV 10%, than your video should represent this too. If you think there is no enough topic to talk about, than just some idea: War, corruption, diseases, 16 oil leaking worldwide just the last 3 years.
I think we need more Joel Salatin's and less Vegan "influencers" who have never grown any food for anyone ever. Before you say your theory about how to feed the world, learn to grow the food for yourself and your family at a minimum first. Also I think that your question is too vague to be answerable and your metrics are far far too narrow but for a mere 12 min video you did ok. Not good or terrible
So developing countries, where life expectancy is low, need to produce more meat for better health and a longer life but the developed countries, where life expectancy is high, should eat less meat...
"So developing countries, where life expectancy is low, need to produce more meat for better health and a longer life", No they don´t, who told you that?
@@anthonybenton7725 Well, if they really said that, it´s bullshit. Nobody needs meat for a longer and healthier life. Usually DWs stuff is kinda decent, especially when it´s about science and technology, but yeah, they have some big fuck-ups here and there.
I really like that you are trying to do a balanced video. I would like to recommend watching the documentary Milked. The issue with grass fed is that they will end up using fertilizer on the grass too also and that also has it's impact. At the scale we are now there is no way this is sustainable and we really need to cut not a bit, but a lot. Also there are a lot of controversies regarding regenerative grazing. You give it a bit more credit then it deserves. Just since 83% of all farmland is already used for animal farming... the first thing we need is not more of it but less of it. It's the number 1 cause of deforestation. This is of course not for people that have protein defiencies, but they are not the one that is getting fed by the meat we produce anyway.
industrialisation of agriculture makes beef so polutant and unhealthy for animals and people. Diversification and and diversity in the agriculture is the key. Animals are part of complex chains that are designed by nature, eating grass allows healthy meadows, pooping too. In the past the whole process was supervised by smaller or bigger farmers, spread nicely across the nation. By industrialisation of agriculture this whole chain of nature is broken at the profits of few corporations. That's whole story.
Hey Tim. Actually, food production accounts for almost a third of all greenhouse gases, while the transport sector for around 14%. In addition, the beef industry produces a lot of methane, which warms the planet 80 times more than carbon dioxide over 20 years (🔗 www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data).
If you sincerely believe eating beef will ruin the planet, I dont think there's any hope for you on this planet regardless of what else you believe or do.
Meat, in general, is complex. If we started eating less meat, the prices would increase. There is a cost point at which meat becomes a commodity for the rich, rather than for all. I would love to see people eat less meat, buy local, and pay more. I bought a half-cow this year and I am still working through the cuts and ground beef. Big, commercial beef will continue to be a problem so long as a ever-growing demand exists. There is a point where the cow/acre is not a large contributor to climate change. Not everyone who raises beef is looking for a profit or to maximize the number of head per an acre.
I certainly think that it would be awesome that people lower their meat intake because I have been seeing a lot of really overweight people, some can barely walk and I am sure they would get a lot healthier just eating less meat and less animals would have to be tortured, so is a win-win, but sadly I know that the problem for overweight comes from poor mental health so this is quite tricky
That should be a long term focus as a fast decrease in population will cause enormous economic damage. Many countries already see this happen and it is predicted that the global population will start to decrease in a few decades.
Hi, thank you for your input. We took a look on overpopulation and discussed whether it is actually a real threat to our planet. Please watch our video here: ua-cam.com/video/kUL-q7ptDW4/v-deo.html and let us know what you think in the comments. ☘
In 300 years I believe that industrial farming and our use of plastics in everything, will be two things which society will not understand and have trouble forgiving us for.
DW leans more on the green/environmental side. but you showed that amazing ted talk and that shows you interest in the full picture. great, loved that ted talk. I even use it on my recreational land
Good luck trying to implement such a law. You can travel to Ethiopia and go around distributing condoms to isolated mountain villages in an effort to lower birthrates if you want, but a law, especially an international one, won´t change shit
Hi Daniel. 😊 Agriculture as a whole with its vast CO2 contribution takes its toll on the environment. You could take a look into our video on agroforestry as a response to conventional farming's issues here: ua-cam.com/video/cfvYL-Acyec/v-deo.html. 🌱
Nope. The real answer is- if we are actually serious about acting on climate change everyone who can needs to stop eating animal foods completely. We are in a time of crisis. There’s no time to um and ah
@@andrejakobsson5790 Horse meat is good for your health. Horse meat is one of the healthiest meats for human consumption. It also produce less methane and it grows faster than cows. It's better for the environment overall than cows.
I'm not an activist of any kind. I don't think I'm a crazy person. I still eat meat. But the argument that killing people is wrong but killing animals is okay just seems wrong to me.
Because you might consider all life of all species to be equal. Most people don't believe that. If you had to choose to save either, an animal, or a human, who would you save?(you dont have to answer the question, it was just an example). Well, thats just what I think anyway. I ain't no philosopher
@@yayayayya4731 Like most people, If I had to choose to save either an animal or human, I would save the human. But imagine a news story involving a burning building where a heroic person could only save one of two people. When the reporter interviews him, he says, "I saw a white person and a black person, and I chose to save the white person because I'm white too." How would that go over? Or instead of race, substitute nationality -- American vs. Mexican. There is something unsavory about considering and ranking one over another -- one race vs. another race, one nationality vs. another nationality, and I would add, one species vs. another species.
You havent thought about it deeply enough. People really do have a higher level of sentience and more potential to accomplish something unique than most animals. We can have a true sense of purpose and goal in life. We are self aware, only very few other animals are. We fear for the future long before bad things actually happen, and also realise more what we miss out on, which would make humans suffer even more than livestock if put in the same situation. We understand life and death on a deeper level than animals. And it greatly endangers the whole society if you try to place humans on exactly the same level as other animals. But I still think animal welfare is highly important, and animals should not suffer their whole lives.
@@zakosist Your self aggrandising statement ironically proves the opposite of your intent. You lack wisdom and humility, your arrogant ignorance appears boundless.
Short answer no if you are against animals farming you don't understand how your microbes work let alone how nature and it's microbes works water ,grass , grain, animals and soil comes with microbes regenerative agriculture do use feedloting buy rotational grazing
Can we produce beef that doesn't ruin the planet? Oil, Coal, Cement, and Metal Production 🤣🤣🤣🤣, we going to ruin this planet anyway even humans don't eat beef anymore.
That should be a long term focus as a fast decrease in population will cause enormous economic damage. Many countries already see this happen and it is predicted that the global population will start to decrease in a few decades.
Can you enjoy beef or are you thinking of its ecological impact?
I’ve been eating significantly less meat since 2022. It’s easier to do thinking about the environmental impact
Coming up to 270 days without eating any plants, except coffee. Stop wasting time eating carbohydrates.
When i eat beef or other kinds of meat, i don't really think about the ecological impact, though i do eat just about the amount of 1 hamburger patty a week, the rest is vegetarian substitutes (like vegetarian meatballs).
I love beef. I will not have children and do not travel. An eye for an eye. Plus, I plant trees in my tropical home country and move mostly by bicycle. Burger guy forever.
No such thing as "green friendly" meat unless it's cultured lab meat from tissue, not from animals, and that's not even available yet. Meat takes enormous amounts of resources, from water usage to waste produced to the high amounts of methane produced. I find it odd DW is even doing a video like this to be honest. I'm sure someone will find a way to greenwash meat though.
The biggest issue this video misses is that beef production is heavily subsidized by the fact that grain production is heavily subsidized in the US. In fact, the entire system of feeding grain to ruminant livestock came about because of the massive surplus of grain produced in the US as a result of industrialization, monoculture farming, and crop subsidies. Eliminate the crop subsidies, and the confined animal feedlot operation will no longer be profitable or even possible.
We could say the same with oil and gas! Funny how we’re subsidizing our own demise!
The biggest issue is the cruelty
One fun fact is that antibiotic use in feeding cattle is not to avoid infections but because the animals will grow more and faster. So basically they are doing it to produce more meat.
Alternatives should be discovered/developed and adopted.
@@johnbash-on-ger it's kinda hard because you need to kill gut bacteria so maybe research might find another way but I think it's probably very hard. I would focus more on using manure for biogas as that procesd would probably get rid of a lot of bacteria while producing energy
No, that is wrong. Antibiotics are used to avoid infections, which I guess would make for leas deadstock and more livestock. Growth hormones are used to produce more meat though
@@tomkelly8827 nope by killing gut microbes cows and other animals including humans get more weighr and more fat. They discovered it and that's why they use it, look it up it's really interesting
@@tomkelly8827 Oh, I thought he meant the antibiotics also had growth hormone properties.
I'm sorry but rotational grazing has been a staple of European farming for generations. The idea that this is new is silly when it's all we ever do. I personally own 2 donkeys and I rotate their grazing area every 2 months just out of custom. Here in Ireland, our beef & lamb are free range but unfortunately, our obsession with pork means with have "pig factories" and you will never see pigs roaming in our countryside. We have a relatively small population and a huge amount of very fertile land per person compared to anywhere else in Europe and we are still net importers of food. It's sickening when you really look at it. Reducing meat consumption is the only way to combat this. Rotational farming is greenwashing and not enough for even the luckiest of countries to sustain themselves...
it's just a marketing smoke screen for their consumers to feel better about what they are doing..
You don´t see cows running on the fields either, they are also held in factory like staples
@@sixtus9559 In Ireland we have very very little beef factories. Like I said in the comment. Ireland is a very large island for 6.8m people. The UK, next door has twice the land and 10x the population. All you see is cows in fields and sheep in mountains and very acidic areas. We grow close to no crops because of it (the acidity that is).
My point was we are still net importers of food, though we are a rainy island where it almost never snows or have droughts and we still can't sustain ourselves. What hope does the rest of the world have once they get wealthy enough to eat meat more often.
@@sixtus9559 over 95% of animal food is factory farmed. Unless you're wealthy and can afford the expensive stuff..
I don't know the exact details but what I know about holistic grazing is that they move the cows every day to a fresh piece of land (smaller ones). Maybe that's why it's more effective. Also the grass is stimulated in root growth this way and thus stores carbon in the ground. I guess that's different when one big piece of land is eaten off at the about same height (of the grass plant) for 2 months.
The difference between grain-fed and grass-fed is not simply that grass-fed ruminants produce more methane per head, but that grain-fed animals produce meat that has an unhealthy balance of omega-6 to omega-3 essential fatty acids for human consumption, and therefore the practice of feeding grain to cattle should be banned, and the concentration of cattle per acre should be strictly regulated to effectively eliminate the confined animal feedlot operation (CAFO) practice. This will of course raise the price of meat, but raising the price of meat is the number one tool we have to curb consumption and waste.
It's not just first world problem, it's also happening in developing countries. I live in indonesia and back in the day people only ate beef during special occasions like wedding party or eid mubarak, it was considered luxury back then. Nowadays you can easily find street vendors selling roasted beef for 5$. Suddenly everyone can afford beef. Sure it's easy to blame the west for their beef consumption but it's a fact that consumption in developing countries is rising very rapidly
To be fair though, us in the west (EU for me), we ARE responsible for this, let's not beat around the bush. This doesn't mean we have all past, present and future blame (I myself predominantly eat greens on a daily level, and meat for special occasions for example), but we have had a very large responsibility in this area.
The amount we consume here in SEA is still way less than in the USA where it's cultural.
The difference is however, developing countries see a rise in spending due to a stronger economy, this isn't a phenomena specific to eating habits. The people there have greater spending power than before.
In first world countries its essentially the opposite, once great spending power that is steadily dwindling thanks to rising inflation and other underlying systematic issues, forcing people to make do with less.
That is undoubtedly going to have an impact as people by necessity cut back on beef in favor of more affordable options that also happen to be more sustainable.
@@ZombieBarioth starvinh is not sustainable. Having lots of health issues is not sustainable either.
Data speaks louder than what you feel... We have special days but people in the west also have lots of special days... And people there either really like beef or care about their protein intake, so they almost consume it at least 3 times a week
Regenerative agriculture is what nature does
We need to diversify our protein sources. Not just cows, but goats, sheeps, etc. And a various poultry, not just chicken or turkey.
Yep, and it also needs to be talked way more about how different meat types compare with EACH OTHER in terms of environmentalism. All plant based may be "best", but not a valid alternative for everyone.
And where is really the saving land/resource benefit when you either way eat like 10 times more (my experience with vegan diet) from the food not satisfying you? And just feel terrible and lose all your spare time and have no energy. I get its still better for the animals themself and their treatment needs to get better. But far from a valid thing to live with.
I think rotational grazing is great for grasslands where its really hard to do anything else but grow grass. However, if the land can be used for crops (or a rainforest) we should do that instead
This, right here. The United States once tried to grow crops on land that was only suitable for grass, and we created the Dustbowl. We lost so much topsoil that it traveled halfway across the continent from western Nebraska to Washington, DC in a giant dust storm. That land west of the hundredth meridian should be used for grazing ruminants and creating pastures. I will eat meat from there without guilt, but I never want to taste Brazilian beef.
@@someguy2135 yes, I know about the soy problem. And as for meat, I can look into any groceries I buy while avoiding beef in restaurants. It's really not that hard at all, especially if you use farmers' markets.
If the land is a forest or rainforest initially, it should remain as it is without changing to pasture. If it has been changed to a pasture, there is still the option of letting it return to forest or rainforest instead of keeping it as a pasture.
@@lowify1 I agree. My point is that there are some huge biomes that naturally are pasture, and we can use those to raise ruminants because we cannot sustainably cultivate any other food sources on pastureland. I believe that was Thijmstickman's point too.
Rotational grazing better than normal, but not enough. Many people engage in animal husbandry are already doing rotational grazing all around world. If it is really desired to use the pastures efficiently, animals must be migrated. For thousands of years, peoples such as Turkic, Hunnic and Mongolic, who lived a nomadic life, grazed their animals in this way. In the past, Turks migrated their animals from lands where more grass could grow in summer to more temperate regions in winter. The reason why the ancient people who control huge geography in Central Asia despite the small population is that millions of people together with their tents and animals and they migrated a distance from Spain to Estonia every year. They can do this by making short-distance migration from high places to low places every 4 months in places like Anatolia, where all four seasons are experienced in one place. In rotational grazing, if animals are grazed in areas with similar climates both in summer and winter, in a hot time when the grass will not be green enough, animals have to expend more energy to digest, consume more grass and they eat glass when grass in growing period not eating period. The meat of the migrated animals is of the highest quality. It is impossible to apply this in every country in Europe because mostly there is only one season in the same period all over the country, but Countries pass livestock laws among themselves and this is applicable if it is determined in which season the animals will graze on which country's pastures. Animals that are happy and healthy, less harmful to the environment, and need less land to graze can be raised with this method, in the wild these animals already live this lifestyle. Also there is no need for a huge investment to implement it, all that needs to be done is to make these agreements in EU and to determine the regions where the farmers graze animals in what seasons.
In Mongolia, you can consume the world's highest quality lamb meat for extremely cheap. Meat is so cheap that people consume meat even for breakfast because grain products such more expensive than meat. Of course, it should be noted that the population of Mongolia is 3 million and it can be used free anyone who wants in its huge territory.
The grass-fed cows look so much happier and healthier. By taste, beef is my favorite meat product. But I buy it the least to reduce it's impact. I'm well under the 1.5 weekly burgers range.
One of the biggest issues I see with your video is that you don’t address the question of “what if this land was dedicated to growing plants instead of farming cattle?” Unfortunately, the answer is that you typically need to feed animals 10X the amount of calories that you get from them so it’s always going to be much more wasteful than eating plants.
While I don’t think everyone needs to go vegan, I do think that we need to drastically overhaul how we farm our food. Animal farming should be kept to terrain that is unsuitable for plant farming or we should only farm animals in instances where they assist in the plant farming. I’ve heard of some cool examples where ducks are kept in rice paddies because they help control the pest and weed populations.
Edit: ok I wrote this comment a little early cause the second half of the video talked a lot about the land use issue. Guess I should have known better than to doubt your investigative skills! Whoops!
Not all the calories cows eat (like grass and crop waste) are calories that humans could eat anyway, so they are providing some new calories into human consumption that would be absent if we didn't farm cattle. Obviously this can go too far by converting fertile farmland into grazing land or feeding cows actual crops grown for them instead of crop waste.
@@Jason821821 that is the vast minority. cause over 1/3 of all food is specifically grown for livestock. and like 99.9% of cows do not eat grass. also 80% of ALL agricultural land is used for livestock. im not saying anyone should stop eating meat, i just think we should all slightly reduce the amount, and replace most of the beef in our diets with chicken and pork, with beef being an occasional thing.
@@Jason821821 I think ignored in this discussion is that in a lot of places in the Global South like the Sahel, Somalia, the Congo, East Africa, Zimbabwe, Siberia, Pakistan, etc there are rural populations that trade in livestock and use livestock as a store of wealth. This is because their financial systems have been destroyed by corruption and colonialism, and their currencies are vulnerable to devaluation and hyperinflation. I don't think their traditional form of trade and wealth generation should be fully discounted. These rural populations should be invested in to improve their efficiency and productivity.
"Animal farming should be kept to terrain that is unsuitable for plant farming" All they will do then is say that the land is unsuitable for ethical uses, or make it so that it is. Wouldn't it just be better to crawl out of our caves and stop deluding ourselves?
@@-opus we've created some massive environmental disasters trying to grow crops on dry grasslands, while the populations indigenous to those places lived off of animal proteins for centuries. Trying to force the land to be more fertile than it naturally is will always end in failure.
Overall interesting video.
However I think the efficiency comparison is a bit too superficial.
Granted, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations CAFOs are more efficient in terms of meat produced. However, they are less efficient at producing overall calories per unit of space (as traditional farms produce more than just meat):
- CAFOs only produce meat (besides require an external input - food; and produce and undesirable output: cow manure which gets toxic when they are not fed properly).
- On the other hand, traditional farms usually produce other animals and plants besides cows (and require no external inputs - the cows eat the grass; and produce no undesirable outputs: the manure is used as fertiliser for the plants).
Further reading:
- The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
- Polyface Farms
Rotational grazing better than normal, but not enough. Many people engage in animal husbandry are already doing rotational grazing all around world. If it is really desired to use the pastures efficiently, animals must be migrated. For thousands of years, peoples such as Turkic, Hunnic and Mongolic, who lived a nomadic life, grazed their animals in this way. In the past, Turks migrated their animals from lands where more grass could grow in summer to more temperate regions in winter. The reason why the ancient people who control huge geography in Central Asia despite the small population is that millions of people together with their tents and animals and they migrated a distance from Spain to Estonia every year. They can do this by making short-distance migration from high places to low places every 4 months in places like Anatolia, where all four seasons are experienced in one place. In rotational grazing, if animals are grazed in areas with similar climates both in summer and winter, in a hot time when the grass will not be green enough, animals have to expend more energy to digest, consume more grass and they eat glass when grass in growing period not eating period. The meat of the migrated animals is of the highest quality. It is impossible to apply this in every country in Europe because mostly there is only one season in the same period all over the country, but Countries pass livestock laws among themselves and this is applicable if it is determined in which season the animals will graze on which country's pastures. Animals that are happy and healthy, less harmful to the environment, and need less land to graze can be raised with this method, in the wild these animals already live this lifestyle. Also there is no need for a huge investment to implement it, all that needs to be done is to make these agreements in EU and to determine the regions where the farmers graze animals in what seasons.
You forgot to talk about carbon neutral production system in Brazil. That system used rows of fast growing trees inside the pasture.
Friend or dinner? Both?
I miss almost completely the following aspects:
1) Human health: red meat was demonized by the WHO, ranked as promoting cancer based on epidemiologic studies. This is only good to find correlations, and no proof at all for a theory. Meat and eggs are the best source of nutrients. Vegetarians, but certainly vegans often will miss essential vitamins and minerals (amino acids, zinc, iodine, iron, Vit D3 and K2 to mention a few so there's more to say than that you have to take your Vit B12). You really have to eat like your great grand parents did. Fake meat, like "Beyond Meat" is ultra processed, and not food. It will give energy, but not health. All these products are prepared with cheap, ultra processed "vegetable oils", study the ingredients list. They are only good to be profitable for "big food")
2) "Healthy plants" often are from monocultures, and prone to insects, fungi and weeds, so amazing amounts of organisms are killed by fungicides, pesticides, herbicides. A nice example is round-up, but the chemical industry is not limited to that.
3) The monoculture fields have to be ploughed every year, disturbing natural life. Minerals are not from the manure from animals, but often a mixture of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium.
These days your plant food contains some 30% less of essential minerals than 50 years ago.
4) Air pollution. Yes, live stock produces methane and nitrous pollutants. Compare the amount with pollution produced by us people, industry and traffic on air, sea and land...
Ok, I am moving away from the idea that vegetables and fruit are very healthy. I prefer grass fed meat.
Just trying to offer a little constructive feedback - I think y'all do great work overall with your videos, and this had a great first half to it. You did piecemeal out the problems with land use, emissions, water, etc with grain feedlots vs grass-fed, even going into the problems with animal farming and land use and that's definitely worth pointing out.
The part after though was a little bit of a headscratcher. Rotational grazing is a pretty controversial topic that's only marginally better than the other methods. Its also not super clear just how bad the methane and nitrous oxide emissions are from the video either. Mentioning that's 80x and 300x worse than carbon emissions respectively (and saying how much of it actually gets emitted) I think would go a long way to motivate people to research more into the topic, and maybe even go vegan.
That said, it was interesting! Honestly, I'd love to see a video on plant-based beef/meat as a follow up to it. Have a good day, and much love!
Hi Chara, thank you for your comment. We did an exploratory video on plant-based meet alternatives! 🙌🍔 You can watch it here 🎞: ua-cam.com/video/6TvNjOrC9lM/v-deo.html. Hope you will find it interesting.
@@DWPlanetA Oh thank you! That's a great video. My mistake, then - I think you've done a great job covering the topic already and this is just an extension of that.
@@DemPilafian Im really not sure who this comment is targeted towards. If its targeted towards me, I already corrected myself in a previous reply and said this is a good extension of their other work on plant-based meat (though admittedly they could do a better job of mentioning stuff like that).
If its targeted towards Planet A, they have *absolutely no love* towards fossil fuels, so I don't think that's really fair. They shouldnt have to make 100% of their content about fossil fuels. That and it's like a 12 minute video and they have a ton of vids like that already, like really - where were they going to put it in the runtime? Agriculture accounts for 21% of climate change, so it's good to look into this stuff.
Overall, good video. I think the answer is indeed to just eat less meat because it’s the only real choice we can make starting today. I don’t think you’ll ever convince McDonald’s or large beef producers, and manufactures to cut their profits, without massive protest which will result in more corrupt funding, or politicians to not do anything about the problems!
Of course we can, and a lot of farmers are not only doing it already, a lot of farmers have been doing it for millennia, just not the "beef industry". There's nothing inherently destructive about raising cattle for beef; to the contrary, ruminant animals turn plants that grow without irrigation and which humans cannot digest into food, and in so doing, improve the soil and the environment, when these practices are conducted in balance with local ecosystems. The problem is mostly the scale at which industrialized farming takes place, but that is not a problem exclusive to animal-sourced foods. People in wealthy nations simply eat too much food and waste too much food. We need to eat less food, waste less food, and this applies especially to meat production and consumption.
The problem is your style of farming. Imagine someone owning 2000 cattle in a ranch or inclosed space? Obviously the land and environmental will not cope with the pressure. Im from Botswana and we do communal farming which means livestock roam freely eating vegetation available in the area, which means that they also contribute to land recovery by spreading seeds and manure, so the environment isn't actually affected severely like in a ranch or inclosed space where there is dangerous accumulation of manure and animals eat one kind of vegetation. Our livestock already know which plant to eat to heal certain illnesses or discomfort like constipation or indigestion and they know places in the wild where they can lick minerals if they feel they are lacking something . Unfortunately with the new farming style the intention is to make an animal grow fast and fat.
In the capitalist system, where there is the concept of property, they do not apply what your say. What's we needs to be is to do what wild animals do like American bison or Africa Antilopes, migrate! Rotational grazing better than normal, but not enough. Many people engage in animal husbandry are already doing rotational grazing all around world. If it is really desired to use the pastures efficiently, animals must be migrated. For thousands of years, peoples such as Turkic, Hunnic and Mongolic, who lived a nomadic life, grazed their animals in this way. In the past, Turks migrated their animals from lands where more grass could grow in summer to more temperate regions in winter. The reason why the ancient people who control huge geography in Central Asia despite the small population is that millions of people together with their tents and animals and they migrated a distance from Spain to Estonia every year. They can do this by making short-distance migration from high places to low places every 4 months in places like Anatolia, where all four seasons are experienced in one place. In rotational grazing, if animals are grazed in areas with similar climates in a hot time when the grass will not be green enough, animals have to expend more energy to digest, consume more grass and they eat glass when grass in growing period not eating period. The meat of the migrated animals is of the highest quality. It is impossible to apply this in every country in Europe because mostly there is only one season in the same period all over the country, but US pass livestock laws among themselves and this is applicable if it is determined in which season the animals will graze on which states pastures. Animals that are happy and healthy, less harmful to the environment, and need less land to graze can be raised with this method, in the wild these animals already live this lifestyle. Also there is no need for a huge investment to implement it, all that needs to be done is to make these laws in central govermend and to determine the regions where the farmers graze animals in what seasons. In Mongolia, you can consume the world's highest quality lamb meat for extremely cheap. Meat is so cheap that people consume meat even for breakfast because grain products such more expensive than meat. With the right planning, they can produce the cheapest and same time highest quality meat in the world in the USA, only by planning and opening the land for grazing to farmers. But if they do, it's likely that the incomes of factory animal produsers and people like Bill Gates working on synthetic meat will make low income, so I don't think it will ever happen. In some African countries, this may be applicable, but here there are nothing but stupid solutions such as lab created synthetic meat. 🤦♂
This is one of the better videos I’ve seen doing this cross comparison but it still didn’t consider all the qualities I consider key to regenerative agriculture. That grass fed operation the video showed didn’t do half the environmental aspects I’m used to seeing on regenerative homesteads like landscaping to conserve water and sylvopasture, food forests, multiple species grazing intermittently, or even just rotating grazing pasture to crop field.
I grew up on meat and still like the taste of it, but I stopped eating beef many years ago because its production is destructive and unsustainable. There are other food alternatives which I enjoy very much and I'd rather eat healthier and more conscious without missing out on enjoyment.
I think going vegan is still the best thing to do for the environment. Depending on circumstances it may not be the easiest thing to do, but if you can, I think you should go vegan.
Finally someone with a normal opinion
I recommend trying Ikea's new meatless "meatballs" I as a regular meateater cannot tell them apart from the ikea normal meatballs. It gives me hope we can find ways to use meat in some food involving minced meat
Meat alternatives can taste really similar! One of our reporters did a whole video on blind taste testing vegan "meats".
Here's a link if you're interested 🙃: ua-cam.com/video/6TvNjOrC9lM/v-deo.html
@@DWPlanetA now if only it can be cheaper and tastier than real meat. I know plenty of people who eat meat 7 days a week, 2 to 3 times a day.
Better hope it also satisfies hunger as well as normal meat even when you have been a few days with only eating vegan food. I was almost constantly hungry despite eating all day when I tried a vegan diet. But I guess just getting the meat flavor could help many people who dont have those same problems to eat more plant based
Before man became involved, there were huge herds of large herbivores grazing grasslands so nature clearly feels these animals have a place. Cutting consumption is definitely key, at most I consume 200g per week of red meat which also includes lamb/sheep, venison, etc. So even if it became more expensive most people in the western world could afford the small amounts they should be consuming.
My husband and I have been vegetarian for 50 years. But we do drink milk and eat cheese. I've seen on Flexitarian Times youtubes that some people are fermenting real cow's milk in tanks using things like beets. It uses a lot less water, no methane, no antibiotics, etc. I'm waiting for this to be available and not expensive. I'll switch to it in a heartbeat. I would be vegan but the vegan cheese has no protein.
As a side note: I used to have a lot of gas until I started taking probiotics. I wonder if they gave cows probiotics if it would reduce their belching and farting.
There is a vegan camembert named "happy Cashew" that has 14 gramms of protein in 100 gramms. Problem solved, you can go vegan ☺️
I'm waiting for fermented cheddar and mozzarella. I know one company is working on the mozzarella. I've had Brave Robot Ice cream made from fermented milk. It has too much sugar, but it did taste good.
Vegan cheese has its issues but protein isn't one of them and you can get your protein from so many other plants. It's quite easy to get protein but being vegetarian for 50 years that's for sure an achievement in itself.
Hi Catalina, thank you for your comment! We made a video on dairy cheese 🧀 and its vegan alternatives: ua-cam.com/video/_u_sLantkq4/v-deo.html. Environmentally speaking, vegan alternatives are always better and at the moment, oat alternatives seem to be the most sustainable option. 🧀
@@DWPlanetA Vegans are people who engage in self-harm trough malnutrition.
The feedlot cows grow faster and thus emit less methane during their shorter life. Their shorter lives also means their beef costs less. But the cheaper cost means it will sell more than grass fed beef so the inrease in sales may outweigh their shorter lives and they could emit as much or more methane than grass fed cows. The higher price of grass fed cows may be their biggest advantage because it reduces beef consumption.
Also important that grass feed cows probably have a way better quality of life
mass production beef, cow vomit after chewing and swallowing for a second time, releasing gases burp, etc, a grass-fed is understandable, but grain? all those cows may suffer constipation
Methane from cows is miniscule compared to what leaks from transportation of Natural gas and dilapidated oil wells. Focus on the right problems.
This. Transportation as in movement of people and goods alone is responsible around 20-30% of the pollution around the world. Food production is around 3%.
USA is worse with 66% of its pollution came from transportation.
@@rzpogi Not to mention Germany shutting down nuclear power plants in favor of more polluting natural gas and coal powered ones. Then these journalist are asking Brazil and Columbia should have better grazing practices. Hypocrisy at it's finest.
@@rzpogi Do you have a source for that? According to the EPA 36% of all Methane emissions are from livestock in the US. Across the globe, livestock account for about 14% of all GHG emissions. By comparison, the airline industry is responsible for only 2.4% of total GHG emissions in the world. I'll post links in my next comment, I don't want this deleted.
Indeed,
Ever since I started looking into the IPCC reports, I can confirm the 6th chapter (by preference from the 2021 version or any after this one) concerning the charts per "short lived climate forcers", clearly shows that the fossil fuel production and distribution accounts from something around 40% of all Methane emissions and agriculture around 30% + waste management around 20%.
Regardless how the IPCC treats about the carbon cycle and their charts about how potently different are natural CH4 and fossil CH4. I'm surprised DW didn't speak about the carbon cycle for CH4 and he 10years ish life span bc those in defense of meat eating & co commonly bring this up.
The production of Ammonia was omitted in this video, currently I'm seeing in these charts it accounts for 75% in agriculture, I think it's the second most produced molecule on the planet and we need oil to make it.
I won't try to imagine how much power it requires to make NH3 from electrolysis divided from other molecules thanks to membranes, because I have no idea how it's done and maybe the research is at it's beginnings...So industrial food isn't green after all since haber bosch became a thing.
The seaweed that was briefly shown over here is Asparagopsis, it's from autralia, dunno much about it either.
Anyways, watch out for oil.
@@thijmstickman8349 Even though NOx are heavily potent than C02. Meanwhile there is still a debate between the use for GWP100 and GWP20 for plenty of reasons like gas lifespan for instance.
Short answer, yes. Eventually, better standards, efficiency and alternatives will exist.
But for the most part, we should just eat as much as we need, train ourselves to finish our food and not buy food in excess. That's a solution, if you don't want a significant lifestyle change like going vegan or vegetarian or buying ethical food products.
That's a small contribution, not a solution. Sorry, it just isn't.
@@mayatara1980 its a solution. Absolutely. We waste a lot of food every day and all that adds up, especially in developed countries.
There was also the discovery of how Brominata works with the cow's digestive system to reduce methane production.
It's a feed additive derived from Red seaweed and a study done at a Dairy farm in California saw ranges from 52 to 92 percent reduction in methane production from the cows when Brominata was added to their feed. Now the problem is scaling up production to meet the demand of Dairy farms all over the world.
*Now the problem is weaning adults off of breast milk
I believe they done already a shorter video like this on "Algea". It was mentioned in this video.
But the cows will still eat seven pounds of grain (plus some seaweed) to produce one pound of beef. We won't be able to feed 10 billion people if so much of the grain is going to cows. And the cows use lots of water. Down with cows.
@@HaldaneSmith The Cows were fine until humans decided to drink their breast milk and eat their corpses.
Hi Kevin, indeed we did! :) When macroalgae called asparagopsis taxiformis is added to animal feed is can help to reduce the methane emissions by up to 82%! 🎉Watch "Why the world needs more algae, not less" here: ua-cam.com/video/bcyIbq3NhI0/v-deo.html.
"Sustainable beef" is a lot like "clean coal", isn't it? So my question to the creators of this video is would you make a similar, "balanced" video for clean coal? Probably not right? I think you gotta be more realistic with your viewers, even if the reality is uncomfortable.
And the reality is that the most efficient beef burger on the planet will still be many times more destructive than an average plant based burger, at least from a land use perspective. And when there are some people calling for global population reduction, maybe you should remind them that there is plenty of more space on the planet for vegetarians.
Further, hasn't that rotational grazing tedtalk been debunked by the scientific community? Cmon now.
Hi there, thank you for your comment. 🍔 Have you already seen our video on vegan meat? You can watch it here: "ua-cam.com/video/6TvNjOrC9lM/v-deo.html". Hope you find it interesting. 🌱
Thanks for the reply. I did see that video. The messaging in your videos is just too subtle for my taste, especially when the literature is so clear that trends for beef consumption dont math with nature preservation. They are mutually exclusive.
As a scientist I respect where your journalism lands on the spectrum of knowledge, and that you're just trying to introduce these topics to the masses. I know the science favours one side of the debate, but it's not really presented that way in your videos.
If you're taking suggestions, do a video on beef and dairy subsidies and show what the true $ cost of a burger actually is. If plant based burgers were subsidized to the same extent, they'd practically be free. Maybe ask the question your audience about how true costs would influence their decisions for meat.
@@qwueicjas What's we needs to be is to do what American bisons to do, migrate animals. Rotational grazing better than normal, but not enough. Many people engage in animal husbandry are already doing rotational grazing all around world. If it is really desired to use the pastures efficiently, animals must be migrated. For thousands of years, peoples such as Turkic, Hunnic and Mongolic, who lived a nomadic life, grazed their animals in this way. In the past, Turks migrated their animals from lands where more grass could grow in summer to more temperate regions in winter. The reason why the ancient people who control huge geography in Central Asia despite the small population is that millions of people together with their tents and animals and they migrated a distance from Spain to Estonia every year. They can do this by making short-distance migration from high places to low places every 4 months in places like Anatolia, where all four seasons are experienced in one place. In rotational grazing, if animals are grazed in areas with similar climates in a hot time when the grass will not be green enough, animals have to expend more energy to digest, consume more grass and they eat glass when grass in growing period not eating period. The meat of the migrated animals is of the highest quality. It is impossible to apply this in every country in Europe because mostly there is only one season in the same period all over the country, but US pass livestock laws among themselves and this is applicable if it is determined in which season the animals will graze on which states pastures. Animals that are happy and healthy, less harmful to the environment, and need less land to graze can be raised with this method, in the wild these animals already live this lifestyle. Also there is no need for a huge investment to implement it, all that needs to be done is to make these laws in central govermend and to determine the regions where the farmers graze animals in what seasons. In Mongolia, you can consume the world's highest quality lamb meat for extremely cheap. Meat is so cheap that people consume meat even for breakfast because grain products such more expensive than meat. With the right planning, they can produce the cheapest and same time highest quality meat in the world in the USA, only by planning and opening the land for grazing to farmers. But if they do, it's likely that the incomes of factory animal produsers and people like Bill Gates working on synthetic meat will make low income, so I don't think it will ever happen.
Pro Tip: Find reporters who aren't inherently biased against eating meat when you report on eating meat.
I stopped eating Beef and Pork... and don't miss it. 🥩🍖👎
That's good for you. Some of us will stick to it though
If history is relevant then ruminants are integral to a balanced ecology. Taste is immaterial, nutrition is paramount. The feeds that livestock eat are essential to healthy landscapes and are usually considered human inedible. We people have a long and mostly honorable symbiosis with livestock.Probably with good reason.
The focus should not be on "better beef", but on better food. The answer is crops. Not only for the environment, but because this environmental movement is critically failing hundreds of billions of sentient, non-human animals per year.
Crops are food. Cows should not be food.
Hi Kevin, you could also be keen in watching our video on permaculture. There are some elements that industrial agriculture too could apply from this method in response to soil degradation. 🌱 🎬 ua-cam.com/video/I0rQNYMwzfY/v-deo.html.
Very balanced video, well done!
Hi Mirko, we are glad you liked it! :)
I tried beyond beef for dinner tonight and nearly vomited.
Impossible Burger meat is pretty good though
I’ve stopped eating beef almost entirely . I’ll have it occasionally , but I encourage people to just stop eating BEEF . It’s hard to quit meat altogether unless u can get a balanced diet, but eliminating beef goes a looong way in reducing, water use, CO2 emissions and deforestation.
Yes. People really need to discuss the whole meat debate as if beef (which is also the absolutely worst meat for environment apparently) is the only meat that exists and not look at and show us how the other meat alternatives compare. Plant based food is maybe still better for the environment all together (but I think that benefit realistically fades a lot when you end up eating way more to compensate for food not being satisfying enough and nutrients not absorbable enough. People got it wrong because they only look at a plain number of calories), but not everyone thrives on it physically even when doing it "the right way", and some again could not do a balanced enough vegan diet due to access and economy.
I felt terrible on a plant based diet, that included mostly starches, some seeds, legumes, fruits and vegetables, and a little bit of fortified soy milk and vegan "meat". I ate at least 10 times the volume in a day I would usually do because the food did just not satisfy the hunger.
I suspect the thing with only comparing the one "worst" meat with vegan food all together is purposefully skewing the result.
Okay, how come you never ever talk about the important use of dung beetles.
Dung beetles have always been used by farmers for hundreds if not thousands of years to improve the quality of soil. Not to mention that they also sequester methane emissions as well
That is a very interesting topic, but to me animals will always be friend not food! 🌱🌱 I also hated how that farmer talked about his cows, as if meat was a plant that can be grown 'slowly' and is not a living, breathing, sentient animal!
Youre delusional if you think growing crops doesnt kill animals
@@gbp3616 and how many more animals die for crops that are fed to farmed animals, who are killed eventually too? So if you're worried about crop deaths, you should really stop eating corpses!
@@mel0001 they displace animals from their habitat to build the farm, then they spray the crops to kill insects and rodents, then when the combine comes through it kills more animals. By the way the proper way for farm animals to eat is free range, so your initial arguement is redundant.
Wake up and stop falling for the elites plan to have you eating bugs and soy beans. Seed oils mixed with these fake meat products are terrible for you. I know plenty of people who have had "balanced" vegan diets and they are still malnourished in some regard.
Also plants are living and breathing too. Its just your simple perception that leads you to believe youre not killing something. Things need to die for us to continue living.. just like the rest of the circle of life
Yes and also this "I am producing meat" bullshit 🙄 is the farmer birthing all of those cows himself? 😂🤦🏼♀️ So arrogant and dumb
same here! animals are my friends & I don‘t hurt them, whether it is eating them or stealing from them…
As an omnivore, I will not compromise on eating meat. I don't like how some (but not all) vegan individuals push to stop meat production. However, I am for making meat production more sustainable and humane. I think if some emissions are unavoidable, this is where other sections of the economy need to balance this out with much lower emissions. We all have to eat and for most meat is necessary, cultural, and not up for compromise.
"I don't like how some (but not all) vegan individuals push to stop meat production." But wether you like it or not, it´s the sensible thing to do. I´m sorry, but that´s just how it is. Apart from some areas, which are only suitable for grazing and in which meat is thus the only food source available, stopping meat production, especially industrial one, is the sensible thing to do.
"We all have to eat and for most meat is necessary." No it isn´t. It´s not neccessary for ANYONE to eat meat. Most people are not willing to give up meat, but it is not neccessary for anyone to eat it.
"I think if some emissions are unavoidable, this is where other sections of the economy need to balance this out with much lower emissions." Well, there is no area, where CO² emissions are more easily avoidable than in the agricultural area. Many people absolutely rely on their car, many countries absolutely rely on coal energy, but as I said, nobody needs to eat meat. We could all just stop tomorrow
Thank you for replying to me! That is really cool someone read what I had to say. As a huge supporter of the environmental movement, I will politely disagree with you on grazing and meat eating. I agree that industrial feed lots have many negative aspects, but pasture grazing can be done at scale and in environmental-friendly ways. Forcing a vegan diet on people is not the correct path, and this is not sensible. There are many benefits to eating more plants and we all should. But I simply do not agree forcing veganism on people, either overtly or covertly.
@@d.boogie3691 "but pasture grazing can be done at scale and in environmental-friendly ways." No it can´t, and no offense to you, but all the people I´ve seen this claim so far, have usually been frauds or ignorant ideologues. Pasture grazing should certainly still exist, but just with pasture grazing we can´t satisfy the current demand for meat, not even closely, we´d still need to eat way, way less meat. And pasture grazing is still not as climate friendly as just eating no meat at all, so we still should try to eat as little as possible. Which in the case of most westerners is none at all.
"Forcing a vegan diet on people is not the correct path, and this is not sensible." Well, mother nature itself will sooner or later force a vegan diet on most people, either that or we will have climate disaster and a bunch of deaths. Besides, we force certain diets onto people all the time, simply by putting a certain price tag on foods. I for example can´t afford to buy asparagus, good whiskey or certain mushrooms, they´re just too expensive. I would if I could, cause that stuff´s freaking delicious, and I could, if we as a society would decide to produce more of that stuff, it is easy to produce. But rarer and thus more expensive asparagus, mushrooms or whiskey is better for business, so bad luck for me. Just producing way less meat and putting a much higher price tag on it, wouldn´t be any different. We could lower the price for other food instead.
And well, sometimes you just have to force people to do or not to do certain things, that´s just how it is. From 2035 onward, only electric cars will be newly permitted in the EU, people then will be forced to buy electric cars. In France, short-distance fligths are banned and people are forced to use train instead, other countries might have similar laws soon. In Germany, only certain types of heating units will be newly permitted, if your current unit reaches a certain age, or breaks, and has to be replaced, you are forced to buy and install a new, different one. We are already forcing people to do a bunch of stuff in the name of fighting climate change, and it´s still not enough. Force is everywhere, the state itself only exists to force people to follow certain rules. And as long as these rules exist for a good purpose and as long as they are within a sensible frame, I have absolutely no problem with that, so I don´t see, what would be so terrible about forcing a certain diet onto people. Living without meat is easy, I don´t see why this should be such a big deal. The least thing we should do, is make meat so expensive, that it becomes something special again, something we only eat once a week, like it was just a few decades ago. Stuffing 2Kg of animal carcasses per week into one´s face just isn´t feasible anymore.
Have to divide farmland. Some farmland we can grow vegetables humans can eat. On a lot of farmland we can't grow vegetables human eat. All farmland used to feeed cattle can't be used to feed humans. If you want to sustain the global population and not starve people we sort of have to eat some meat. I'm in Sweden a lot of our farmable land etiher the soil is to bad or the weather is too bad to grow anything humans can eat.
What's we needs to be is to do what American bisons to do, migrate animals. Rotational grazing better than normal, but not enough. Many people engage in animal husbandry are already doing rotational grazing all around world. If it is really desired to use the pastures efficiently, animals must be migrated. For thousands of years, peoples such as Turkic, Hunnic and Mongolic, who lived a nomadic life, grazed their animals in this way. In the past, Turks migrated their animals from lands where more grass could grow in summer to more temperate regions in winter. The reason why the ancient people who control huge geography in Central Asia despite the small population is that millions of people together with their tents and animals and they migrated a distance from Spain to Estonia every year. They can do this by making short-distance migration from high places to low places every 4 months in places like Anatolia, where all four seasons are experienced in one place. In rotational grazing, if animals are grazed in areas with similar climates in a hot time when the grass will not be green enough, animals have to expend more energy to digest, consume more grass and they eat glass when grass in growing period not eating period. The meat of the migrated animals is of the highest quality. It is impossible to apply this in every country in Europe because mostly there is only one season in the same period all over the country, but US pass livestock laws among themselves and this is applicable if it is determined in which season the animals will graze on which states pastures. Animals that are happy and healthy, less harmful to the environment, and need less land to graze can be raised with this method, in the wild these animals already live this lifestyle. Also there is no need for a huge investment to implement it, all that needs to be done is to make these laws in central govermend and to determine the regions where the farmers graze animals in what seasons. In Mongolia, you can consume the world's highest quality lamb meat for extremely cheap. Meat is so cheap that people consume meat even for breakfast because grain products such more expensive than meat. With the right planning, they can produce the cheapest and same time highest quality meat in the world in the USA, only by planning and opening the land for grazing to farmers. But if they do, it's likely that the incomes of factory animal produsers and people like Bill Gates working on synthetic meat will make low income, so I don't think it will ever happen.
If there is a way to collect the methane and use it as fuel it would be great.
There is! Check out anaerobic digestion.
Hi, indeed Philip! 🌱 Although unfortunately, biogas can be quite problematic. Watch our video on biomass, touching upon anaerobic digestion and biogas: ua-cam.com/video/XXu15NlOuGo/v-deo.html.
Definitely FRIEND !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NO dinner.....
Yes! Freerange Grassfeed is the answer
I think meat can be produced sustainable but only in countries where it is sustainable todo we need to cut out global meat Production 20% so we can recover the rest of the 80% for nature
All of these examples are industrial agriculture
maybe make a video about lab-grown steak in a few months the us and Israel should have at least 1 company mass-producing them for a reasonable price so it's not far away from the day we can create one factory in the middle of south America or west Africa for developing nation
The USDA used to teach and subsidize regenerative ag with livestock into the 50s. Livestock isn't the problem. Lobbyists and corrupt, crony capitalism is the problem.
Livestock is the problem. Like 90% of it that has to be produced through factory farming. There is no way everybody can eat meat on a daily basis with grass-fed animals and la-la-land fantasies about regenerative farming. There is a place for it, but as a niche production, not something for the masses. Grow up.
@@mayatara1980 There is no place for it. "Grow up".
@@hlw1306 who are you talking to?
@@TheHonestPeanut What's we needs to be is to do what American bisons to do, migrate animals. Rotational grazing better than normal, but not enough. Many people engage in animal husbandry are already doing rotational grazing all around world. If it is really desired to use the pastures efficiently, animals must be migrated. For thousands of years, peoples such as Turkic, Hunnic and Mongolic, who lived a nomadic life, grazed their animals in this way. In the past, Turks migrated their animals from lands where more grass could grow in summer to more temperate regions in winter. The reason why the ancient people who control huge geography in Central Asia despite the small population is that millions of people together with their tents and animals and they migrated a distance from Spain to Estonia every year. They can do this by making short-distance migration from high places to low places every 4 months in places like Anatolia, where all four seasons are experienced in one place. In rotational grazing, if animals are grazed in areas with similar climates in a hot time when the grass will not be green enough, animals have to expend more energy to digest, consume more grass and they eat glass when grass in growing period not eating period. The meat of the migrated animals is of the highest quality. It is impossible to apply this in every country in Europe because mostly there is only one season in the same period all over the country, but US pass livestock laws among themselves and this is applicable if it is determined in which season the animals will graze on which states pastures. Animals that are happy and healthy, less harmful to the environment, and need less land to graze can be raised with this method, in the wild these animals already live this lifestyle. Also there is no need for a huge investment to implement it, all that needs to be done is to make these laws in central govermend and to determine the regions where the farmers graze animals in what seasons. In Mongolia, you can consume the world's highest quality lamb meat for extremely cheap. Meat is so cheap that people consume meat even for breakfast because grain products such more expensive than meat. With the right planning, they can produce the cheapest and same time highest quality meat in the world in the USA, only by planning and opening the land for grazing to farmers. But if they do, it's likely that the incomes of factory animal produsers and people like Bill Gates working on synthetic meat will make low income, so I don't think it will ever happen.
@@CruWiT what you just did is called a gish gallop so I'm not addressing everything you said. Meat is cheap in the west because it's so heavily subsided and the animals are treated like product instead of animals. Meat in Mongolia is cheap for westerners because of the rate of exchange. The best lamb meat is not cheap for nationals. As for soil health, rotational grazing mimics what bison did over thousands of years but it speeds it up. Instead of inches of healthy soil over thousands of years you can build feet in decades.
My cousin Ray Ray invented a contraption that attaches to the livestock's butthole and it captures the methane. He lives totally off-grid now.
We need clean air. We don't need to eat beef..
Okey so.. my local had this new brand i never really saw before.. it looked like any other processed meat but it was.. expensive? I thought it was odd but it really didnt look out of the ordinary exept for the packaging or the price. Its one of the days where you just see something that seems out of place and because i like being creative in the kitchen i chose to buy it. It was first when i came home i noticed it were a trial of "grown" meat. At first i were sceptical but then i thought that when we eat meat we literally eat cells.m this was the same thing and how right i was, it tasted no different but had a much smoother texture. Usually any meatlover would agree that you can feel the quality of the meat and how well the animal were raised based on its tenderness but in this case it really were just like you would expect a normal quality beef to feel like. Savory, juicy, but with much less bite to it. I was so impressed by it that i got curious of the topic so i guess im a labmeat fanatic now.
Its manufactured to taste like meat, just like any other food that is artificially flavoured to mimic something.
What do you think is better for you, something that is orange flavoured or an orange? The same is with artificial meat, one is a man made combination of chemicals to make it seem like something it isn't, the other is meat.
It is bad for you.
BBC's "Wartime Farm" series showed the big problems England had a couple/few years after they culled much of their food animals (in an effort to have more food for people) - lack of (natural) fertilizer! I'd love to see a study comparing the planetary impact of creating fertilizer in a lab/factory (energy, chemicals) , put in containers (plastics?), transported (fossil fuel, often long distances), to be used on cows (being fed antibiotics, etc) VS grass fed cows whose manure fertilizes nearby farms and their own food source (while providing greater nutrition). Vegan, vegetarian or meat eater - the land growing our produce requires fertilizers so isn't it better it come from a local "natural" source than chemicals from other countries and all that's entailed in making that happen? Yes, please show me that study. (PS less people on the planet also seems a good idea!)
Hi there, how about algae? You could be interested in watching our video on this natural fertilizer here 👉ua-cam.com/video/bcyIbq3NhI0/v-deo.html. Also, we explored the argument on overpopulation here 🎬 ua-cam.com/video/kUL-q7ptDW4/v-deo.html. Let us know what you make of these in the comments. 🌱
I really enjoyed this one.
Eating beef does not ruin the planet! Yes, producing beef causes emissions of co2 and ch4, but not to an amount that justifies the use of the term "ruin the planet".
In western countries, eating animal products (including beef) causes about 10-15% of annual co2-emissions. However, if we stop eating animal products, we would have to start eating more vegetables and fruits, which also cause co2-emissions. So in short, there are some climate-benefits to a began diet, but they are very limited.
Of course it doesn't ruin the planet. The idea behind that is to produce artificial meat.People already started to eat insects. Idiots.
And I think people greatly underestimate just how much more people would eat without meat, its not just a matter of plain number of calories. I probably ate at least 10 times more volume than usual when I tried a vegan diet due to food just not satisfying hunger properly. How much of the nutrients your body actually absorbs and needing to get close to enough of all of them is another issue
@@zakosist "I probably ate at least 10 times more volume than usual when I tried a vegan diet due to food just not satisfying hunger properly." Then you probably ate the wrong food.
"However, if we stop eating animal products, we would have to start eating more vegetables and fruits, which also cause co2-emissions." It causes way,way less emissions though. Insanely less.
And the thing is: Currently we produce a bunch of nutrient-dense food (soy, wheat, rape seeds, corn, etc.) and feed it to cows instead of humans. Which is of course a huge waste, only a small portion of the nutrients in a cows food are left in the steak at the end. If we would just stop eating cows, we could eat some of that food instead, we wouldn´t have to grow new food somewhere, overall, we would need to grow LESS food. A plant-based agriculture uses way less space and water and causes way less CO²-pollution. That are just the facts.
I have no problem, if we keep cows in areas only suitable for grazing. You can´t grow vegetables in the Alps or the mongolian steppes, so keeping cows, goats or sheep there is the sensible thing to do, and it´s not that problematic for the environment. But the industrial production of meat is among the worst things humanity has ever invented and yes, industrial meat production does definetly ruin the planet, that´s not even an exaggeration. And humanity needs to eat less meat, you can´t satisfy a demand of 1,9 Kilogram of meat per week (average per capita demand in the US) wiht only pasture-raised animals
@@teutonicterror0365 People often compare the co2-footprint of 1 kg meat to the co2-footprint of 1 kg vegetables. This is not correct, because 1kg of meat contains a lot more nutrition than 1 kg of vegetables. So the difference in co2-footprint is a lot smaller than is often suggested.
Nevertheless, I allready stated a vegan diet would lead to a decrease of co2-emissions, probably 5-10%. That is not really gonna make a difference.....
I think you need to investigate precision fermentation. This process lets microbes produce the exact same nutrients that animals produce at a fraction of the cost to the planet. It could also produce better nutrients, still at a fraction of the cost. It's already here, and will eliminate the problems you describe.
Hi Jim, many thanks for you comment. We are actually planning on making a video on how to make meat out of microbes, so stay tuned! 🦠🦠🦠
No mention of lab-grown beef?
Rather disappointing that they never looked into lab-grown beef for this video
I expected it to be the topic when I saw the video.
Its not cruelty free.
@@yayayayya4731 if it isn't cruelty free then literally nothing is
@@limbodog yeah it isn't. They use some product made from the blood of newly born calfs. Seriously im not joking. I think real science has a video on it lol..
I definitely want my children to get everything to need to grow healthy, and beef is an easy source of iron and protein. That said, we definitely moderate our consumption and only do beef once a week, with chicken and fish being our main sources of protein.
I think when my kids are older, I wouldn't mind going to a mostly-vegetarian diet with fish, and only occasionally eat meat.
But, yes, I do think of animal welfare and environmental impact with what we eat. It's pretty much tied in to an environment into which my children (and children around the world) will need to grow up and inherit.
You also should want your kids to live on a livable plant, what good would their beef sustained health would do if the planet is in shambles
@@catalina5382 It won't be families' modest meat (and very little beef) consumption that will make a tangible difference. But yes, I agree that beef and its worldwide environmental implications need to be adressed, far beyond the consumer's choice.
You mean plant based meat, yeah possible! 👍
This video is bias toward plants..
I'm deleting..
I don't know if I missed it but I didn't hear this video talk about the methane cycle? Where in less than 15 years the methane produced by cattle turns back into carbon dioxide and therefore back into the crops and grass, cows don't magically introduce new carbon into the atmosphere and so are inherently carbon neutral by themselves, what's not carbon neutral is the fossil fuels burned to farm them ofc, a bit misleading to leave that out the video in my opinion..
Hi Patrick, thanks for your comment. 🌱 The methane cycle is an important natural process indeed, but the methane emissions from meat production are so significant that this process does not fix the issue unfortunately. Methane is warming the planet 84 times more than CO2 in a 20 year period. 😐
The thing is, at some point in the process, that methan is in the air and doing damage. That it´ll eventually turn back into CO² is well and good, but before it does this, it has already done damage. And in the last decades we have increased the number of cattle extremely, and thus the amount of methan currently in the atmosphere and currently doing damage to the climate has also been risen. If we would just kill and cattle tomorrow, then yes, much of the methan currently in the atmosphere would be gone in 12-15 years, but we constantly produce new cattle and thus constantly pump new methan in the air, which keeps doing it´s damage
After researching this topic, I've almost entirely stopped eating beef and milk, and very little cheese, and eat mostly vegitables, chicken and veggie milk. Looking forward to lab-produced meats as well.
Time for you to research Chicken farming as well by the sound of it
Lab produced meats are not cruelty free.
If we really look at how inefficient beef production is compared to alternatives we see regardless how much we can improve methane production returning the land used to forest and eating meat alternatives is going to win time and time again.
of course we can. permaculture depend a lot on what animals do for the ecosystem.
I'm not a beef lover, but neither a vegetarian too. Give me my poultry or fish anytime, though I also enjoy beef and veggies. But to this point about farming beef and its environmental impact, every opponent says that raising cattle is more harmful to the environment than if the farmers had switched to farming plants. I just learnt that one cow feeds about one thousand people! 1000!! Did all these environmentalists factor that one thousand mouths into consideration when calculating the climate costs of farming beef? And what would be the environmental impact of growing enough plants to feed a thousand people for every cow that the vegan diet is suppose to replace? Not championing for either side of the coin, but just putting it out there that before we jump on anything, we should really get the numbers and calculations correct. 1 cow feeds a thousand human adults. How many plants and acres of land do you need to feed that same one thousand human adults? Does that then have the same impact on the environment as raising that one cow?
Hey there! If the whole world would switch to a plant-based diet, global land usefor agriculture would decrease by 75%. This is mainly due to less land needed for grazing and growing crops.
"Did all these environmentalists factor that one thousand mouths into consideration when calculating the climate costs of farming beef?" YES. There are many studies about this. You can feed way more people while producing way less CO² with a mostly plant-based agriculture, that are just the facts.
"And what would be the environmental impact of growing enough plants to feed a thousand people for every cow that the vegan diet is suppose to replace?" The impact would be: Less space used for food production, less CO², less water needed. It would be great.
"but just putting it out there that before we jump on anything, we should really get the numbers and calculations correct." We already have the correct numbers. As I said, scientists have studied this shit for decades, and there are many studies out there proving, that vegan diet is superior in every aspect. Except maybe taste, gotta admit, there´s nothing (yet) that could replace the taste of a good omelette, but that´s honestly a small sacrifice.
Look: modern industrially farmed cows don´t eat much if even any grass anymore. They usually eat some protein super food, mostly a mixture of corn, soy, rape seed and similar shit. And they need a fuck ton of that power food, before they reach their desired weight. So you first need to pump tons and tons of food, food that we humans could eat, into a cow, and the cow needs to digests that food (a process during which a bunch of nutrients are lost) before it can be slaughtered and "feed a thousand people". The food that one cow consumes, before it is slauthered, could feed thousands of people, not just one thousand. And of course all this corn and soy and shit has to be grown somewhere. Do you really think the giant corn fields in the US or the soy fields in south america for which we deforrest the Amazon, do you really think the food there is for humans? No, we feed cows, chickens, pigs, etc. with that stuff.
There is no problem with holding cows in areas only suitable for grazing. We humans obviously can´t eat grass, and letting cows graze somewhere in the alps or whatever, is no big deal for the environment, in some areas of the world, grazing animals are the only foodsource available, mongolia or the sahel zone for example, areas with lots of grass land, but not much land suitable for agriculture. But currently, we use the majority of the land that IS suitable for agriculture for the production of high protein animal food, to satisfy the lust of the rich countries for more and more meat. Industrialised meat production is the biggest waste of land and ressources on this planet, and it would be so, so much better for every living thing on this planet, if we would eat and produce way, way less meat. Again, I have nothing against holding cows in areas only suitable for grazing. But this would mean, that beef would be a rarity again, something that we can only eat maybe once every two weeks. Like it should be and has been for most of humanities existence
Carbon dioxide gas is always measured in tonnes.
What cubic volume is a tonne of CO2?
The amount of gas in a given volume would depend on the pressure and temperature.
Hi Douglas, like Jordan mentioned, it is not a fixed value. The exact volume always depends on the conditions in which it is stored or measured. But some approximations can be made under standard temperature and pressure (STP). 🌞
buy meat from grass fed cattle which is the most used system in uk and europe with only a small amount of cereal used in final stage of fattening ,dont buy brazilian or feedlot fed beef and the carbon footprint will be low many beef farms in uk are carbon negative taking into account the woodland on the farm
It is absolutely incorrect that feedlot systems use land more efficiently, since most grass grazing land is land that cannot support other forms of agriculture, while land dedicated to growing grain or alfalfa for cattle feed can be used to grow other food.
0:46 why forgetting there are a whole bunch of other types of meat (and fish/shellfish) than cow? Why is it talked about like its "cow only"?
Well the only way to produce meet from cattle substantially is to feed them only and only with field where we can't produce crops for us... so it means all the intensive farm where they feed the cattle with soy, corn, barley and whatever they feed them, are gone, history... so it means yes we have to eat less meat... and one more little contratiction with this video is that to stop the starvation worldwide, we don't need to produce more we just need to share it and to stop to waste it...
rewild the land plant or let more trees grow don't over grace the land. we need to ban the intensive farming of animals and crops. Crops use a lot of chemicals to grow plants made from fossil fuels. I think we need to ban cheap meat and replace it with lab-grown meat.
You try to explain everything else problem too and blame people, but you do not even mention how much methane being released each year by oil industry. Very interesting, you can somehow all the time explain why the renewable bad, but you never mention why oil is bad. Your view very selective. Same with battery, you say battery needs cobalt, but you forget to mention the fact oil industry was the biggest cobalt consumer until 2019. Or you forget to mention the meaning of lithium passport, or for example LiPo battery has no cobalt at all which slowly pretty much all electric car use except German manufactures. This channel is just part of the disinformation motor. People want electric car, people want solar panel on their roof....
Hi Krisztián. Have you seen our video "Why Big Oil loves to talk about your carbon footprint" 🎬: ua-cam.com/video/vqZVCEnY-Us/v-deo.html. Here we discuss the dangers of shifting too much of the focus on environmental responsibility to private consumers rather than the bigger players. Let us know what you think in the comments. 🙏
@@DWPlanetA Yep, obviously you have :) no surprise here. You know what would be fair? Rather mention the responsibility of the oil industry in a single video, and mention the problem of renewable in countless videos, why you just don't turn it around. Make video every week about oil and the problems around it and just make a single video about the problem of battery? or alternatively you could discuss both side in each video but keep the balance of two party. Like oil makes the 90% the problem, EV 10%, than your video should represent this too. If you think there is no enough topic to talk about, than just some idea: War, corruption, diseases, 16 oil leaking worldwide just the last 3 years.
I think we need more Joel Salatin's and less Vegan "influencers" who have never grown any food for anyone ever. Before you say your theory about how to feed the world, learn to grow the food for yourself and your family at a minimum first.
Also I think that your question is too vague to be answerable and your metrics are far far too narrow but for a mere 12 min video you did ok. Not good or terrible
this was an awesome informative video. thank you!
when you add how bad it is for the animal regardless of the environment. it's a no brainer. go vegan.
So developing countries, where life expectancy is low, need to produce more meat for better health and a longer life but the developed countries, where life expectancy is high, should eat less meat...
"So developing countries, where life expectancy is low, need to produce more meat for better health and a longer life", No they don´t, who told you that?
@@teutonicterror0365 the video. Thou it is DW...
@@anthonybenton7725 Well, if they really said that, it´s bullshit. Nobody needs meat for a longer and healthier life.
Usually DWs stuff is kinda decent, especially when it´s about science and technology, but yeah, they have some big fuck-ups here and there.
I really like that you are trying to do a balanced video. I would like to recommend watching the documentary Milked. The issue with grass fed is that they will end up using fertilizer on the grass too also and that also has it's impact. At the scale we are now there is no way this is sustainable and we really need to cut not a bit, but a lot. Also there are a lot of controversies regarding regenerative grazing. You give it a bit more credit then it deserves.
Just since 83% of all farmland is already used for animal farming... the first thing we need is not more of it but less of it. It's the number 1 cause of deforestation.
This is of course not for people that have protein defiencies, but they are not the one that is getting fed by the meat we produce anyway.
the person who make this doesn't really care..
As usual, algaculture seems to be the answer
What about live ground meat? For the company back
Took me a few seconds to realize it's feedlots, not feediots. 😛(was subconsciously reading the subtitles)
industrialisation of agriculture makes beef so polutant and unhealthy for animals and people. Diversification and and diversity in the agriculture is the key. Animals are part of complex chains that are designed by nature, eating grass allows healthy meadows, pooping too. In the past the whole process was supervised by smaller or bigger farmers, spread nicely across the nation. By industrialisation of agriculture this whole chain of nature is broken at the profits of few corporations. That's whole story.
not even close to what cars do to the air.
Hey Tim. Actually, food production accounts for almost a third of all greenhouse gases, while the transport sector for around 14%. In addition, the beef industry produces a lot of methane, which warms the planet 80 times more than carbon dioxide over 20 years (🔗 www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data).
My favourite part of these videos? The blink and you'll miss it pun(s)
If you sincerely believe eating beef will ruin the planet, I dont think there's any hope for you on this planet regardless of what else you believe or do.
Meat, in general, is complex. If we started eating less meat, the prices would increase. There is a cost point at which meat becomes a commodity for the rich, rather than for all. I would love to see people eat less meat, buy local, and pay more. I bought a half-cow this year and I am still working through the cuts and ground beef. Big, commercial beef will continue to be a problem so long as a ever-growing demand exists.
There is a point where the cow/acre is not a large contributor to climate change. Not everyone who raises beef is looking for a profit or to maximize the number of head per an acre.
I certainly think that it would be awesome that people lower their meat intake because I have been seeing a lot of really overweight people, some can barely walk and I am sure they would get a lot healthier just eating less meat and less animals would have to be tortured, so is a win-win, but sadly I know that the problem for overweight comes from poor mental health so this is quite tricky
They are individuals, not food. Go vegan, and save our animal friends and the planet!
YES! Very good, balanced analysis!!! (Unlike the cheese episode!) Well done! :)
Why does everyone avoid the real issue, the roots cause.
It is plain and simple there are too many people on this earth
That should be a long term focus as a fast decrease in population will cause enormous economic damage. Many countries already see this happen and it is predicted that the global population will start to decrease in a few decades.
Hi, thank you for your input. We took a look on overpopulation and discussed whether it is actually a real threat to our planet. Please watch our video here: ua-cam.com/video/kUL-q7ptDW4/v-deo.html and let us know what you think in the comments. ☘
In 300 years I believe that industrial farming and our use of plastics in everything, will be two things which society will not understand and have trouble forgiving us for.
DW leans more on the green/environmental side. but you showed that amazing ted talk and that shows you interest in the full picture. great, loved that ted talk. I even use it on my recreational land
We need an international law for population control.more people means more polution and use of resources.
Good luck trying to implement such a law. You can travel to Ethiopia and go around distributing condoms to isolated mountain villages in an effort to lower birthrates if you want, but a law, especially an international one, won´t change shit
I only eat chicken, do same video on chicken please
Hi Daniel. 😊 Agriculture as a whole with its vast CO2 contribution takes its toll on the environment. You could take a look into our video on agroforestry as a response to conventional farming's issues here: ua-cam.com/video/cfvYL-Acyec/v-deo.html. 🌱
Nope. The real answer is- if we are actually serious about acting on climate change everyone who can needs to stop eating animal foods completely.
We are in a time of crisis. There’s no time to um and ah
I feel like the answer is reduce eating cow and start eating horse.
Why would that be the answer?
@@andrejakobsson5790 Horse meat is good for your health. Horse meat is one of the healthiest meats for human consumption. It also produce less methane and it grows faster than cows. It's better for the environment overall than cows.
Should we not start by eating your friends and family though? After all, what is good enough for the goose, is good enough for the gander.
I'm not an activist of any kind. I don't think I'm a crazy person. I still eat meat. But the argument that killing people is wrong but killing animals is okay just seems wrong to me.
"seems wrong to me" but you still do it, do you feel that you mentioning that it is wrong somehow justifies you partaking in it?
Because you might consider all life of all species to be equal. Most people don't believe that. If you had to choose to save either, an animal, or a human, who would you save?(you dont have to answer the question, it was just an example). Well, thats just what I think anyway. I ain't no philosopher
@@yayayayya4731 Like most people, If I had to choose to save either an animal or human, I would save the human. But imagine a news story involving a burning building where a heroic person could only save one of two people. When the reporter interviews him, he says, "I saw a white person and a black person, and I chose to save the white person because I'm white too." How would that go over? Or instead of race, substitute nationality -- American vs. Mexican. There is something unsavory about considering and ranking one over another -- one race vs. another race, one nationality vs. another nationality, and I would add, one species vs. another species.
You havent thought about it deeply enough. People really do have a higher level of sentience and more potential to accomplish something unique than most animals. We can have a true sense of purpose and goal in life. We are self aware, only very few other animals are. We fear for the future long before bad things actually happen, and also realise more what we miss out on, which would make humans suffer even more than livestock if put in the same situation. We understand life and death on a deeper level than animals. And it greatly endangers the whole society if you try to place humans on exactly the same level as other animals. But I still think animal welfare is highly important, and animals should not suffer their whole lives.
@@zakosist Your self aggrandising statement ironically proves the opposite of your intent. You lack wisdom and humility, your arrogant ignorance appears boundless.
Short answer no if you are against animals farming you don't understand how your microbes work let alone how nature and it's microbes works water ,grass , grain, animals and soil comes with microbes regenerative agriculture do use feedloting buy rotational grazing
"Can changing how we care for cattle make a difference? " It sure can, all we need to do is stop exploiting them. #obvious
Can we produce beef that doesn't ruin the planet?
Oil, Coal, Cement, and Metal Production 🤣🤣🤣🤣, we going to ruin this planet anyway even humans don't eat beef anymore.
No approach can counteract an ever increasing global population.
That is obviously our biggest problem.
That should be a long term focus as a fast decrease in population will cause enormous economic damage. Many countries already see this happen and it is predicted that the global population will start to decrease in a few decades.