What good reasons are there for livestock production being sustainable?
Question by Haley: What good reasons are there for livestock production being sustainable?
I know many “sustainable agriculture” types who say that we should grow mostly plants, or grain, and greatly lessen livestock production. However, I would say that livestock is one of the most important segments of agriculture for feeding a population, in certain cases. Aren’t some types of land not good for growing crops, therefore having dairy cows or meat animals, chickens, what have you, better for the environment than trying to get produce to grow on land that isn’t the best for that type of production? I’m talking about raising animals using pastoral practices here. Do you agree? Or are there any other reason you can think of why raising animals could be GOOD for the environment, sustainable ag.
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3 Responses to What good reasons are there for livestock production being sustainable?
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Animals produce dung to make the land rich and make plants grow nice and healthy. In Switzerland, they manure everything and what do you know? everything is amazingly green… can’t have good plants without livestock
izzy
August 22, 2012 at 11:00 am
Always organic is better. Normally thats how it works — rock less fertile land become grazing and livestock raising regions and fertile soil become an agricultural reason. Organic means the animals are fed oraganic foods because its better for them and organic means no use of pesticides (which harm Earth) which makes it environmentally-friendly. By pastoral practices hopefully you mean no anti-biotics, growth hormones, genetically modified animals…..
Recycling Education
August 22, 2012 at 11:02 am
Firstly; ruminants like cows give out a lot of methane, a greenhouse gas.
Secondly; there isn’t enough pasture. Lots of meat is grown in feedlots, using cropped land to grow food for them. It takes something like 10-12kg of feed to make a kg of edible beef. For pork it’s about 8:1 and chicken 4:1. This can be very inefficient and huge portions of crops are given to animals (iirc in the US it’s 90% of soy, 80% of corn and 70% of grain):
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1997/08/970812003512.htm
This is a huge increase in demand. If everyone ate as much meat as Americans by 2050, we’d need 200% more grain than the world currently produces to feed all the animals. If they were vegan you’d need under 50% more for the extra 3bn people we’ll probably have.
That said, some meat is better than none. I still eat a little because you can grow it on grass, or feed it agricultural waste. Eg soy oil is very popular, and animals eat what’s left. I eat pasta, which only needs the semolina of wheat and the rest can be fed to animals.
But it seems we already eat more meat than can be produced in this way. More animals will need more crops that could be fed to people.
MTRstudent
August 22, 2012 at 11:33 am