This was such a thorough article. Really good reporting.
Not to mention the amount of water required for operations like this
Or the amount of rainforest that was burned down to produce soy to feed to those.
It’s just irresponsible to accept meat as a default food option.
Even if you don’t go vegan completely no-one should have it more than once a week. Slowly cutting back now makes it way less expensive and also easier once the regulations happen - and it also shows the politicians that they have people behind them for regulations like that, too
Abbott 85% of the global soy crop is pressed for oil for human use: livestock are mostly fed the industrial waste from that process
More than three-quarters (77%) of soy is used as feed for livestock.
https://ourworldindata.org/soy#more-than-three-quarters-of-global-soy-is-fed-to-animals
Soybean meal is not a byproduct of soybean production either. It’s the main source of revenue
When we look at the most common extraction method for soybean oil (using hexane solvents), soybean meal is still the driver of demand
However, soybean meal is the main driving force for soybean oil production due to its significant amount of productivity and revenues
[…]
soybean meal and hulls contribute to over 60% of total revenues, with meal taking the largest portion of over 59% of total revenue
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0926669017305010
This is even more true of other methods like expelling which is still somewhat commonly used
Moreover, soybean meal is the driving force for the whole process [expelling oil from soy] because it provides over 70% of the total revenue for soy processing by expelling
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/9/5/87
Even other extraction methods being explored in research as well don’t have soybean oil as the main driver of demand
From the results, soybean oil makes up around 24% of total revenues; revenue from insoluble fiber makes over 70%, due to the large amounts produced throughout the process. [of Enzyme-Assisted Aqueous Extraction]
it is the bulk of the weight of the bean, but that isn’t the reason it’s grown
Hexane extraction is the most common method used in the industry to produce soybean oil due to its high oil recovery and lower production cost. With the demands of soybean oil increasing either in food or industrial applications, expansion plans are considered by many companies to increase production capacity.
I can’t believe how dishonestly you are trying to cherrypick those papers
That’s much more cherrypicked quote ignoring the “however” part about how soybean meal being the main driver of production
It’s quite a thing to claim someone else is cherrypicing and ignore critical context. I don’t see much point in continuing this discussion if that’s how things are going to go
I pulled that straight out of the abstract
Soybean meal is not a byproduct of soybean production either. It’s the main source of revenue
these aren’t mutually exclusive
In the context of production, a by-product is the "output from a joint production process that is minor in quantity and/or net realizable value (NRV) when compared with the main products".[2]
soy oil punches way above it’s weight in value.
Brazil sells soy mostly to feed pigs and chickens in China
pigs and chickens are mostly fed soy cake: the industrial waste from making soybean oil
Going to copy my comment from above:
Soybean meal is not a byproduct of soybean production either. It’s the main source of revenue
When we look at the most common extraction method for soybean oil (using hexane solvents), soybean meal is still the driver of demand
However, soybean meal is the main driving force for soybean oil production due to its significant amount of productivity and revenues
[…]
soybean meal and hulls contribute to over 60% of total revenues, with meal taking the largest portion of over 59% of total revenue
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0926669017305010
This is even more true of other methods like expelling which is still somewhat commonly used
Moreover, soybean meal is the driving force for the whole process [expelling oil from soy] because it provides over 70% of the total revenue for soy processing by expelling
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/9/5/87
Even other extraction methods being explored in research as well don’t have soybean oil as the main driver of demand
From the results, soybean oil makes up around 24% of total revenues; revenue from insoluble fiber makes over 70%, due to the large amounts produced throughout the process. [of Enzyme-Assisted Aqueous Extraction]
Soybean meal is not a byproduct of soybean production either. It’s the main source of revenue
these aren’t mutually exclusive
it’s the bulk of the weight of the bean, but it isn’t the reason it’s grown
Hexane extraction is the most common method used in the industry to produce soybean oil due to its high oil recovery and lower production cost. With the demands of soybean oil increasing either in food or industrial applications, expansion plans are considered by many companies to increase production capacity.
I can’t believe how dishonestly you are trying to cherrypick those papers
hardly any soy goes to cattle at all
While technically true, more than ¾ of it goes to animal agriculture.
the owid article shows exactly what I said.
The cows are bad it seems, but it’s glossing over natural gas companies not maintaining their infrastructure of leaky pipes. They are both larger emission producers, and completely unnecessary and unjustifiable.
Edit: It’s hard to feel that the environmental debate has been hijacked. Even when an article lists 2 higher sources of methane production with corporate leakage in gas pipes, the focus is solely on beef. Is this industrial astroturfing, or vegans that have their own skin in the game so to speak and this isn’t about the environment. The environment is a complex topic that requires multifaceted solutions to solving different contributory factors, yet it’s been condensed down to this weird meat eating witch hunt.
I don’t agree with the statement cows are bad. I think that factory / industrial farming at this scale presents an unnatural concentration of conditions that allow methane levels to be checked and highlighted. Its like if you judged the emmisions of all cars based off of the redneck that just rolled coal through an intersection.
I think the methane issue, if it was framed correctly, would be used to boost the endorsement and possibly subsidization of small farms that raise beef in a more generally traditional way (pasture grazing) or in ways that are more in the vein of permacultue.
Yes, doing so will likely raise the cost of the meat you buy at the store. But beef on pasture, especially when teamed up with chickens and other livestock create a much more balanced system that doesn’t impact the ecology in such an acute manner.
I’m concerned that the argument being made about beef overlooks more significant sources of greenhouse gases that aren’t tied to our food supply. There is an underlying assumption that we can’t go back to farming on a small scale and spin down the general economy so that we could all live simpler and more ballanced lives.
The powers that be will never push for that. They need our behemoth economic output to help keep their thumb on the world through miltary, political and economic force. But, one can’t help but recognize that we’ve become a significantly unwell society. I don’t think this all boils down to old people simply being out of touch with themselves or that it wasn’t OK to acknologe mental illness. I think our collective illness is one born of the pressures we all face from the GDP graph always needing to go higher and higher.
I just look at it like this. Families used to get by on 50 acres with a few livestock and would run minimal power equipment to manage it all. Their localized impact to the atmosphere was significantly smaller than all of our modernized, centralized methods. I’m not saying we all need to be farmers. But I do think the past has some valuable points to reference from the standpoint of reducing our individual carbon footprints and thereby reducing the incentive for companies to make more stuff that we don’t really need if it wasn’t in support of our fast paced highly commercialized way of life.
Sorry for the long wandering rant. I’ll go back to yelling at the clouds.
Power tools are not the main source of emissions for raising cattle. Methane emissions happen in ruminents from digestion. Grazing-only production actually has overall higher methane emissions due to longer growing times and lower slaughter weight. Further, it does not scale well in the slightest. For instance, the US would need a 4x reduction in beef consumption using 100% of available land (if you want to avoid high deforestation pressure, you would need even more reduction)
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401
More broadly
If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives? The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.
[…]
Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy.
Grazing-only production actually has overall higher methane emissions due to longer growing times and lower slaughter weight.
citation needed
I gave one in my comment? There’s a quote with a source there
not for that claim
Not all greenhouse gas production is equal nor should it be treated equally. If we eliminate the personal automobile from being needed to commute to work, literally nothing else about society needs to change and we are at pre-ww2 emissions.
Yeah like take methane which is 20 times worse than carbon as a greenhouse gas, but we don’t talk about that because not enough people want to stop eating meat - which accounts for more emissions than all types of transport combined
We have to both tackle fossil fuels and meat production if we want to hit climate goals
To have any hope of meeting the central goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to 2°C or less, our carbon emissions must be reduced considerably, including those coming from agriculture. Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. Thus, major changes in how food is produced are needed if we want to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
(emphasis mine)
