usernamesAreTricky
@usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
- Comment on It's just loss. 1 week ago:
Not the person you are replying to, but you are severely underestimating the number of factory farming. They are the dominant method of production
Based on the EPA’s definition of a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (i.e factory farm) and USDA census data:
All fish raised in fish farms were considered to be factory-farmed. More than 98% of hens and pigs. For chickens and turkeys, the share was more than 99%. Cows were a bit more likely to be raised outside in fields, with greater space and freedom. Nonetheless, 75% were still fed in concentrated feeding operations for at least 45 days a year.
ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-f…
And even those that are not considered factory farmed don’t always look how one may think, for instance non-factory farmed cows still use plenty of grain feed
Currently, ‘grass-finished’ beef accounts for less than 1% of the current US supply
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/…/aad401
None of this is not limited to the US by any means. For instance in the UK:
There are more than 1,000 US-style mega-farms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, including some holding as many as a million animals
theguardian.com/…/uk-has-more-than-1000-livestock…
Factory farming is unfortunately what scales well. If we want less factory farming we need the industry itself to be smaller. That is no impossible goal. Germany, for instance, has seen its overall meat consumption fall over the last decade
In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
Cheesemaking uses even more dairy than it being in liquid form. Varies depending on what you’re looking at but it can be around a 10:1 ratio. Butter from dairy milk has an even worse conversion
Have to make up for the lost water when turning it into a solid and other stuff you strip from the milk and that’s going to be from even more dairy going into it
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
This graph is normalized per kg. Graphs look similarly per kcal as well
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
It’s enough to make it difficult to keep to 2C climate targets on its own. Its not something we should ignore - especially since much of it comes in methane emissions which means reduction in it can be felt quicker and reduce chance of hitting feedback loops
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.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
That’s also on top of other environmental issues that it contributes to besides just climate change. Land usage, water usage, waste runoff
Transitioning to plant-based diets (PBDs) has the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 76%, diet-related greenhouse gas emissions by 49%, eutrophication by 49%, and green and blue water use by 21% and 14%, respectively, whilst garnering substantial health co-benefits
www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html
And pesticide and fertilizer usage is lower
Thus, shifting from animal to plant sources of protein can substantially reduce fertilizer requirements, even with maximal use of animal manure
www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0921344922006528
The diet containing more animal products required an additional 10 252 litres of water, 9910 kJ of energy, 186 g of fertilizer and 6 g of pesticides per week in comparison to the diet containing less animal products
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
For agriculture at least, the differences are often quite categorical. The best cast production will not get you the same differences as reducing meat consumption
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html
It’s an even larger difference than eliminating all food waste (which we should also work to reduce)
we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
If we assume that’s the case, half of revenue is still not a byproduct, it’s a coproduct. The other half is still pretty relevant to its value and usage. If 50% of your revenue disappears from something, you’re going to be making a lot less of it
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
It’s worth noting that soybean meal is not a byproduct. 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
www.sciencedirect.com/…/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
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
Good news is that overall arable farmland usage goes down the less meat you eat. Don’t need to use all the same land, you have flexibility to move around production
we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
Yes, though that doesn’t mean it can’t be stopped. That it can be reduced in some countries is a sign we can make progress on it
Much of the global growth is occurring in developing countries right now who often view increased meat consumption as a symbol of wealth and status (in part due to seeing it highly consumed in the west). Changing expectations and consumption in the west can have a ripple effect outward
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
To an extent, yes it would likely do that. Though on the other hand running into the maximum capacity limitations would not look pretty. Even countries that have a just bit higher grass-fed production than others have a fair number of issues (and still use plenty of supplemental grain)
For instance, in New Zealand, they use a massive amount of synthetic fertilizer on grasslands to try to make it keep up for dairy production
The large footprint for milk in Canterbury indicates just how far the capacity of the environment has been overshot. To maintain that level of production and have healthy water would require either 12 times more rainfall in the region or a 12-fold reduction in cows.
[…]
The “grass-fed” marketing line overlooks the huge amounts of fossil-fuel-derived fertiliser used to make the extra grass that supports New Zealand’s very high animal stock rates.
theconversation.com/11-000-litres-of-water-to-mak…
Or in the UK and Ireland where grass-fed production leads to deforestation and they still need additional grain on top of it
Most of the UK and Ireland’s grass-fed cows and sheep are on land that might otherwise be temperate rainforest – arable crops tend to prefer drier conditions. However, even if there were no livestock grazing in the rainforest zone – and these areas were threatened by other crops instead – livestock would still pose an indirect threat due to their huge land footprint
[…]
Furthermore, most British grass-fed cows are still fed crops on top of their staple grass
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
We should push for large institutional change, but don’t ignore individual change either. Problem is how will you get said governments to act if people aren’t also stepping up and they expect backlash to it? The more people expect it to be cheap and highly consumed, the harder it will be for them to act. Moving people the opposite direction makes it easier. Movements that succeed usually have both individual and institutional change
Institutional change that is achievable at the current moment is smaller. There’s been some success with things like changing the defaults to be plant-based (which is good and we should continuing to push for that), but cutting subsides is going to be an uphill battle until a larger number of people change their consumption patterns
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
Beef production is falling in some countries. For instance in Germany
In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
Unfortunately grass-fed production is no solution. It both does not scale or help reduce emissions
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.
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 weeks ago:
It’s fundamentally inefficient. The claims of “green” meat production are greenwashing from the industry. The industry would love for you to believe there is a way that they could clean it up. It takes growing tons of crops just for most of that energy to be lost by the creatures moving around, digesting, etc.
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html
Nor is something like grass-fed production a solution when that has even higher emissions due to higher rates of methane production from cows. It also is even higher land demand
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.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
If the filibuster is removed, it is also possible to get through with 50+VP as tie breaker or 51. The filibuster being removed is not as unlikely as you may think since Republicans right now are getting closer and closer towards defacto removing the filibuster. There currently are narrow ways around the filibuster (reconsideration is one big one) that are supposed to have a bunch of limitations, but they are testing the waters in ignoring violations of those limitations. The senate parliamentarian is the one who makes rulings about if something violates their clauses, but their opinion can be ignored by a strict majority via the “nuclear option”
A month ago, Republicans used the nuclear option to ignore the senate parliamentarian ruling that the Congressional Review Act would not allow them to skip the filibuster to remove California’s EPA waivers (see here).
As I write this Republicans are currently trying to play another different a different trick about some of the stuff in the Big Beautiful Bill. Dems have been challenging a bunch of provisions and getting the parliamentarian to most of the time rule they are in violation of the Byrd rule. But they are also trying to challenge the whole bill as violating the Byrd rule’s limit that a bill passed via reconsecration cannot increase the deficit over a ten-year period. Republicans are playing an accounting trick to claim it doesn’t. They know the parliamentarian is unlikely to agree with them, so they are currently trying to prevent dems from even being able to ask the parliamentarian about it
- Comment on Gen Z and young millennials battling ‘negative wealth’ as debt burden grows 3 months ago:
Even if any did, they would be part of voters abroad (US citizens can vote by mail if living outside the country) who are an even bluer voting block. If memory serves me right, it’s on the order of like D+60 overall
- Comment on Gen Z and young millennials battling ‘negative wealth’ as debt burden grows 3 months ago:
The margins dipped, but they didn’t flip to voting for Trump overall
18-29 year-olds voted Harris+4 overall and Young women in particular voted Harris+18
Headlines are often misleading about changes within group voting patterns
- Comment on Why aren't there mass protests in the USA? 4 months ago:
Glad to hear my posts are going notice. Indeed, there are lot more than you might think. I’ll repost one of my long comments with details about protests here. Wrote this five days ago so mentally subtract 5 days from all the times
They are being suppressed in media coverage, but there are people protesting. Media coverage paints a false picture that no one in the US is fighting back
Here’s one from today [meaning five days ago] with 1000 people in Boise, Idaho
Here’s a super incomplete timeline with just a handful of the nationwide protests. I’m missing a lot, I’m just showing your the photos I had from recent memory
8 days ago there were national protest for science funding cuts. Here’s the main one in DC
11 days ago there were nationwide protests in all 50 US state capitols + DC + Many cities within those states. This was part of the 50501 movement
Portland, Oregon
Monroe, Wisconsin
San Fransisco, California
Albany, New York
Raleigh, North Carolina
Richmond, Virginia
Austin, Texas
Protests Outside Fox News in New York City
16 days ago there were large protest in the Iowa Statehouse
19 days ago, a protest in Cherry Hill, New Jersy outside Tesla Showroom as part of a nationwide movement protesting Telsas. There have been tons more than just this one and these happen basically every day
21 days ago, large protests in DC for Ukraine aid
And so on. There’s a lot more going on than just this
- Comment on FCC to get Republican majority and plans to “delete” as many rules as possible 4 months ago:
We can still fight back on the state level. States and local levels will lead the way for progress here
California got a state law to enforce net neutrality in 2018. This is a good part of what limited the damage of Trump overturning it the first time
- Comment on The right-to-repair movement is growing as wins stack up 4 months ago:
Local & state level is where a lot of the progress will live on in the near future. Call your local legislators & vote in every local election - they are way more frequent across the country than you may realize
- Comment on FCC chair says we’re too dependent on GPS and wants to explore ‘alternatives’ (read: multi billion contract with Musk) 4 months ago:
Or is he referring to GLONASS, the Russian version of GPS?
In any case, I guess it’s good the EU has the Galileo network specificaly to have an alternative to avoid depency on the US
Modern and newer phones will often use all three system (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS) + sometimes others at the same time since it improves accuracy
- Comment on All 50 States Have Now Introduced Right to Repair Legislation 4 months ago:
Don’t do Trump’s work for him by spreading apathy and dispair. He wants us complacent and to forget the power we have. He is far weaker than he seems so he has to project absolute power. Don’t give anything to him for free
- Comment on All 50 States Have Now Introduced Right to Repair Legislation 4 months ago:
Local and state officals can enforce laws on their own without federal involvement
- Comment on All 50 States Have Now Introduced Right to Repair Legislation 4 months ago:
The state and local is where most of the progress is going to happen in the next 4 years. They control a lot more than you think - even including running elections for federal office. Pay attention to all your local elections - they are going to matter a lot
- Comment on Elon Musk just offered to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion 5 months ago:
Still slows down some of their other goals. Attention and resources aren’t infinite. The more they wear themselves thin on things that don’t matter, the better
- Comment on YSK You can substitue blood for eggs in recipes 5 months ago:
Or instead there are also some good vegan eggs out there to give a try
If you want something that cooks and bakes like eggs there’s stuff you can by like Just Egg
For baking there’s a million things you can use that are pretty cheap. For instance, Aquafaba is the leftover water from cooking chickpeas or the water in the can if you buy it canned. Acts like egg whites and can be used as a binder for baking
- Solar Energy Surpassed Coal in the EU for the First Time in 2024: Report - EcoWatchwww.ecowatch.com ↗Submitted 5 months ago to energy@slrpnk.net | 0 comments
- Comment on Science Journalism 9 months ago:
In fairness sometimes small tiny differences like that do turn out to be significant. But measurement error usually wins out most of the time
