• Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      Under literally any ethical system you choose.

      Forget harm to the animal for a moment.

      Breeding animals to slaughter is more water, land and time intensive than growing crops, and produces substantially fewer calories for even more land area. Breeding animals to slaughter also generates far more CO2 then crops, either from the animal directly or from transport and butchering processes.

      • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Under literally any ethical system you choose.

        deontological ethicists aren’t concerned with the consequences, only the action itself.

      • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Under literally any ethical system you choose.

        i don’t know of any divine command theory that says anything like that

      • LufyCZ@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        If it’s pure calories you’re after, might I suggest Uranium? It’s pretty cheap considering what you can theoretically get out of it.

        ^/s

      • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        letting a cow graze a field and killing it next year takes way less time than tilling and planting and fertilizing and watering and harvesting.

        • papertowels@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t most pastures also planted, fertilized, and watered? You’re also assuming infinite land here - I don’t know shit about farming, but the first google hit I got suggests that cows need about 1.8 acres of pasture per year.

          1 cow, consuming 1.8 acres of land, produces on the scale of 0.5 to 1.4 million calories, according to this estimate

          However farming produces up to 18 million calories per acre, so if you were growing potatoes you’d have 32 million calories. On the same land that produced up to 1.4 million calories via grazing cow.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            You’re also assuming infinite land here

            no, i’m not. i was comparing the work done to plant a field of potatoes against raising an equivalent amount of cattle. i’m making no sweeping policy proposals.

            • papertowels@lemmy.one
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              1 year ago

              Great, in a vacuum, and assuming efficiency of land does not matter, you are correct in saying it takes less work to produce less calories.

              • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 year ago

                not just in a vaccuum but literally any time you have the option to plant a field or put a cow in it, it will always be less work to put a cow in it.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            However farming produces up to 18 million calories per acre, so if you were growing potatoes you’d have 32 million calories. On the same land that produced up to 1.4 million calories via grazing cow.

            so? the work of lettin a cow eat what grows is still less work than planting, tending, and harvesting.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            aren’t most pastures also planted, fertilized, and watered?

            no. they’re grasslands, and hilly terrain or rocky soil is a common feature of land designated as pastures because of the difficulty of working the land.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            https://www.northamptonseed.com/pastures

            if you ask a seed salesman whether you should buy his product for your pasture, he’ll try to sell it to you. but no, for the most part pasture management is very low intensity: repair fences and deter predators. these have direct analogues in raising crops though in warding off pests that would eat the crops.

      • DaBPunkt@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Much more land can be used for growing animals than for growing crops. And without animals there would be no dung so the only way to let crops grow would be chemical fertilizer (which is made of oil).

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          1 year ago

          You’re talking about a different issue which is food shortages.

          There is absolutely no shortage of arable land on earth, the problem is it isn’t evenly distributed but that’s an easy enough problem to solve if we actually wanted to solve it. The solution isn’t cattle.

          It’s obviously not the solution because if it was the solution there wouldn’t be world hunger, you can’t feed millions of people on cow.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          1 year ago

          Not relevant. The field that is used to grow food stock for animals could have been used to grow food stock for humans. Potatoes have a high calorie count and are not particularly difficult to grow.

          You’ll get far more calories out of the field of potatoes than a field of cows, unless you’re packing them in at the same density as the potato plants which I’m assuming you’re not.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            The field that is used to grow food stock for animals could have been used to grow food stock for humans.

            often, it is. as i said, most of the crops fed to animals are parts of plants people can’t or won’t eat.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            You’ll get far more calories out of the field of potatoes than a field of cows,

            if the land is unsuitable for crop production, you can often still raise cattle on it.

            • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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              1 year ago

              You still need to grow food to feed the cattle, if only for winter stock, so you have to find a fertile field to grow food stock, so that field could be used for growing crops and the field that’s unsuitable for anything else could just be, well not used. There’s absolutely no scenario where cattle are going to be more sustainable than crops.