Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
It's actually better for grasslands to have cows grazing in a sustainable manner(not overloading the land and stripping it bare.) The cows replace the rolls of bison on the plains, and their grazing is beneficial for a lot of reasons.
https://www.albertafarmexpress.ca/li...t-study-finds/ |
As this article notes, the big ecological problem is land-use changes. The connection it fails to mention is that much of this land change is also the result of the meat industry. The increasing demand for feed crops means that we increasingly destroy grasslands to plant feed crops to fuel feedlot operations, which are more efficient. It would be great if we simply raised beef almost strictly on sustainable grazing practices (although it would massively increase the cost and decrease availability), but this isn't the way that the industry actually works. Unfortunately, while it's mostly grassland and parkland habitats being destroyed here in Canada, internationally there are much more ecologically carbon-intensive habitats being destroyed for beef production.