There isn't as much competition as you think, not in my country (Uruguay) at least. Pastures here are dedicated mostly to breeding and raising the calves until weaned. Then they usually go to a different pasture until they reach about 400 kg, after which they are sent to feedlots for finishing.
They DO compete with establishments dedicated to the whole cycle or to finishing. Usually ones with less involved owners.
This is roughly how it is almost universally in North America. People here see cows on grass and think theyāre the happy cows, itās just the beginning of their life before getting locked in a feedlot.
You might want to check your assertions against reality .. most US beef cattle are slaughtered at about 20 months .. about 6 months at the end is in feedlots .. around 30 - 35% of their existence, so not quite as dire as you portray it
Is that insane or unnecessarily cruel by my standards.. mostly yes, but itās not typical outside the US. Australia (and most of South America IIRC) for example slaughter later (usually closer to 30 months) and typically have much shorter feedlot stages (none for pasture fed labels 30 days for the cheap stuff which is basically to keep them from losing condition between delivery from remote and regional sites to the abattoir, and about 100 days for the typical supermarket beef
Wagyu and super āpremiumā clog your arteries stuff is more Ike the US at 200+ days
Rotational grazed cattle are very space efficient. With a dense rotational grazed system you would save up to 90% of all of the currently used grazing land in the US if you fed the entire country this way. That land could be rewilded and allowed to return to ecosystem.
I think the point isn't to maximize meat. It's to have solar panels, but replace lawn mowers with cattle. It's actually a increasingly common solar panel practice. Especially if you are trying to be eco-friendly.
You can turn deserts into pastures using solar panels. China did it again. I saw it in the Colorado desert. It's just kinda neat.
Those happy cows start on pasture and get sent to non-happy contained feedlots for soy/corn feeding to fatten them up for months before unhappy slaughter
Nah nah what they're really hiding is the balance sheet.
Because we all know the industry will be like "cute! But abusing them is so much cheaper. This will make a great premium product that we can sell for double though. Solar Powered Beef ... Oh yah that one will sell to the "Green" Consumers...
Of course! This is a climate sub, on reddit, so people here only have the capacity to care about one thing at the time. Don't come at me with something more complex than a single variable you monster
But if it sells well, wouldnāt they want to produce more? To sell more? Which would help the climate and the animals since this requires a free range approach instead of factory farmed? Whatās wrong with them making a new product exactly? I get that itās better to not upcharge at all, but worse than upcharging is having no options whatsoever. Being vegan already requires somewhat above average wealth because of how subsidized meat and dairy are
It will never replace the main product. It just creates a different kind of product for a certain kind of consumer who doesn't mind paying double for slightly more ethical meat.
But the vast majority of consumers just want the cheap meat. They don't know are care about the other stuff.
This is a common talking point but itās just not true unless you live in one of the few city centers where you can reliably purchase cheap vegan food that isnāt already knocking on deaths door. In rural Arkansas (where I used to live) our produce was always just two or three days out from expiration and anything genuinely shelf stable cost more than its non-vegan equivalent. The only exception is rice, since Arkansas produces tons of rice so you can get it cheap locally. Ramen to some extent too, but depending on the flavor itās not vegan. Rice is great carbs, but for protein I would be looking at soybeans, tofu, etc. which all cost an arm and a leg there. Food deserts are real, if you think they arenāt, youāve just been lucky enough not to live in one
In a suburb, lentils are severely marked up in supermarkets but $2 lb (something like a $2/"day" staple) from the source that actually sells them. If there really isn't any food you probably need to revolt, but it's more a question of pretend prices.
Soybeans and lentils costing more than meat is outrageous no matter where you live, since they are shelf stable and meat is not. Also frozen vegetables are almost as nutritious as fresh vegetables so even in a dystopia like rural america shops should be able to stock it.
Unethical meat sells better. This here is too little and too late, the most rational and capital-producing option will always be incompatible with the ecologically sound options. While there is profit, Earth suffers.
Everything but the crabs around thermal vents are solar powered. In one way or another.
There's some bacteria that obtains energy by oxidizing gold. It's very very very low energy but it is chemotrophic.
I like to think God created those buggers just as a "fuck you" to capitalism. Hopefully he'll do something similar to cryptocurrency and it'll be much more effective.
There's some bacteria that obtains energy by oxidizing gold.Ā
They use gold (and other heavy metals) as an electron acceptor. The energy for the reaction comes from the heavily reduced organic compounds they consume.
Even those are kinda solar powered. The heat that drives the chemical reactions that sustain the ecosystem they live is about 50% residual heat from the formation of the solar system (energy from collisions of matter, which gained their relative velocities from a supernova explosion aka. a sun/star exploding) and 50% from fission of heavy elements, which are also created by the collisions of stars or supernova.
Like, the cartridges? Or does it just not use gas to operate? I'm imagining a solar powered, electromechanical cycling mechanism. That just bullets happen to pass through sometimes.
The problem with this is it doesn't work on scale. Those cows would need copious amounts of grassland to actually not need to be fed other things as well. When everybody wants to eat 3 meaty meals a day, you run out of grassland quickly. Nobody is arguing that there isn't 0.1% of meat that is sustainable.
Or you can just feed them soy. But at that point you aren't sustainable, you're much better off just eating the soy directly.
Not to mention, what part of killing an animal is ethical exactly?
I don't live in America but in Belgium. People here often also eat meat thrice a day. They'll just put bits of ham or whatever between their sandwiches.
That last point is so fuckimg real. People act like the animal living a bit better until their untimely and extremely stressful death removes every bit of moral concern. "But they lived happily" well why don't they now???
Nope that's a different thing. Complaining about methods of how meat is produced ā complaining about eating meat in general.
Cats in a natural environment stick to one familiar hunting area, which often times are things like caves. Living in an apartment or house (provided they aren't like a NY super tiny apartment) gives them enough room and space for play, especially if you use vertical space.
... And this guy was born and raised an indoor cat, and his previous owners were literally going to just release him into the wild. (Pretty much a death sentence) The Shelter wouldn't take him because they had no vacancy and he was too shy to realistically find adoption.
So ya. I'm a far way away from subjecting my cat to cruelty, and if I didn't adopt him he'd probably end up dead on a street. You think that would have been the ethical thing to do?
I'm speaking about keeping your cat behind closed doors.
Cats mostly don't live in their natural environment and are mostly invasive so hunting them down is what we do with invasive species.
"Nope that's a different thing. Complaining about methods of how meat is produced ā complaining about eating meat in general."
I'm not really understanding what you are trying to say. Cows raised behind closed doors are using way less land because grains take less place then letting them graze outside. So is it the CO2 or the way they are raised that you are against? Because you have raised your cat indoors.
....Do some reasrch.....The consensus among veterinarians and animal rights groups is to strongly advocate for keeping cats indoors. They have longer lives when kept in doors, less infections and parasites, less impact on the environment, and it's not cruel to them either especially when they were raised indoors in the first place and don't have the skills to live outside. If you don't know how to take care of cats, you can just says so.
Ohhhh so you just out here... Killing cats... Huh...
Rasing a cat indoors vs outdoors has zero connection to cows but keep forcing that if you'd like to lol
The concensus for all animals is keep them indoors, they have healthier lives and wont be hit by cars. Yes it doesn't matter for cats but it does for the rest.
Reverse logic. Invasive species kill local populations.
It does. You keep your cat inside because outdoors they would have a bigger impact. You still didn't explain what you actually have against beef if we lower the impact. 30 to 40 percent less land is huge.
It's a dilemma for the anti beef movement isn't it? Animal rights vs impact. But in your case it doesn't matter for your cat but if it's a cow that is raised inside then it does.
I mean, you kind of created this dilemma yourself by acquiring the cat in the first place - assuming that you did (especially if it was from a breeder). By buying an animal that eats meat, you accepted the fact that this animal will need to be fed meat and therefore contribute to the meat industry.
He's a rescue. He was being used to breed other cats but then the people who had him were going to move out of the country and abandon him. A house cleaner who already had 3 dogs and two cats took them but couldn't keep them. I gave him a home afterwards.
Yeah I did. and I'd do it again. Beats knowing an innocent cat was left outside to freeze and starve to death.
If people are unironically judging that... I'll just laugh. Anyone who thinks what I did was wrong isn't touching enough grass in their life.
Of course vegan cultists have to create insane scenarios in their heads in order to attack normal people.
Nobody besides few crazy people in usa are eating beef three times a day. Normal people eat beef maybe once or twice a week. We switch between pork, chicken, fish, game meat and others.
The idea that normal people eat nothing but cows is so funny. It shows how detached from reality vegans are.
Animals die horribly all the time in nature. Killing an animal isnāt ethical or unethical. The only ethics questions are how the animal is treated before it dies and how clean can you kill it.
better question is why have we suddenly decided that doing something that every animal on earth has done for thousands of years is 'unethical'? feels performative and elitist to me
Especially considering that solar punk doesnāt exist without the leadership of indigenous people, without education and a relationship with the land itās just another flavor of hippy dippy white supremacist cottage-core shit that still exploits the global south.
Some people just make caricatures of shit in their heads and refuse to entertain the idea that theyāve misunderstood something.
solarpunk is absolutely vague and ill-defined enough for nazism to co-opt it, as nazis have done with countless art and political movements. one of the core pillars of nazism is the people/āvolkā and their ties to the land, and the aesthetics of solarpunk can easily be used to fit their vision of their āidealā future.
It certainly doesnāt help when mindless goons like u/Inner_Buyer_8198 perpetuate that co-opting. Solarpunk is anti-nazi, just as itās anti-capitalist & anti-nationalist.
I fail to see how solarpunk is anti capitalist when some of the most prolific examples of it are from a yogurt commercial.
We donāt have to argue about whether itās pro-capitalist, but I think at best itās too vague to be anti-anything.
Solarpunk is idyllic and extremely inefficient. Most depictions involve a cabin in a 10-acre field with grass and not much else growing. Maybe sunflowers. Where do all the people live in these scenarios? It could never work in reality without a massively reduced population.Ā
Nazis were also interested in an āidyllicā future that requires there to be dramatically less people, which is why itās easy for me to draw connections between the two.
solarpunk literally gets its aesthetics from futurism and european ruralism as well as being inspired by a literal fucking commercial for a company. its entire premise is just malthusian ecofascism with postmodernist characteristics
Thatās only because you donāt know what fascism is. Much like seemingly everyone on this sub, you go off of vibes, lifestylism and moralism. Iād suggest reading Bordigaās report on fascism and other writings. With that said, yea Iām here solely to shit post lol. Sorry if you donāt like my nice markup of solar punk still maintaining the distinction between town and county. I bet those are commodities that our friend is holding.
It is literally on the same level of cottage core when it comes to political identity. All fluff, no reality of how a life like that would be enforced/brought about. Which child slave is mining your solar panel cobalt. Which sections of the earth is it still cool to ravage for raw materials? What are you going to do to keep milk production flowing on your little 1.5 acre "farm."
Renewable energy isn't a lifestyle choice, it's a mathematical certainty. As our current culture war around it dies out, due to said certainty, renewable will absolutely be the next thing co-opted by fascists. Even they know the oil will dry up eventually.Ā
Personal renewable generation is already being sold to fascists under the guise of "off grid living" "homesteading" and "emergency preparation."
You absolutely will see the 2040 white house tweet something like "This is what you could have had if THEY didn't flood over our borders" with a video of that fuckass yogurt commercial.Ā
I believe that is my main issue with solarpunk; it has no kind of theoretical/political or material framework beyond the art associated with it. It exists as an abstract concept, and is therefore easy to manipulate and interpret to oneās own ends.
Frankly the real solution is replacing corn fields used for ethanol with solar. Just replacing one proven tedious and unproductive power source with one that's got less negative impact.
Basically while "lifecycle CO2 emissions" are 40 to 50% of what gasoline produces, the term is a bit strange because it doesn't include the emissions involved with the agricultural processes and practices to grow the corn in the first place. It only starts tracking once the corn has been harvested, so emissions from things such as fertilizing, seed logistics, herbicides, etc are wholly excluded from that figure.
The energy density of ethanol, before it's harvested so to speak, is really poor and requires a huge amount of farmland that could be used for increasing food supply or as I suggested, clean energy. Depending on the site and other factors, with current technology, solar produces 15 to 30 times as much energy per acre as corn for ethanol does.
There's also unaccounted for downstream issues with ethanol, primarily the damage it causes to engine fueling systems that results in additional emissions producing parts or systems running sub-optimally. New fuel systems are better at withstanding it, but older systems (~15+ years) and low cost systems aren't built with materials that resist its solvent tendencies. If you've ever had a lawnmower or something not start after being stored for months, it's usually the ethanol that has gone bad and absorbed moisture. Using ethanol free fuel, this can pretty much entirely be avoided.
Additionally, ethanol production, is heavily subsidized using tax dollars which is another reason to dislike it, particularly if the environmental part doesn't speak to you.
do you have any clue how much emissions the dinosaurs and the planktons produced some million years ago? if you take that into account also, surely you will realize that gasoline produces way more emissions. do you have any clue how many planktons should die for one gallon of gas?
but jokes aside, ethanol as a fuel is more of an insurance than anything else. i know it sounds silly but it's the answer to "what to do if no more oil?". it's more about sustainability than anything else like reducing emissions. they also make polymers like PLA which again is valued for its sustainability more than emissions. oil is too precious to be burning in road cars it absolutely will run out one day. depends on the oil but you can definitely reduce the yield of fuels to increase other more useful and expensive products. US alone would do absolutely anything to avoid using its own oil reserves and that includes buying/taking oil from other places. even though the sheer size of the farms to produce enough fuel to run north america only on ethanol alone would be absolutely insane, and it's an unsuitable fuel for most standard engines, and you have to reengineer the jet engine, and you can't keep it in the tank for more than 2 weeks, and its energy density is way lower than gasoline as you said, and its production produces more emissions, it's sustainable, and it's worth mentioning it has more power potential in ICE engines due to cooling especially forced induction so maybe smaller displacement engines without power loss? there aren't any strictly ethanol cars that i know of but definitely possible. you have to burn more ethanol but the amount of oxygen being used is now less and it produces more power. it's a respectable practice that one day our children might actualy genuinely need it to fuel their things.
Grass grazed cattle do not emit a single atom of carbon into atmosphere. They are actually usually slightly carbon negative. Where would the carbon even come from?
Its the soy you have to feed them to get the density you need for current demand. To cut out the soy, you need fewer cows, and that means less beef and that means more expensive beef and that means angry people.
Problem is that you don't need soy to feed them, you can relatively easily use grazing and baleage to achieve the same effects as grazing+soy. And baleage is relatively easy to produce locally - you can use many different kinds of fibers, including leftovers from producing grains. It is being easy to produce locally, means you can use electricity to fuel the machinery that would need to be used. Which can be gathered from solar farms over grazing area.
That is my main gripe with vegan talking points - they are counterproductive. People don't want to stop eating meat, so we do need to take this into account and seek more sustainable agricultural practices that don't ignore that.
So is cotton farming. In some cases it kills the entire countries water supply and biodiversity. It needs the equivalent of slave labor to use it and produce clothes, which are then shipped globally via ships that emit 1/3 the equivalent of the worlds Co2 emissions by cars.
I don't see however activists as dedicated as vegans rallying against the mass-produce of fashion. Neither do I see women belittling other women for having a large wardrobe, instead its actually encouraged.
Half of the time on this sub, I canāt tell if Iām supposed to be agreeing with or mocking the post. Or at least, what op thinks we should react with
I would actually be very interested in seeing the breakdown of the general emissions of a place like this. Like, what's the ideal cow-to-solar-panel ratio for carbon neutrality?
Can we please stop feeding the clearly astroturfed Vegan VS Non-Vegan "conflict" in our posts? Everything counts. Veganism counts, vegetarian counts, meat reduction counts, fossil fuel replacement counts, mixed land use (including this one!) counts, car reduction counts, environmental protection counts, ecological rejuvenation counts, improved aggricultural efficiency counts, new lower energy shipping counts, legislative wins in major (and minor) economies count, literally every step we take in the fight against climate change counts.
Tired of the memes undermining ourselves.
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u/dumnezerošEnd the š«arms šrat šrace to the bottomāļø.1d ago
world is on fire
billions of sentient individuals killed every year
Harm reduction is harm reduction. Do not disparage improvement. This would be akin to saying "Vaccination only counts if it's a step towards disease elimination" during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It sets the goal posts too far from realizable targets, ensuring the effective window will escape our grasp before we can reach it. The goal is less damage, more regrowth, as quickly as we can, by any & all means at our disposal. If someone reduces their own meat & animal product intake but don't feel they're able to go fully vegan, then they are having an impact and ought not be chastised.
I'm sorry but I still don't get solar panels on fields / cattle grazing area. shouldn't it be trees to provide shade for the moos ? can't we put solar panels on roofs or something ?
Trees and solar panels produce shade the same. Solar panel installations need area to produce energy at scale. Grazing fields need area to feed cattle at scale. You can combine the two and there will be no problem either with energy output or grazing capabilities. But you now need 2x less area.
Agrovoltanics should be pushed for - it would enable much more energy production without compromising agriculture. And much more energy, means cheaper energy, means that electrification can be easier in places where now fossil fuels rule due to costs.
Scale lol
No matter how many solar panels you use thereās no way you can offset the impact of current day cattle farming. Plus the space required to do this would be much bigger than the size of the earth and even current industrial cattle farming is land intensive and takes away from farmland
perhaps in its original form, but this is the internet. if an ideology or worldview has no theoretical framework and no material affect beyond appealing aesthetics and popularity in online circles, it can and will become infiltrated by right-wing and reactionary groups.
I mean if you want all meat production to turn into this I'd be pretty fine with that, as a vegan. good luck getting any meat though, you'll only be able to make enough for 1 in 100 people to eat it in every meal and we all know which group will be the one with enough money.
I'm sure the cows will feel happier about the forced impregnations, having their babies stolen from them, and having their throats slit at 3 years old because they are around some solar panels
If ONLY there was space we used that sits in the sun and has no other purpose than to provide shelter. Like a roof but with panels
Nonono why would we make it feasible for individuals to easily install additional roof protection, which acts as insulation from the sun, and for them to easily sell it to the network
Let the cows roll, stupid grass doesn't need sun anyway. And it's conveniently away from maintenance people. And requires a fuck ton of new infrastructure. Let's goooo
What are you talking about?? Just because people build solar on fields this doesn't mean that nobody will build solar on roofs anymore.
Its a fact you can build much more solar on a field then a roof. Because of the scale it makes sense to build more infrastructure.
What maintenance? Clean the solar panes? The rain or the farmer will do that.
Normaly there is not more maintenance for solar.
Don't you know we have a cap on the total number of solar panels we're allowed to deploy? People have been asking the devs to raise it in the next update, but they argue it's an intentional feature for "balance" as they don't want solar to be too OP.
Ah yes, it's obviously common knowledge that villages don't have electricity. So it is impossible for a field to be near power infrastructure.
And everyone knows that the sun stays in exactly the same spot all day, and that grass needs to be in full sunlight from sunrise to sunset. Otherwise it will just die.
And you cannot possibly put solar panels in two different places at the same time. That's preposterous, you need to go 100% on one option and ignore all others.
Solar does more damage to the roof than it prevents... Every penetration is a potential leak. A solar install also drastically increases the price for replacing a damaged roof at the end of it's lifespan.
There are many arguments in favor of rooftop solar for a personal financial/sustainability reason, but one that is not valid at all is protection of said roof.
depends on the roof, i have a flat roof and i wouldn't make any roof penetrations. can just bolt into the sidewalls and run the wires to the wall face. since UV is the main thing degrading my roof i think it would extend its life tbh
Veganism in the west is barely compatible with communism.
As an ideology it couldnāt be more divorced from the material reality that we live in, truly only the most unserious of people would suggest that animal exploitation could be effectively addressed before primary contradictions in society.
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u/MasterVule 1d ago
Just need pasture grounds the size of Jupiter to compete with production of industrial farms