There is also evidence that this sort of grazing can substantially reduce carbon emissions. Meanwhile monocultured grain, beans, and veggies - especially conventional with heavy pesticide* (edit: originally wrote fertilizer, meant pesticide) use - are devastating to ecosystems. They're essentially turning large swaths of land into killing fields, taking the bottom right out of ecosystem and contributing to the massive drop in insect populations (which form the foundation of the food web) we've seen across the developed world.
In short - the agricultural analysis is really fucking complex, multivariate, and grey.
She links a literature analysis that claims to contradict much of this, but I've read literature analyses making these sorts of claims before that just ignore most of the alternative systems, gloss over a lot of nuance, or downplay the harm of convention systems in major ways. I need to read the one she linked, but experience has taught me to treat it skeptically.
> b) Because there is evidence that meat production done right IE intensive rotation grazing or silvopasture where the meat is grazed on a small section of land at a time and most of the land is left fallow most of the time can actually drastically increase ecosystem services. It allows the land to function as native prairie or savanna.
There's no way the method of meat production that you described can produce meat to sastisfy current US demand, let alone increasing demand from the developing world. Therefore practically speaking, reduction of meat consumption will still be needed.
>Meanwhile monocultured grain, beans, and veggies - especially conventional with heavy fertilizer use - are devastating to ecosystems.
You're suggesting, in a very roundabout way, that we drastically reduce meat consumption. None of these things you describe can be done sustainably without a drastic reduction of livestock.
But that's not the same as putting it on top of the list. Ever since Cowspiracy came out (which has been roundly debunked) there's been this segment of the environmental movement that wants to put beef on the top of the list of carbon problems. It just doesn't belong there and there are so many issues with putting it there - not least of which is the individual responsibility trap.
Climate cannot be solved by individual action alone. Individual action is necessary, but not sufficient. And since people have limited capacity to make lifestyle changes, we need them to focus that capacity where it will do the most good. Meat just isn't it - transporation, housing, energy - those are where it belongs. We should be encouraging people to eat less meat, yes, and to eat sustainably pastured an grazed meat. But we shouldn't be telling people to go vegan as their primary lifestyle change.
