On: Denmark to charge $100 per cow in first carbon tax on farming

[rvense]

I don't know if it's by gross weight or calories, but the number I've heard is that feeding plants to animals is 10-20 less effective than just having people eat the plants. Or mostly eat the plants. So, in the case of Denmark, where 50% of the surface area is used to grow food for pigs, we could instead use 3-5% of the surface are to grow food for people and come out at something resembling the same amount of food, at least if we're just talking "food needed to survive". And given some of the other talk we see on this site, (or used to see a few years ago) about how indoor farming is an absolute necessity because we're running out of land due to rising populations, I think that seems quite significant.

BTW, I am not a full-time vegan nor interested in becoming one, but the average meat consumption in Denmark is as far as I know measure in the hundreds of grams per day. Maybe there's room for compromise?

[tracker1 → rvense]

Cows don't eat plants that people can derive appropriate nutrition from. They also don't generally use land that is appropriate for crops. Also, from what I understand, the emissions from the animals isn't significantly different than seasonal die off from natural grasslands they graze on. Beyond this, most of the calculated water consumption "used" is rainwater on said grasslands.

[bryanlarsen → tracker1]

Cows in America derive most of their calories from corn. And while most Montana cows generally live on land unsuitable for crops, Montana only has a small fraction of American cows.

And I believe that your comments are even less true in other prominent cattle producing countries than America.

[tracker1 → bryanlarsen]

And in Denmark?

[bryanlarsen → tracker1]

No Montana like semi-deserts in Denmark.

[tracker1 → bryanlarsen]

I mean, what are the standards in Denmark in terms of land use? grass fed vs grain fed, etc. Since the article is referring to Denmark.

[rvense → tracker1]

As far as I know, mostly soy. A lot of it from South America.

[bryanlarsen → tracker1]

Grass-fed beef in Denmark would necessarily be raised on viable crop land, so would displace an order of magnitude more cropland than grain fed beef.

[tracker1 → bryanlarsen]

Grass doesn't grow on hills, or soil with lots of stone/rocks that would be prohibitively expensive to turn into cropland? Not to mention that cropland using regenerative farming, or anything actually sustainable, should include grazing animal rotation.

[bryanlarsen → tracker1]

> Grass doesn't grow on hills, or soil with lots of stone/rocks that would be prohibitively expensive to turn into cropland?

Denmark doesn't have a significant amount of those. It's pretty flat and rock free.