I heard something to do with Nitrogen and …cow farts(?) I am really unsure of this and would like to learn more.

Answer -

4 Parts

  • Ethical reason for consuming animals
  • Methane produced by cows are a harmful greenhouse gas which is contributing to our current climate crisis
  • Health Reasons - there is convincing evidence that processed meats cause cancer
  • it takes a lot more calories of plant food to produce the calories we would consume from the meat.

Details about the answers are in the comments

  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    if you can cite where in that article it gives credit to cattle for conserving water that would be wasted, I would eat my hat.

    • fkn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      For each study, we recorded the inventory of outputs and inputs (including fertilizer quantity and type, irrigation use, soil, and climatic conditions).

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            no. I just want to see how much water they say cows consumed from cotton and the total amount of water they say was used to grow the cotton. and then I want you to ask yourself if it’s reasonable to attribute ANY of that water to cows (it isn’t)

            • fkn@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Cam you link specifically what you mean? I don’t see any attribution of cotton water to cattle in the 2018 Poor, Nemeck.

              • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 year ago

                i’m having problems right now even pulling up the full article, but, to my recollection, they didn’t actually gather any of this data themselves, so you should be able to find some oblique reference to water used somewhere in the body of the paper, and then follow the citation to the actual study that did gather the data.

            • matlag@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              A non-peered review article from a totally unbiased source.

              Coming up next, an article demonstrating the benefit of burning oil for the environment by Shell.

                • matlag@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Today we burn tons of oil. Say tomorrow we have switched to all electric. Do you think we’ll keep extracting oil and that will create an environmental burden because of that oil sitting around?

                  That’s the same reasoning.

                  Today we grow megatons of corn,… for different things, including feeding livestocks.

                  Tomorrow, if we have less livestock, we’ll adapt the crops mix, just like rest of the world has been or is still doing fine without having mega-herds of cows.

                  We don’t have too many cows because we had too much crops. We increased the crops to match the herds!