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Originally posted by Color Me Badd Fan
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Recently there have been some attacks on eating meat, particularly beef, with some idiots saying the best thing we can do to personally reduce our carbon contribution is cutting out meat. Another point of attack is they mention how much water is required to produce a certain amount of beef without acknowledging that the overwhelming majority of that water comes from the grass/plant material grazed by the cattle. Then they talk about all the land that is used up by livestock -- as if that is also land that we could just instead just start growing cabbage, tomatoes, etc on the same land.
The amount of misinformation that is coming out of this is staggering. My grandfather moved his family out to California in the early 50s and proceeded to become a millionaire in the meat (beef) packing/processing business by the early 70s. One of his roles in the business was to go out to northern Nevada, buy cattle and arrange for their transportation back to California. It's absurd to think the land being grazed by the cattle had any other agricultural value -- and it's the same for massive swaths of the Western US and Canada along with places like Australia.
California has a persistent drought problem and farmers from Bakersfield on up through north of Sacramento have had to pump more groundwater due to a variety of factors -- but apparently the wells are drying up. Those crops are relatively water efficient compared to what comes out the Salinas Valley. The amount of water it takes to grow everything in the Salinas Valley is staggering -- the artichokes, strawberries, spinach, etc and the nutritional value of these pales in comparison to the nutritional value of beef. What's particularly galling to me is that many of the same people worried about the water, carbon, etc with regard to beef production then turn around and insist everything be grown organically while they chug down almond milk. It's hilarious.
This video does a good job of dealing with the idiotic hysteria regarding beef and it includes a few clips of Mark Rober who really should know better:
The amount of misinformation that is coming out of this is staggering. My grandfather moved his family out to California in the early 50s and proceeded to become a millionaire in the meat (beef) packing/processing business by the early 70s. One of his roles in the business was to go out to northern Nevada, buy cattle and arrange for their transportation back to California. It's absurd to think the land being grazed by the cattle had any other agricultural value -- and it's the same for massive swaths of the Western US and Canada along with places like Australia.
California has a persistent drought problem and farmers from Bakersfield on up through north of Sacramento have had to pump more groundwater due to a variety of factors -- but apparently the wells are drying up. Those crops are relatively water efficient compared to what comes out the Salinas Valley. The amount of water it takes to grow everything in the Salinas Valley is staggering -- the artichokes, strawberries, spinach, etc and the nutritional value of these pales in comparison to the nutritional value of beef. What's particularly galling to me is that many of the same people worried about the water, carbon, etc with regard to beef production then turn around and insist everything be grown organically while they chug down almond milk. It's hilarious.
This video does a good job of dealing with the idiotic hysteria regarding beef and it includes a few clips of Mark Rober who really should know better:
I understand that it takes 1 gallon of water to produce 1 almond. It is crazy.
I rarely buy organic foods as a matter of principle.
My relatives run range cattle in southern utah. Yes, that land is not going to be used to grow quinoa and kale if people stop eating beef.
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