The Key Points
When you drop beef and lamb, and eat exactly the same amount of animal-free protein, you cause…
95% less greenhouse gas emissions
85% less water usage
95% less land burden
(food production is complicated, and so these numbers are global averages)
Cutting out beef (and lamb), frees up enormous quantities of land for reforesting, and (as long as you don’t switch from beef to other meats) also means you preserve a huge amount of soil, reduce fertiliser pollution and suffering too.
The problem
As a species, we’ve depended enormously on cows, which are miracle workers; turning seemingly infertile, good-for-nothing grassland into milk, beef, and even power to pull plows.
However, now that there are more cows on Earth than any other land mammal, they are doing more harm than good
1. Excessive land use
Cows require an astonishing amount of land, water and fertilisers. About 80% of the protein fed to cows is lost in their poo, and only about 5% of it becomes beef. This results in the destruction of nature and soil erosion
2. Cows produce loads of methane
Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 86 times worse than carbon dioxide (when measured over 20 years)
The Bottom Line
Humans waste about 1/3 of the food we produce.
Yes, there are places in the world where food is short (because the food system is a mess) but overall, the world is definitely not short of food.
Today, we need to be a lot more worried about climate change than increasing food production.
Farming cattle (and sheep, for similar reasons) is terrible for our planet.