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Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change

Allan Savory · TED · 6 HN points · 24 HN comments
HN Theater has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention Allan Savory's video "Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change".
TED Summary
(NOTE: Statements in this talk have been challenged by scientists working in this field. Please read "Criticisms & Updates" below for more details.) "Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes -- and his work may show -- that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.
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You might be thinking about Allan Savory's work on dense rotational grazing for land regeneration purposes in savannas and rangelands. Quick TED talk to get you started: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...
The North Pole doesn't have any land, and a blue water summer in the Arctic ocean is likely within 4-10 years. And, high Arctic lands also DO NOT NEED MORE TREES BECAUSE THAT WOULD HASTEN TUNDRA COLLAPSE. A Russian scientist proposed deforesting Siberia to convert it to grassland tundra using large herds of hybrid mammoth-elephants in order to eliminate trees that keep arboreal tundra from hard freezing in the winter which hastens its destruction in the summer. https://pleistocenepark.ru/

A better solution would include many overlapping approaches for a holistic strategy, including iron fertilization of the oceans and bio-energy with carbon capture and sequestration (BeCSS).

Furthermore, the best anti-desertification solutions must include extremely large, managed herds of browsing animals like goats to restore soil health. There was a TED talk on this. https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

Tillage is killing organisms living in the soil, which are crucial for fertility and resistance to erosion. Permacultures have interesting techniques, like covering the soil to let weeds die and enrich the soil at the same time, not sure how those techniques can scale, even if they are highly productive. There are also the use of livestocks: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

other links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsoil#Erosion http://www.fao.org/3/a0100e/a0100e07.htm http://www.fao.org/3/t0389e/t0389e02.htm

Or maybe you should just eat properly grazed live stock, might be a lot better than going vegan. https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...
jamesgagan
This is discussed in the article: "Some scientists have suggested that grass-finished beef, if managed properly, can be a more sustainable option: As the cattle graze, they stimulate grass to grow deep roots and pull more carbon into the soil, helping to offset the cows’ climate impact. But, on the flip side, grass-finished cattle also take longer to reach slaughter weight, which means they spend more time burping up methane into the atmosphere. Because of this, some studies have suggested that grass-fed beef can actually be worse for the climate over all, though the debate about this continues to rage.

For now, it’s hard to say with confidence that grass-fed beef is consistently more climate-friendly than conventional beef."

leekyle333
I'd love to see more research on this, I just wonder who would actually do it.
passiveincomelg
Links from the article:

http://www.futureoffood.ox.ac.uk/grazed-and-confused

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4494320/

This might be slightly off-topic but I wonder why, in the context of Global Warming, solutions like this [1] aren't more widespread.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

rimunroe
If you follow the link you'll see that they've made a note that a number of scientists disagree with him. These two articles came up immediately after going to his Wikipedia page: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X1...

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbd/2014/163431/

redka
Thanks, I've missed that
Cows eat grass, which is just out there, growing naturally. Those aren't calories humans could be consuming; we don't have the right kind of stomaches. You can view a cow as machine for extracting the nutrients in grass into a dense, human-digestible form. Pretty cool.

I'm also not sure your "modern agriculture" point stands -- are industrial farming methods sustainable over the long scale?

Think about America pre-colonization: a continent filled with ruminants happily munching away, being hunted at sustainable levels. To my mind that is peak sustainability and environmental friendliness.

Whereas a huge environmental problem we have right now is soil depletion, which is largely driven by agriculture.

Cows could actually help solve this problem, because their manure contributes to the health of the soil.

https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

It's far from obvious that a veggie burger would be healthier for the environment than eating cows.

(Disclaimer: haven't watched the ted talk, but familiar with the ideas and seemed like a good summary to link to.)

cageface
Think about America pre-colonization: a continent filled with ruminants happily munching away, being hunted at sustainable levels. To my mind that is peak sustainability and environmental friendliness.

That's with a population of on the order of 10 million for the entire continent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigeno...

Naturally grazing cows wouldn't even come close to sustaining the current demand for meat. Industrialized animal agriculture exists for a reason.

dilap
That's fair, but still, my point is raising beef is not intrinsically unsustainable and destructive.

Though I agree, it's probably not a reasonable primary food for most people at current population levels.

cageface
Yeah it might make sense to do on a controlled scale in the right climates, but it wouldn’t even come close to meeting current demands. People would have to get used to eating meat a few times a week.
hexane360
Not to mention that that 10 million count includes many tribes/societies based around fishing, and an entire civilization based around farming sustainably:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)

tom_mellior
I just posted this in a cousin comment, but a whole lot of experts disagree with Savory's claims: https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/04/allan-savorys-ted-t...

The TED talk is really good and sounds convincing, but in the end it's a bunch of pretty pictures going against what appears to be scientific consensus.

dilap
It doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but the tone of the piece and the fact that it's funded by Kellog's is certainly at least eye-brow raising:

There’s no such thing as a beef-eating environmentalist.

Slate’s coverage of food systems is made possible in part by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Anyway, I think it's fair to at least say the topic is debated.

(Also, I wouldn't recommend being too overly swayed by "scientific consensus": scientists are just people, who are mostly sheep; lots of scientific consensuses turn out to be wrong. I'm reminded of the Feynman quote:

–Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, "Is it reasonable?")

mathw
Cows eat grass which grows on land which used to have rainforest on it but which has been cleared, wiping out thousands of species, to make more cows. (Okay not all cows, but rainforest clearance for pastureland is a big problem where there are or used to be rainforests).

Cows also produce a massive amount of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas, and they're not very efficient converters of plants into grass.

It is therefore well established that beef production is the least efficient and environmentally friendly form of meat production.

dilap
Yes, it's bad to cut down rainforests to raise beef, just like it's bad to cut down rainforests to make palm oil. That's not really a knock against raising cows in natural grassland, though.

Re GHGs, you have to weigh the methane against the carbon sequestration the cows promote.

These guys are working with local (to me) farms to study and enhance that:

https://www.marincarbonproject.org/about

It also just doesn't seem to me, on a gut level, that having 90 million cows in the US is our main problem (especially compared to historical levels of 20 million bison). I think we should be much more focussed on the 20 million barrels of oil a day we're burning through (compared to historical levels of basically 0).

StrictDabbler
Shoot. Wait wait wait. That's a really excellent point. What?

We've killed most of the sizable animals on the planet. We really absolutely have. No question. Passenger pigeon flocks, billions of fish, vast populations of whales and bison and all the major megafauna we wiped out.

That's a holocaust of farting biomass. Complete slaughter. There's no way that our beef herds offset the megafauna that were here before the landbridge migration to North America when it comes to methane.

I haven't heard something genuinely new in this debate for a long time. Thank you.

blacksmith_tb
Maybe it would be better to say "cows would eat grass" but unfortunately >90% of beef comes from cows who don't, and are raised on feed[1].

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2016/01/29/the-gras...

dilap
I think it'd probably be good to stop feeding grain to cows, but even "grain-fed" cows eat grass (or hay) most of their lives -- it's at the end when they're sent to the feed lots to fatten them up that they eat grain.
hexane360
"you don't need to grow vast quantities of grain to raise cows, just to increase their biomass enough to feed large quantities of people"
Oct 23, 2018 · aoner on Carbon Removal Technologies
RE: 1. Automate tree/crop planting:

https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/ These guys use drones to shoot tree seeds in the ground.

Also regarding terraforming a dessert, I think one of the biggest problems with is the number of water needed in the area, but I do think that this will be a really interesting part of the solution. Maybe the increase of land prices due to the decrease of arable land might make such ventures more profitable. There's a great ted talk about reversing desertification: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

thinkling
Around here, tree farms replant by hiring people who plant hundreds to thousands trees per day per person and are paid for piece-work, a fraction of a dollar (~$0.20?) per treelet planted.

Given that you need to do this once every 25-40 years (maturity cycle of the tree), is doing it with drones really that big a win?

aoner
I'm also not sure how much of a big win the drones are. Proper forest management is probably way more important. So protecting against illegal logging and making sure that whenever trees are almost dying to take them out so that they don't rot and replant a new one.
I feels ya.

A few years ago, I got pretty worked up about my state killing an entire wolf pack, just to protect some cows. So I got involved. I learned a lot.

Ranchers are people too. I really loved these people. It was just one bad apple, deliberate repeat offender, causing all the problems. Everyone else was totally onboard towards creating a better future.

Ranching is unsustainable. And they (the families) know it.

Skipping to the end... My predictions:

#1 Laboratory meat will largely eliminate factory farming. It will completely upend our (Western) agricultural economy. Huge reduction in feed grains, pesticides, fertilizers, etc. Massive improvement in waste management. It can't happen soon enough. My uneducated guess is 10-20 year transition. All us tree huggers should work to expedite.

#2 To continue, ranchers will need to go up market. Artisan, bespoke meat.

#3 We will pay ranchers to restore habitat. This will make up for their loss of income from selling meat. And hopefully keep families working the land.

"How to fight desertification and reverse climate change" https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

#4 Trend towards direct micromanagement of animals (wild and domesticated) and habitat will continue. GPS tags, drones, IoT for soil monitoring & management, satellite imagery, adapt to weather predictions, etc. Even more so than my grandfather's day, future farmers and ranchers will be high tech entrepreneurs, knowledgable in tech, business, accounting / finance.

In conclusion: I know our current situation is bleak. There is a way forward, out of this mess. Keep the faith.

agumonkey
Be warned about Allan savory, I liked his talk a lot, but it seems he's selling snake oil procedures (a few people tried to rebuke him online, I'm not knowledgeable enough to know who's right but it made me shift my stance nonetheless).

And about meat, some cultures enjoy eating way less meat, surely we could reduce the quantity, so that farmers can go back to simpler ways, and probably enjoy a lot more quality too.

specialist
True. I do remain skeptical. I just really hope he's right.

The opposition feels like concern trolling. I've been in Allan Savory's position a few times. For instance, a local newspaper called me "a sweaty paranoid kook" in the late 2000s. Today, all we can talk about is election integrity.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Mahatma Gandhi

I promise you that if Savory is debunked, I'll update my position accordingly.

agumonkey
The articles were pretty clear on that his methods were never working. I have nothing against him I really liked his theory at first.
tomjen3
I am looking forward to the day we have high quality artificial meat, but how many jobs will that cost? Most farms (even not meat farms will produce feed for other animals), a big part of shipping and mostly everybody who works in meat packaging.

With automatic cars and factory meat, that will do a huge number on non coastal areas of the US. We need to take that into account for the planning process as well.

RobertoG
"#1 laboratory meat will largely eliminate factory farming. [..] All us tree huggers should work to expedite."

Any suggestion about how to help here? For instance, is there any organization where we can send money for pushing for this outcome?

The environmental reasons alone should be enough to invest in this.

specialist
I'm still looking. Please tell us if you find something.

My 1/2 baked notion is to meet with family ranchers, start talking about active management, build alliances with some tree huggers, enlist the help of their (likely conservative) legislators (state and federal). Maybe start in Wyoming. The messaging would be terrific. Maybe enough to blunt the counter attacks from Big Ag.

My other 1/2 baked notion is to enlist the Tim Ferriss types (health nuts, earliest adopters), pitch vat meat as a veganism meets paleo paradox buster, better than current protein sources (eg whey), create demand from the top-down.

bungula
The Good Food Institute is working on exactly that:

https://www.gfi.org/donate

They are a non-profit that are advocating and researching clean meat and plant-based alternatives. I recommend this 75 minute interview with it's director if you want to understand why is it such an important and effective cause:

https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bruce-friedrich-good...

The value of the good news is to keep hope alive.

I'll give an example of an unexpected improvement:

I volunteered at Audubon for a group that was trying to save wetlands, and by extension the wild salmon. At the time, we didn't have the science to actually mitigate wetlands. So all of our efforts were on conservation. (That didn't go very well.) Now we have more options. So we could, if we wanted to, increase habitat.

That's kinda cool.

Another example is a guy claiming that he has a way to restore grasslands (reverse desertification) by using ranching to simulate migratory herds. https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

If true, that's also kinda awesome.

Generally, the trends are pretty bleak, and awareness is a curse. So people like me need good news just to get out of bed every day.

southern_cross
Are you aware of the research which suggests that much of what we consider wetlands today may only exist because of prior deforestation in those areas? And that reforestation may naturally then lead to these wetlands shrinking dramatically in size?
specialist
I hadn't. If you have links handy, I'd be much obliged.
southern_cross
What I saw was from years ago, but here's an example of what a quick Google search turns up about it:

http://www.lakescientist.com/research-summary-effect-defores...

There are solid arguments that it could have positive environmental consequences too: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...
They probably have to let the sheep roam because there isn't enough food if they fence them in. Here is a nice video on farming practices that might reverse desertificaiton:

https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

Not sure if that would apply to Iceland, but it seems reasonable for someone to try it.

spraak
Allan Savory's theories are wildly unsound and have been debunked... But it seems like good intention.
phkahler
Except that the land they tried his ideas on really did start growing stuff again. Nobody refuted the results he shows in the presentation. What may have been "debunked" is the notion that it's somehow good in terms of CO2 production, but even that isn't clear to me - plants take CO2 out of the atmosphere, and animals put it back.
spraak
https://youtu.be/_EDpuQMpyYw
>>potentially (and most likely) more land needed to produce equal amounts of meat

>Please explain this in more detail.

Sure! Plants are much less nutrient dense that animals. So for them to create fake meat that's equally nutrient dense as real meat, their farms have to be adequately large. You need a ton of plants to achieve the density of meat. Animals on land however are already nutrient dense. The only physical space they need is enough room to graze.

>>and sequesters carbon/methane as a side effect

>I have not heard of a farming practice that sequesters methane released from ruminants. Can you provide more information?

Scientists and farmers in this area can do a much better job explaining it than I [1], [2], [3].

[1]: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z75A_JMBx4

[3]: https://vimeo.com/80518559

jmknoll
You're right that animal-based foods are much more calorie-dense than plant-based foods. But an animal contains roughly 1/10 of the calories of all the plants that collectively went into feeding it.

The animal's only energy source is plants. Some portion of that energy goes into producing muscle and organ tissue. Some of it is converted to heat. The rest is used for respiration, digestion, thinking, walking around, dreaming, and all the other ongoing processes of life. Animals don't undergo photosynthesis, nor do they spontaneously generate energy.

Unless there's something else you're getting at here. Energy loss and trophic levels is a pretty well-understood idea.

http://kids.britannica.com/students/assembly/view/90132

Admittedly, there is a bit more nuance to the issue; for example, a cow can produce milk and meat from grass, which, for humans, creates available nutrients where there were none before. However, we could also plant that field of grass with corn or potatoes and get many more calories for the same amount of water and sunlight.

lern_too_spel
You should become familiar with the energy pyramid. It's an order of magnitude more efficient to extract energy from plants than to pass the plant energy through animals first. https://www.brainpop.com/science/energy/energypyramid/
OK, I'll bite:

>> What part of the "CO2->Global Warming->Catastrophe" thing is it that you don't buy?

I don't buy that CO2 emissions are going to be a problem. I don't buy that the observed changes in climate are due to CO2.

>> What is "false consensus"? Are you in a position to judge the conclusions supported by a vast majority (that's only my perception, but how likely is it to be completely mistaken?) of experts?

I do not believe that a majority of experts believes that stuff. The IPPC reports are not actually singed by a majority, only a few people who claim to represent that majority. To be honest, I trust engineers judgement more than I trust funded scientists. If you like that idea you may want to read Burt Rutans take on it here: http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm Like you say it's your perception of experts.

What about the documented case of a computer program that showed the same "trend" regardless of input? There is documented fraud on the GW side. Does that invalidate all of it? Of course not, but it should call it into question.

>> What brings you to the conclusion that global warming could be a hoax?

I never said that. I do think it's being used to further political agendas (don't you?) whether those people believe in it or not.

>> Do you have a reason for not trusting the experts?

Sure, go read about climate and weather models. They are very tricky. Sometimes a part of a model is improved based on some real experimental data, but it throws off the weather models which had been tweaked to work with the old assumptions (sorry, I don't have a link handy). New tweaking is needed. This points to known problems with the models, which are not 100% physics based and are not inclusive of all phenomena as they'd like you to believe.

One of my biggest complaints is the lack of consideration of water vapor in the models - it is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. Here, just read this: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/artificial-weather-revealed...

I live in Michigan and while everyone was feeling the trauma of those events, I noticed the unusually cloud-free the sky was at the time. It was a beautiful deep blue every day. Notably different to the norm. One may also notice that the change in "climate" over the last 50 years is also concurrent with the rise in air travel. I don't think that's a coincidence. BTW, the weather models do not incorporate much in the way of contrail effects - precisely because they are very sensitive to it. Until we can understand the effects of water vapor, I don't see how we can vilify carbon.

Then there is the benefit plants - had we not dumped carbon into the air we were dangerously close to having too little. Lots of studies are starting to show how plants thrive in our modern high-carbon world.

Let's talk historical records - not 50, 100, or 100 years. I'm talking 100K or 10M years. We are in an interglacial period, which is near it's end if you look at history. If we do nothing, you should expect glaciation in geological short order. Then there's the fact that glaciations didn't used to happen at all. If you go back even farther, the earth was in fact warmer and life flourished.

If you watched the recent Cosmos series, I believe the whole thing was propaganda. I watched the final episode which was on Climate Change. It was sadly science-free. That is to say he talked a lot about the things you see in the paper but didn't give any evidence - no data, no plots, nothing. And then at the end he's up in the arctic talking about some coastal tundra eroding and there's old plant matter buried in there! Imagine plants thriving in the arctic - I don't even see a problem with some warming even if it's not caused by CO2.

Then lets talk about desertification, which people like to attribute to climate change. Here's a great TED talk about how farming practices can reverse that (and may be the cause): https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

I would hope that all of this at the very least can cast some doubt on the notion that CO2 is this big global problem that's going to destroy everything if we don't do something about it. Cast some doubt. Start a debate based on data not a media promoted "consensus". And not doctored data: https://www.google.com/#q=doctored+ocean+temperature

Oh, and finally this has been going on so long that the longer term predictions are starting to fail: https://www.google.com/#q=failed+climate+change+predictions

But I'm not trying to convince you, just maybe cast a little doubt.

freen
Your "evidence" is links to google searches?

Climate modeling is hard, of course it is. Many things are hard. You don't doubt planes because building jet engines is hard, do you?

Do you honestly think climate scientists would forget about water? Really?

Or not know about the history of our planets climate?

Dangerously close to having too little CO2?

I don't doubt that you believe what you say you do, but you sound more like anti-vaxxers than you sound like a medical professional calmly explaining well documented research of vaccination.

oligopoly
You might have seen this but I put it out for other people to see it. Recently It came out that climate scientistic have been manipulating weather data. Essay from the whistleblower:

Climate scientists versus climate data https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/04/climate-scientists-versus...

I posted it to HN as well but it never got any traction. Great read nevertheless.

Anyone who has lived for a while has seen multiple climate doomsday predictions that didn't pan out. The end prophecy reminds of a religious sect.

splawn
Judith Curry has a long past of incorrectly claiming that global warming has ended. Ironically, It reminds me of those cult leaders that claim the world is ending on a specific date and then keep moving it back when it doesn't happen, lol.
Not a bad answer, presuming humanity is a thing to preserve (not proven). Though it answer the question "Should we eat meat farmed in a mass production way" much more than should we eat meat at all. There is a theory that we can use cows to reclaim deserts (https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...). Given your argument, we could eat those cows when they come to market since they should have a positive impact on the problem.

Edit: grammar clarification.

Civilization could "just" relocate. As for desertification, see this TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

And remember, the alternative is still glaciation.

mikeash
Yeah, and "just" relocating ain't exactly trivial or foolproof.

The alternative is glaciation? If we have enough control over the climate to make it a bunch warmer, surely we have enough control (should we choose to exercise it) to keep it in the middle.

I often forget the difference between deforestation and desertification. For the later, which is an even worse problem you might want to watch this TED talk:

https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

As for some of your other suggestions "global carbon pricing system" reminds me of cap-and-trade which is a very political process if implemented. A simpler and fairer way to do that is to simply tax hydrocarbons and coal coming out of the ground. Then the price will be passed on to whomever uses it - tax the source rather than the use, it's much simpler and less subject to political manipulation and agendas. As for changing peoples diets, why not change their reproductive habits? All of these problems stem from having too many people. You can cut down a few forests, you can pump a few oil wells, you can raise cattle, the problem is having too much of that stuff to support an untenable number of people. We don't even have jobs for all of them. IMHO every country should have a means to provide birth control to anyone who wants it. A simple and effective long term attack on all of these problem, but no, it may not be enough by itself.

Jan 13, 2016 · poelzi on Trouble in Tibet
Allan Savory made great research in this field:

http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world...

Great video. Very much in line with Allan Savory's plan to reverse climate change: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl....

Instead of planting trees and pruning he uses rotating herds of animals. Both techniques respect nature and revitalize soil compared to conventional industrial farming practices. I don't understand why there aren't more startups in this space. Climate change is a worthwhile problem to tackle.

Seems a good time to post this: http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world...

It a TED talk about reversing desertification with farming practices. Not applicable to every crop, but here you go.

Silicon Valley needs to understand the food domain and it's environmental impact better before investing in these processed food startups. We already have the most efficient machine that converts plant matter into meat. It's called a cow. Cows and other ruminants have evolved over millions, if not billions of years, to make this process super efficient using just solar energy (photosynthesis) and water. Who are we to think we can do better in a few years in the lab?

Have these companies thought about the environmental impact of growing more row crops to create this fake meat and eggs? Row crops destroy ecosystems and reduce topsoil. It's also a system that sounds like it would need lots of logistics and energy to operate. Also it's not sustainable.

Silicon Valley should instead fund organizations looking to work with nature to create the future of food. Companies like Summer Technologies [1] are doing the right thing by acknowledging nature and creating technology that empowers sustainable agriculture that scales. With the right tools, these kind of farms can be more productive than massive industrial farms [2], feed the growing population of the world [3], while improving the quality of land and reducing CO2. It's a win-win-win if I've ever seen one.

This article also fails to mention anything about how the dangers of meat are greatly over exaggerated and not corroborated by modern science. [4] And what's wrong with eggs? They're one of the most nutritious foods out there with healthy omega-3 fats and a variety of minerals that are sorely lacking in modern processed food diets.

[1] http://www.summertechnologies.com

[2] Soil Carbon Cowboys: http://www.carbonnationmovie.com/about/clips/225-new-video-s...

[3] http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world...

[4] http://chriskresser.com/red-meat-it-does-a-body-good

deegles
The most efficient protein-producing machine is certainly not a cow. Chickens and especially insects are way more efficient. Some species of insects are over 90% efficient in turning raw food into protein, with way less water used to boot.
ethanbond
I don't see any evidence that we have "the most efficient machine" and that it's a cow. Evolution is incredibly slow, and humans outpacing it (using their brains) is exactly why we're at the top of the food chain.

Who are we to think we can't do better in the lab, when almost every worthwhile human invention has been precisely that – beating evolution at its own game?

I do agree with your initial premise though, we should be very careful and spend a lot of time considering the environmental impact. It's also very easy to say that as a well-off westerner with abundant access to food, though ;)

This could reduce desertification and reduce atmospheric CO2 while helping elephants. See this Ted talk to understand how:

https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

Terrible for the planet... until you watch this Ted talk. Then you may reconsider your position.

http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world...

To fix healthcare we need less technology, not more. People are getting cancer and diabetes because we've gone from eating nutrient dense high quality food to industrially processed corn, soy, and wheat-based junk. We have to stop the vilification of red meat, promote the health benefits of grass-fed meat, and try to get factory farms to employ some sort of holistic management [1]. Not only can we feed the world in a healthful manner this way, we can also reverse climate change.

Big pharma isn't interested in curing anything. It's financially beneficial to them to keep us sick. Why help them even more?

[1]: http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world...

hvs
Oh, is soy a villain this week?

I'm sorry, but it's so hard to keep up with which wacked out unscientific belief about food I'm supposed to believe from day to day.

tsax
I can understand your frustration. The key is not to follow the headlines but do deep research on each claim. For example, intake of dietary saturated fat is simply not associated with heart disease. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009...

Most soy consumption traditionally has been in Asia in small quantities, and after fermentation (soy sauce, miso etc). Vegan widespread usage of soy does not fit this pattern. http://www.westonaprice.org/soy-alert/studies-showing-advers...

Mar 12, 2013 · 2 points, 1 comments · submitted by spatten
spatten
This turned out to be a very interesting talk. The speaker set off my BS detector at the beginning with all of his grandiose statements, but the images near the end of the talk seem to prove him right.

I'd love to hear more about this. Anyone have any more information on this guy?

Or switch to sustainably raised meat (that's the focus on my farm). No medication of any kind, animals live on managed pasture that requires no inputs other than sun, air, and water.

Switching away from meat will certainly help to address the development of resistant microbes, but if you can make a switch instead to meat that was raised with regenerative pasture management practices, you can additionally have a large positive impact on many other environmental factors. Look for terms like "high-density grazing," "holistic grazing," "holistic management," or "management-intensive grazing (MIG)."

This TED talk [1] covers some of the information, for more you can google around for the above terms (sorry I don't have a good link handy). Correctly managing grazing livestock can actually reverse desertification and trap tons of carbon per year per acre in the soil. Of course, doing it wrong can have the opposite effect, so if you go this route it's important to know whether your farmer is running his operation with land restoration in mind.

Conventional vegetable production also comes with a slew of its own problems (breeding of herbicide-resistant weeds [2] being something closely related to the topic at hand). Eating in a way that doesn't cause harm is a tricky thing these days.

[1] - http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world...

[2] - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121002092839.ht...

*edited for formatting

RandallBrown
What do you do when your animals get sick?

I'm not trying to be inflammatory, I'm just curious.

aethertap
Just wanted to add two notes: First, I'm relatively new to raising animals, so I'm speaking from a position of some experience, but primarily learning from others' work. Second, sickness in general is rare for animals raised in this manner (long rest rotational mob grazing), so it's not an issue that really crops up very often.
aethertap
It's a natural question. Sick animals are culled from the herd. They may be either processed or sold to another producer who is willing to medicate, but my program is focused on building resistant genetics. You can look into "South poll cattle" [1] for an example of this type of breeding program. I don't raise cattle at this time, but I will be soon, and I'll be using an aggressive culling system like what was used for that breed with good results. For more information about this methodology, check out the Lasater Philosophy of Cattle Raising [2]. In my case, I try to apply the same basic ideas to sheep (and eventually cattle).

[1] http://www.southpoll.com/History.html

[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Lasater-Philosophy-Cattle-Raising/...

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