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lysergicfuneral249 karma

gross $100,000+ in a season

Great, but what do you think they actually net?

lysergicfuneral36 karma

Most of it. Something near 50% of land in the US is dedicated to livestock and their feed.

lysergicfuneral20 karma

Hi Bill,

With documentaries like Cowspiracy, Forks Over Knives, and Food Inc., the damage that animal agriculture causes to the environment and personal health is becoming more well-known. Livestock's impact on the environment rivals (or even exceeds) that of all forms of transportation combined. You have several posts about this on your blog. And as you pointed out, demand for meat and dairy will only increase in the developing world in the coming decades. You have also been influential in actions taken to work on climate change issues, notably and recently in Paris.

Someone with your influence could make a big difference in weaning the Western world off of meat and dairy and maybe, hopefully, setting the standard for the rest of the world. Renewable power, electric cars, and mass transit are all great, but changing one's diet cane make a bigger difference, right now, at no additional cost.

A few years ago, I saw that you and your wife went vegan. Are you still? Will you make reduction of meat and dairy one of the points of your climate discussion?

Thanks for everything you do, Bill.

lysergicfuneral19 karma

I should asked before but is this gig (veg farming ~1 acre) 40hr / week job? Basically is there much room for a side hustle?

lysergicfuneral14 karma

Let it return to it's natural state. Some was forest, most of it was plains with wild animals. Bison etc animals lived and died in the same place, their resources stayed there. All the cattle there now are taken away for slaughter, along with their nutrients.

In many cases (obviously it depends on the type of terrain etc) water is either delivered or pumped from a well for the animals to survive. This contributes to the ground water/aquifer depletion issue that is a problem from much of the land in the plains and western states.

Finally, we have MANY, MANY times more cattle etc than there would have been of bison. And so those cattle produce much more CO2 and methane than was the natural state. As you may know, methane is something like 70x more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2.