It's been well reported that plant-based diets are improve for the environment, because growing plants produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions than raising livestock, as well equally requiring less water and land use overall. But all the research out there can be a bit confusing—such as, for instance, a recently published white paper that lauds the minimal environmental affect of U.S. beef, published by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. The white paper outlines the "minimal environmental footprint of beef product in the U.Due south.," citing all the ways the U.Due south. produces beef sustainably and is standing to brand improvements when it comes to environmental touch on.

It's a scary fourth dimension for those in the animal-production manufacture. Dean Foods, the largest U.Due south. milk producer, simply filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy, blaming declines in consumer milk production. Surveys testify people are eating less meat and instead might be reaching for pop establish-based offerings like Impossible and Beyond. Information technology's also a scary time for all of us who live on this planet, which is in the midst of what experts are calling a definitive climate emergency. As more than and more than experts encourage people to curb their meat consumption for the planet's benefit, it seems the beef industry is trying to counteract that narrative with its own reports of its sustainability efforts.

Of course, the meat and dairy industries are going to share their own perspectives through self-funded research and white papers, notes Tim Searchinger, a research scholar at Princeton and senior fellow at World Resources Institute (WRI). Searchinger recently authored an extensive study on how to create a sustainable food future. While reports from industry associations may comprise real facts, they also tend to include a few things worth some skepticism. Searchinger broke downwards some of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association'southward highlights to put it all in context and give us the broader picture of how sustainable beef can really be.

Beef says: Carbon emission calculations are wrong

The National Cattlemen's Beef Clan says they get a bad rap because of how global statistics on greenhouse gas emissions become mistaken for U.Southward.-specific stats, and how beefiness emissions are muddled with that of all livestock. "Globally, life cycle emissions from livestock production (emissions from feed product to consumer) are fourteen.5% of GHG emissions," per the white paper. Global beef life bike emissions are half-dozen% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, they add together, and for the U.South. specifically, they say, citing the EPA, just three.3% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions come from beef cattle, in the form of  feed production, fuel and electricity use, and methyl hydride and nitrous oxide emitted by moo-cow burps and manure.

Merely Searchinger says this isn't authentic, because this number doesn't take into business relationship the land set aside for cattle farming. That ways the beef manufacture is ignoring the emissions that are a result of converting land to utilise for livestock—both the energy it takes to convert that land and the fact that farmland doesn't blot equally much CO2 from our atmosphere as the forests that information technology replaced. "Virtually a tertiary of the carbon in our atmosphere is there because of the conversion of country to agriculture," says Searchinger. "In club to produce all of this beefiness, we've had to articulate a huge corporeality of woods, which is true even in the U.Southward."

Though the beef industry may say that doesn't actually matter since all that land has already been converted to agricultural use, that'southward not the whole story either. "As global consumption [of beef] increases, nosotros demand to clear more land," says Searchinger. Plus, it's not like that country couldn't become back to being wood, which would help absorb more CO2 from the air. "We cleared all this state, and people say, 'Well, forget about it,' only every acre of land we're doing this to could be an acre that's reforested," he adds. "When agriculture contracts, forests regrow." Taking land into business relationship, WRI calculated that beef product was responsible for about fifteen% of the U.Southward.'s full greenhouse emissions.

Beef says: Only we're non as bad as transportation

Big Beef points the finger at transportation, saying that it's not equally bad every bit all the planes, trains, and automobiles that emit greenhouse gases. "To put U.Southward. beef production further into perspective, all of agriculture, including beefiness cattle and other animal and crop agronomics, accounts for 8.4 percent of U.South. GHG emissions," writes the Cattlemen'due south Association. "Comparatively, transportation accounts for 28 percent of GHG emissions in the U.Due south." But this comparison doesn't really make sense, for a few reasons. It's non similar Americans are choosing between eating a burger or driving around. As well, these calculations over again ignore the ecology impact of land use for agriculture. And in the cease, it'southward only a "silly" statement, says Searchinger, considering information technology doesn't really affair: Both are responsible for a lot of environmental damage.

"They obviously don't want the message to be that people should eat less beef, but it's like anything else," he says. "Nosotros want the world's cars to be more efficient . . . merely that doesn't mean nosotros want people to drive more than." Overall, people accept been eating less beef; the average American eats about a tertiary less beef now than they did in the 1970s, dropping from almost eighty pounds per capita to  57 pounds, according to 2017 data. Only the matter is, total beef consumption on a population level has basically stayed the aforementioned, and that's because our population has grown. "So if it weren't for the fact that people are consuming less beefiness, we'd take to clear a lot more country," says Searchinger. "It's clearly had a big upshot that people have [been eating less]."

[Source Photo: JackieNix/iStock]

Beef says: Compared to other countries, U.S. beef is the virtually efficient

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association says U.S.-grown beef is more sustainable than beef from other countries—"The U.Southward. has one of the lowest beef GHG emissions intensities: x–50 times lower than other parts of the globe," they write—and this one is actually truthful, only it comes with a pretty big caveat. "The bottom line is that beef is inherently a very inefficient food," Searchinger says. "There are huge environmental implications involved in producing beef. That's true wherever it's produced." The crux of why, he notes, is considering it takes about 50 to 100 calories of feed to produce 1 calorie of beef, meaning lots of land set bated for cattle, which is less land for forests that can sequester CO2.

1 thing the U.S. does do well is maximize production: "The U.S. produces around eighteen% of the world'south beef with eight% of the world's cattle herd," according to the Cattlemen'south Association, thank you to refined genetics and nutrition advancements. "Fewer cattle required for a given amount of beef produced means fewer GHG emissions and fewer natural resource required to produce homo nourishment." It means we go more than burgers out of less land, and less land for agronomics is a positive.

Though the Cattlemen's Association says that "cattle can convert plants with little to no nutritional value frequently found on these lands into a high-quality protein," that'due south only taking into business relationship the grass intentionally planted on that land for cattle to graze, as if that'due south the only option. American cows aren't just fed grass that humans can't eat; they're fed grain, and if we took all that grain given to U.Southward. livestock (beyond just beefiness), it could feed almost 800 million people. "We utilize less land per kilogram of beefiness, but we're however providing it through corn, which is edible past people," says Searchinger.

Beef says: Nosotros're always getting more sustainable

Finally, the beefiness industry promises information technology's getting better and more efficient every year—making advancements in everything from grazing land management and methane-inhibitors to water recycling engineering science and manure composting, which it says are "just a few of the examples of new technologies existence deployed and tested that volition further heighten the sustainability of U.Southward. beef production." But that might not really matter. Fifty-fifty with big gains in the meat industry, WRI projects that emissions from the industry will ascent, and that'southward because our population will continue to grow. Overall, says Searchinger, we need to eat less beef, and that's most true for Americans. "Almost of the earth eats staggeringly lilliputian meat and dairy. If everyone in the world ate the same amount of beef we do in the U.S., nosotros'd need another planet," he says.

WRI thinks the boilerplate American should eat closer to the equivalent of a hamburger and a half a week, instead of the electric current three-hamburger-per-week average consumption. Simply as they say, less is ever more than.