I beg of you to investigate real-world cattle raising practices in 2021, this idea of sustainable grazing is not a thing that's happening in the real world. Much of water consumption in order to sustain meat production is not happening locally, other states are farming excess crops expressly for the purpose of contributing to feed.
And the Wisconsin parallel doesn't work -- it is barely a blip when it comes to U.S. beef production. California and Florida both produce more, for example.
> this idea of sustainable grazing is not a thing that's happening in the real world
It is, in many places. I live in Montana (alongside some 2.6M head of cattle), and we have vast ranches with sustainable numbers of cattle. The land they live on isn't (and wouldn't be) forest, nor is it farmable (typically too rocky or too much grade).
As for the "blip" argument, Wisconson is ranked 9th, while California is ranked 5th. Hardly a "blip". Also Florida? It's ranked 18th, with 1.6M head.
Actually, most of the top 10 states are naturally grassland states, with California being the outlier.
on sustainable grazing: there's not enough land to produce the amount of cattle we would need to sustain even the U.S. meat consumption sustainably.. we need something else
Since this post is about individual choices, an individual can easily buy milk that is grass raised. My milk comes from a farm 10 miles away. The cows eat grass, drink water, and milk comes out. There are plenty of small businesses and family farms still milking cows.
Sustainable grazing is happening in the real world, just not at scale to really matter. But we can change that. And the political will to change it is likely far higher than political will to get everyone to stop consuming these products entirely.
On a well managed farm, you can get 1 cow per 1.25 acres of land, hanging weight about 750lbs. That yields about 750k kcal, which is enough for 2100 calories per day for an entire year.
Nutritionally, you can get all of your fat or protein from 1lb of beef per day. One cow is enough to feed 2 adult humans for an entire year.
This production would require almost zero external inputs. No fertilizer or water, just graze land and water from rainfall.
Just in corn alone, we produce over 10k kcal per person annually in the US. We have a surplus of grains and legumes. We produce an order of magnitude more calories than we need every year.
If you want to solve sustainability, you need to solve waste. To solve waste, you need to fix the incentives. As long as city dwellers demand their cheap industrialized food, taxes will subsidize the cheap industrialized food.
And the Wisconsin parallel doesn't work -- it is barely a blip when it comes to U.S. beef production. California and Florida both produce more, for example.
EDIT: The Wisconsin factoid is incorrect, it only holds true for cattle raised for beef production, not dairy. Here's the USDA data: https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/...