the movie is titled: Six Inches of Soil
The comments on the article are a dumpster fire. I’m not sure if it’s just UK Guardian comments being worse than on the other regional variants, of if animal agriculture shills are targeting this article in particular.
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More importantly, the counterfactual scenario went unmentioned: if his cattle were removed from the land and it was allowed to rewild, far more carbon would accumulate, both above and below ground, and this would not be counteracted by the farm’s emissions
That’s not the counterfactual, though.
The ACTUAL counterfactual is that the demand for beef continues to skyrocket worldwide and that if we do not embrace regenerative agriculture practices, we must instead continue to endlessly fertilize soils and buy feedstocks to keep the beef growing. The actual counterfactual to having this guy pushing his farm towards more sustainable practice is that he’ll continue to operate the farm with less sustainable practice. Or even more likely, become financially unsustainable and have to sell out to a larger industrial farm who will operate the land in the least sustainable way possible to extract the most quarterly profits possible because they don’t give any damn about the long term.
And the ACTUAL counterfactual is that if western markets abandon beef production, there’s plenty of farmers happy to raze the Amazon and other even-more-critical ecosystems to do it there instead. Because the demand will be there regardless.
It’s utter fantasy to pretend that everyone is just going to wake up vegan tomorrow. It’s not going to happen. This author clearly is arguing that we need to… I don’t know, outlaw beef, I guess? Just ban it entirely? And then take all the farmland and convert it to protected wildlife habitats instead? Including a staff of rangers who will oversee and protect the land to make sure it stays healthy, safe, and sustainable? Because that’s the only way the ‘counterfactual’ he made up makes one lick of sense.
It’s a good strategy for environmentalists to take… if they want to ensure they lose elections and doom us all.
It is disingenuous to claim that regenerative agriculture practices can even hope to be a functional carbon sink. But they can hugely reduce the emissions and mitigate the other externalities of an incredibly polluting industry. And do it in a way that simultaneously increases animal welfare, reduces spread of disease, and increases profits progressively (because these practices are actually easier and more effective at smaller sizes rather than at huge industrial operations).
Definitional retreat – changing the meaning of a word when an objection is raised.[22] Often paired with moving the goalposts (see below), as when an argument is challenged using a common definition of a term in the argument, and the arguer presents a different definition of the term and thereby demands different evidence to debunk the argument.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
Argument to moderation (Latin: argumentum ad temperantiam)—also known as the false compromise, argument from middle ground, fallacy of gray, middle ground fallacy, or golden mean fallacy[1]—is the fallacy that the truth is always in the middle of two opposites.
What word are you accusing me of redefining and what moderation am I suggesting?
The argument of this article can apply to literally all of agriculture, not just animal produce. It applies to fucking backyard tomatoes. Increasing sustainability and reducing emissions should be seen as a good thing. Even when you don’t get directly to 0 from the beginning.
Starting with the lowest-hanging fruit isn’t capitulation, it’s progress. If your position is completely undoing all of a global capitalist system tomorrow or bust, you’re getting bust and likely taking others with you.
Redefining the counterfactual scenario. Why ignore the case of less beef production out of hand? Beef consumption has been declining over time in a number of countries. Then proceed to ignore the rest of the article’s main point after that one word
Beef is an enormous outlier in emissions and they are pointing out that the claims that supposedly reduce it are highly missleading. They’re not much of a reduction. People tout it as if the emissions were gone. They’re nowhere near that
Moving my reply to the comment that wasn’t deleted…
Redefining the counterfactual scenario
Lord please give me the strength to not give this guy a Logic and Critical Thinking 101 lecture… Definitional retreat does not apply to what I said about the counterfactual because that was not an argument about what the term “counterfactual” means. It only applies when people argue about the definition of a word. He and I have the same definition of the word “counterfactual”.
What you MEANT is that you DISAGREE with my assessment of the counterfactual scenario. But instead, you tried to make yourself seem very clever and logical and me very foolish and emotional by misappropriating a term.
Why ignore the case of less beef production out of hand
Why ignore the reality that annual beef demand is growing consistently every year? Especially in the global south, where the environmental effects of raising beef are in fact way worse.
I think you should just say what you actually want to say.
Here, I’ll do my best to do it for you:
Beef production is an environmental disaster. These people working to mitigate the harms of that industry are mopping the decks of a sinking ship. If they really want to say they care about the environment, the only reasonable choice is shutting down their ranches and doing something else, because beef is just hopeless.
To which I’ll respond in mostly the same way I have. That’s nice and all, but beef demand is still growing. I’d rather farmers that do their best to mitigate harms raising the beef than the ones who only care about making the most short-term profit possible, damn sustainability. Keep going out there and preaching for veganism. I hope you succeed. Don’t make enemies out of your allies along the way.
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But my book club leader says working within our current means is counterrevolutionary!
It’s increasingly a problematic attitude I see among some of the gamer chair leftist groups of Lemmy. That anyone attempting any kind of pragmatism is identified as a liberal reactionary. Any criticism of their particular pet theory within socialism is just counterrevolutionary propaganda.
Imo it’s kinda counterproductive considering that leftism is built upon the ideas of mutual cooperation and aid.
This is all missing the point. People are claiming it’s carbon free or low emission when it is still substantially higher than other things. The beef industry loves to promote this as if it solves beef emissions. It does not. The emissions are still very much there. If it was touted as a small reduction that would be one thing
You really, really need to read up more on the world of regenerative ag. It’s not typically touted as being “zero emissions” or anything like that outside of this op-ed writer’s strawman argument.
It’s almost entirely sold as a way to avoid having to buy expensive feed and fertilizers through better land management. Do you really think the average farmer gives a fuck about the climate? They have bills to pay. They like that there’s sustainability benefits to the practices, don’t get me wrong, and and being able to advertise the better practices that went into producing the beef is part the pitch, but this is all about cost-savings and improving product quality almost entirely through thoughtful field rotation and reduced/eliminated tilling.
And it does work. Small farmers who have enough land and patience to adopt these practices can almost entirely eliminate their needs for buying fertilizers and feed. Which I’ll remind you, outside of transportation, is the main source of carbon emissions for most farms. Methane from cellulose digestion is another battle that is being waged separately.
Moreover, the more farmers prove that it CAN be done in a financially sustainable way, the easier it becomes to get rid of the worse environmental practices, both on friendly soil and abroad.
People are claiming it’s carbon free or low emission when it is still substantially higher than other things.
Who? The person I responded to was not making that claim…
The beef industry loves to promote this as if it solves beef emissions. It does not. The emissions are still very much there.
No one here is agreeing with the beef industry, they were just specifying that a few countries abstaining from the beef industry would not inherently limit the demand for the beef industry. Meaning that the production of beef would just move to regions with less environmental protections.
My comment was just extrapolating on a personal opinion about modern leftism and how we typically deal with conflicting rationality from within.
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