usernamesAreTricky

It's enough to make it difficult to keep to 2C climate targets on its own. Its not something we should ignore - especially since much of it comes in methane emissions which means reduction in it can be felt quicker and reduce chance of hitting feedback loops. We must tackle all sources

To have any hope of meeting the central goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to 2°C or less, our carbon emissions must be reduced considerably, including those coming from agriculture. Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. Thus, major changes in how food is produced are needed if we want to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357

That's also on top of other environmental issues that it contributes to besides just climate change. Land usage, water usage, waste runoff

Transitioning to plant-based diets (PBDs) has the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 76%, diet-related greenhouse gas emissions by 49%, eutrophication by 49%, and green and blue water use by 21% and 14%, respectively, whilst garnering substantial health co-benefits

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html

And pesticide and fertilizer usage is lower

Thus, shifting from animal to plant sources of protein can substantially reduce fertilizer requirements, even with maximal use of animal manure

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344922006528

The diet containing more animal products required an additional 10 252 litres of water, 9910 kJ of energy, 186 g of fertilizer and 6 g of pesticides per week in comparison to the diet containing less animal products

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/article/comparing-the-water-energy-pesticide-and-fertilizer-usage-for-the-production-of-foods-consumed-by-different-dietary-types-in-california/14283C0D55AB613D11E098A7D9B546EA

For agriculture at least, the differences are often quite categorical. The best cast production will not get you the same differences as reducing meat consumption

Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html

It's an even larger difference than eliminating all food waste (which we should also work to reduce)

we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115

If we assume that's the case, half of revenue is still not a byproduct, it's a coproduct. The other half is still pretty relevant to its value and usage. If 50% of your revenue disappears from something, you're going to be making a lot less of it

It's worth noting that soybean meal is not a byproduct. When we look at the most common extraction method for soybean oil (using hexane solvents), soybean meal is still the driver of demand

However, soybean meal is the main driving force for soybean oil production due to its significant amount of productivity and revenues

[...]

soybean meal and hulls contribute to over 60% of total revenues, with meal taking the largest portion of over 59% of total revenue

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0926669017305010

This is even more true of other methods like expelling which is still somewhat commonly used

Moreover, soybean meal is the driving force for the whole process [expelling oil from soy] because it provides over 70% of the total revenue for soy processing by expelling

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/9/5/87

Good news is that overall arable farmland usage goes down the less meat you eat. Don't need to use all the same land, you have flexibility to move around production

we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115

Yes, though that doesn't mean it can't be stopped. That it can be reduced in some countries is a sign we can make progress on it

Much of the global growth is occurring in developing countries right now who often view increased meat consumption as a symbol of wealth and status (in part due to seeing it highly consumed in the west). Changing expectations and consumption in the west can have a ripple effect outward

To an extent, yes it would likely do that. Though on the other hand running into the maximum capacity limitations would not look pretty. Even countries that have a just bit higher grass-fed production than others have a fair number of issues (and still use plenty of supplemental grain)

For instance, in New Zealand, they use a massive amount of synthetic fertilizer on grasslands to try to make it keep up for dairy production

The large footprint for milk in Canterbury indicates just how far the capacity of the environment has been overshot. To maintain that level of production and have healthy water would require either 12 times more rainfall in the region or a 12-fold reduction in cows.

[…]

The “grass-fed” marketing line overlooks the huge amounts of fossil-fuel-derived fertiliser used to make the extra grass that supports New Zealand’s very high animal stock rates.

https://theconversation.com/11-000-litres-of-water-to-make-one-litre-of-milk-new-questions-about-the-freshwater-impact-of-nz-dairy-farming-183806

Or in the UK and Ireland where grass-fed production leads to deforestation and they still need additional grain on top of it

Most of the UK and Ireland’s grass-fed cows and sheep are on land that might otherwise be temperate rainforest – arable crops tend to prefer drier conditions. However, even if there were no livestock grazing in the rainforest zone – and these areas were threatened by other crops instead – livestock would still pose an indirect threat due to their huge land footprint

[…]

Furthermore, most British grass-fed cows are still fed crops on top of their staple grass

https://theconversation.com/livestock-grazing-is-preventing-the-return-of-rainforests-to-the-uk-and-ireland-198014

We should push for large institutional change, but don't ignore individual change either. Problem is how will you get said governments to act if people aren't also stepping up and they expect backlash to acting? The more people expect it to be cheap and highly consumed, the harder it will be for them to act. Moving people away from meat individually makes it easier. Movements that succeed usually have both individual and institutional change

Institutional change that is achievable at the current moment is smaller. There's been some success with things like changing the defaults to be plant-based (which is good and we should continuing to push for that), but cutting subsides is going to be an uphill battle until a larger number of people change their consumption patterns

Beef production is falling in some countries. For instance in Germany

In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23273338/germany-less-meat-plant-based-vegan-vegetarian-flexitarian

Unfortunately grass-fed production is no solution. It both does not scale or help reduce emissions

We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates

[…]

If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

It's fundamentally inefficient. The claims of "green" meat production are greenwashing from the industry. The industry would love for you to believe there is a way that they could clean it up. It takes growing tons of crops just for most of that energy to be lost by the creatures moving around, digesting, etc.

Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html

Nor is something like grass-fed production a solution when that has even higher emissions due to higher rates of methane production from cows. It also is even higher land demand

We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates

[…]

If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

If you are going to make criticism, please make informed criticism

On the senate side they did challenge quite a bit as violations of the Byrd rule and got the parliamentarian to strike down some important parts of the bill. Provisions ranging from the attempts to limit court's abilities to hold people in contempt (pretty important one) to anti-trans medicare provisions to the federal land sell off. Think it was something like 15 provisions struck down for violating the rules of reconciliation (the narrow exception to the filibuster used to pass budget bills).

The struck provisions didn't end up in the final passed bill. And note that article is about the house which that limitation does not apply to. The filibuster does not exist in the house. Debate is time limited as well. The only reason Jeffries was able to speak as long as he did is the convention to not count a party leader's speech as being longer than one minute. Republicans could have cut him off if they wanted to

EDIT: And again, this is not a defense of either chamber's leader in general, just that they actually did this time what people were calling on them to do earlier. If you want to shit on Schumer for helping passing the CR in March where he actually did give up real leverage from the filibuster (was not passed through reconciliation), then rightly go ahead. Just endlessly frustrated at the desire for a magic wand to fix it all that doesn't exist. Criticize where it counts or we're wasting our energy in the wrong places