I've found that a lot of analysis of beef and CO2 production revolves around factory farms and not sustainable farming. Cattle raised primarily on grassland emit greenhouse gasses that are then taken up by the grassland. There were literally millions of buffalo roaming this country 200 years ago. They fed off and fertilized grasslands. Would have been nice to analyze that cycle. I'm guessing there wasn't a lot of excess carbon going into the atmosphere.
I actually found info on that as well! Didn't make it into the final post, but there were actually huge discrepancies between the 'big' farms and the vast majority, which was responsible for a majority of the emissions. Thank you for pointing it out, I will include it next month in the next article of this series, because that is indeed an important distinction to make.
I've found that a lot of analysis of beef and CO2 production revolves around factory farms and not sustainable farming. Cattle raised primarily on grassland emit greenhouse gasses that are then taken up by the grassland. There were literally millions of buffalo roaming this country 200 years ago. They fed off and fertilized grasslands. Would have been nice to analyze that cycle. I'm guessing there wasn't a lot of excess carbon going into the atmosphere.
I actually found info on that as well! Didn't make it into the final post, but there were actually huge discrepancies between the 'big' farms and the vast majority, which was responsible for a majority of the emissions. Thank you for pointing it out, I will include it next month in the next article of this series, because that is indeed an important distinction to make.