To be fair. There is much debate around whether livestock is indirectly carbon neutral with very valid studies on both sides
Please link any study on livestock being CO2-neutral. Iām very skeptical, but would love to read your source first.
I donāt have access to my schools library atm. But hereās one I found off google (which is admittedly a poor method to find studies)
https://smallfarms.oregonstate.edu/new-study-finds-grass-fed-beef-reduces-carbon-footprint
Full disclaimer I should have clarified in my original comment. Grass fed livestock specifically is carbon neutral
Itās not carbon neutral if you look at studies that account for more factors. For instance, hereās an article with an interview of the researchers in the field talking about how there is no carbon-neutral beef
Thereās not been a single study to say that we can have carbon-neutral beef
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We also have to ask how much of the sequestered carbon in these systems is actually due to the cattle. What would happen to the land if it were simply left fallow?
The answer is, depending on the land, and on the kind of grazing, it might sequester even more carbon https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/10/03/beef-soil-carbon-sequestration/
If we look at much more rigorous reviews on the carbon sequestration potential of āregenerative grazingā itās pretty slim. It cannot even sequester enough to counteract just grazing only production which only produces 1g protein/person/day
Ruminants in grazing-only systems emit about 1.32 Gt [ā¦] These are their emissions. The question is, could grazing ruminants also help sequester carbon in soils, and if so to what extent might this compensate? As the following numbers show, the answer is ānot muchā. Global (as opposed to regional or per hectare) assessments of the sequestration potential through grassland management are actually few and far between, but range from about 0.3-0.8 Gt CO 2/yr 301,302,303 with the higher end estimate assuming a strong level of ambition.
https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/reports/fcrn_gnc_report.pdf
And keep in mind that this doesnāt scale very well due to the massive land it requires. Already clearing land for pastures is a large deforester. Trying to even scale to a quarter of beef demand would require using 100% of grassland which would put enormous pressure for further deforestation
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
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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.
The key is to farm or graze using regenerative methods. Current factory farming methods are detrimental to the soil and the rest of the environemnt in many ways. Bear in mind, however, that the largest contributor to greenhouse gasses is the healthcare sector, and thatās going to be a tough nut to crack.
See my comment further down the thread going into detail about how this is not the case https://lemmy.ml/comment/646750
Check out the āsodcastsā of Peter Ballerstedt on his YouTube channel. Heās a forage agronomist with a lot of knowledge. You may not like his conclusions, but he gives you the data to check them out.
