Can you imagine if every human on the plannet only ate Boston Baked Beans?  Just kidding, but many kinds of beans and vegetables can cause human farts.  Honestly, I cannot look at another Garbanzo bean in my life. 

Anyway, great article and thanks for the smile.  Better watch out that Monsanto doesn't read this and invent GMO "beano" for cattle feed and vegatables, right?  LOL...

There may be a future in beef-eater rehab clinics. A lock-down facility in which you are taught the evils of beef followed by two days of working in a slaughter house. Then you would spend a week working in a small garden and eating only what was grown there. It might work!

I suspect your plan would backfire.

Working in a slaughter house would just remove that particular aversion. You would get used to it very quickly. Your distant and very recent ancestors hunted and slaughtered animals routinely. In my time I've gutted, skinned, and cleaned uncounted rabbits, fish and squirrels, fed pigeons rats and rabbits to snakes, euthanized terminally ill and suffering pets. Death is part of life. Suffering is the thing to minimize.

Spending a week tending a small hobby garden would give you a false impression. Working as a farm hand in the baking sun all summer and eating for an entire year only what you could successfully grow would teach you to find an easier way to make a living.

Sadly, I am aware of the path of which you speak  as I live in a hunting-positive environment. Well, hunting here is sitting in a "deer stand" on a comfortable chair, 20 feet up in the air, waiting for the deer you have corn-fed in high tech solar powered and timer driven feeders all year long, to saunter by. Yeah, you are pretty sure they will be here and 6:00am and 6:00pm.  Yes, here it is the only perfectly acceptable reason for leaving the wife and screaming young ones ( "younguns" in local parlance)  at home while you peacefully watch hours of movies on your iPhone in your deer stand.  This may be the deepest secret of the southern hunting lobby. The only thing that could interrupt this somatic activity is a deer. Then you have to shoot it, chase it to the point of it's ultimate demise, haul it's only large-dog-size carcass through untold amounts of razor sharp vegetation, and then hang and gut it. (So Sorry if the graphic  description offends those living where someone else guts your "free range meat"--like Massachusetts or New York ). Yet, after a few dozen of these adventures, I still prefer supermarket steaks. Which is why I thought this erroneous plan would work. (Random note: Raccoon meat is really, really bad tasting stuff.)

At this point I have to redeem my hunter-self by saying I lived in Colorado for most of my life where you hiked through knee deep snow for days to shoot an elk that was the size of a horse that would travel a mile after the fatal shot. Then you would have to coax a dozen of your fellow hunters ( you better have a dozen coaxable fellow hunters with you) to haul it for miles and gut the thing. I still preferred supermarket steak.

Maybe you can also help me on this problem: I have this huge crop of Swiss chard in my garden. It grew slowly over the winter, just enough for nice salads and as "lettuce" for my hamburgers,  and now each plant is nearly 5 feet high!  Five feet times 40 plants that well, I can't eat. Do you know of some pallatable recipes for same? I do not have the heart to slaughter it all and plant yet another row of tomatoes and peppers for my "salsa garden".

Note: I live just a wee bit north of New Orleans where the major gardening challenge is keeping the height of your weeds below the height of the more edible stuff.

What I think is important is to note that grass-fed cattle are just that  - grass-fed.  This means that pasture is involved on a significant scale.  Pasture takes no fossil fuel imputs to maintain (just properly managed herds) and sequesters a lot of carbon thus helping the whole excess atmospheric carbon problem.  Just imagine if all of those corn fields were pasture instead.  There is a good explaination on this site :  http://www.carbonfarmersofamerica.com/Savory3.htm

In fact, considering that - and their relatively cush lives when being  milked - they are considered to be some of the best meat.

Ironically, our reunion is centers around an affair called a "pig-picking" that involves a large swine cooking all day. Not sure I am ready for swine after all the reading about the factory farms even though I am assured this pig was raised locally on a conventional farm.

It's the big corporations that make all the money, not the grow-out pasture folks and some organic beef operations, or the "mini-ranch" dudes.

Really great thoughts on pastures.  What you say is mostly true for traditional systems.  If pastures are grazed intensively (meaning the cattle bunched together and moved frequently - imitating the natural habits of herd animals) there should be no fallow pastures or "free-range" pastures.  When pastures are managed correctly, weeds become a minimal problem.    Hay is a necessary, fossil-fuel consuming part of it - you are right.  It doesn't mean chemicals need to be used.  Most open-range ranching is as you describe currently.  There are a group of ranchers, however, who are managing the land and animals more carefully and actually improving forage quality, water quality and biodiversity.  It is truly wonderful to see. 

Bloat does sometimes happen on overly-rich pastures but if the farmer is engaged and watchful, it can easily be prevented with proper roughage. 

Yes, it is a lot of work, but myself and my family are living proof that 100 percent grass-fed dairy and beef is profitable and viable (it is our sole source of income - no hobby operation). 

While I constantly hear about cutting back on meat to reduce your carbon footprint, it is worthy to note that eating locally-produced, grass-fed beef has a smaller carbon footprint than eating veggies trucked 1500 miles (in most cases). 

Thanks for the discussion!

Additionally, pasture is not necessarily the optimal land type for all regions, and many regions are in fact ecologically unsuitable for grazing, and would be best suited instead for wetlands resortation, reforestation efforts, etc. for building sequestration as opposed to pasture. For those regions that are suitable for rest rotation grazing, such as New England where I reside, even then, most pastures are estimated to have about a 25-year period of sequestration before the soils reach a "saturation point" and then may actually begin to leak or lose carbon. So, grazing for sequestration purposes still might be a temporary fix and is restricted to only a certain regions in the U.S. 

To put it simply, no matter what type of meat or dairy we are consuming, we need to consume substantially LESS of it. The FAO called for the immediate halving of all livestock production; the IPCC suggested everyone choose to eat meat free one day a week and reduce from there; other estimates say we should reduce by 2/3 in the next decade or so. The U.S. are the highest per capita consumers of meat and dairy in the world, at three times the global average. It's simply not sustainable, and hasn't been for awhile. There's no way to argue around it or justify it. Eat less meat and dairy...

Thank you for your information and comments.  I have not read the reports you cite and find the conclusions interesting. 

I agree that the inputs that go into confined livestock are excessive and we should all cut out conventionally-raised meat.  I also agree that not all land is suitable for pasture but there is much land that is devoted to corn and soy that used to be grasslands and is well-suited to this more ecologically-sound purpose. 

I don't want to drag this out and really do appreciate your comments.  I have just one question, what inputs do you see going into, for example, grass-fed beef that are sooooo much greater than a vegetable crop?  The only inputs that go into our beef are the fuel to transport them to be processed and then to market, some fencing, some salt blocks, and some fuel to harvest hay for the winter (the same, I imagine as would go into harvestng soy beans, wheat, or beets mechanically).  I know this is not the picture of beef production in general in this country and a clear distinction should be made.  I am a vegetarian when eating away from home but happily consume the meat we produce. 

I really am interested as I like to fully understand the product we produce and market and its implications. 

Thank you!

Thanks for your questions. In response to your question on inputs, I was speaking more generally. Livestock, especially cattle, require much, much more resources in general, specifically water, to produce meat and dairy. In my experience traveling to different farms in the NE area, very little farms in fact are 100%  grassfed; most of them seem to use at least some supplemental grain. Some of this grain is produced on the farm. Most often, it is not. So this is another input that can stack up. Esteemed agroecologist David Pimintel has done a lot of research on inputs into livestock production. Here's one study: http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html

The Carnegie Melon study I cited on local v. lower meat diet can be found at this link: http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/esthag/2008/42/i10/abs/es702969f.html 

Again, my attempt is not to demonize all meat and dairy production. I think that small-scale, pasture-based, localized livestock production in select regions can be defined as sustainable and even ecologically beneficial (in fact, my thesis is also partially on what subsidies are available to graziers and if the playing field is level between them v. CAFOs). However, I am trying to enforce the message that pasture-raised is not a panacea and in order for it to be a sustainable option, overall animal product consumption rates need to be dramatically reduced. In my personal experience here in Vermont, there is a great amount of resistance in the University of implementing a Meatless Monday or to even foster discussion on reducing meat or dairy consumption, despite some of the findings of the university itself. A lot of people in this resistance merely promote pasture-raised and local as the band-aid solution (even though a lot of the meat offered in fact is industrially-produced).  I just want to make it clear to people that just because you're eating "grassfed" or "local" or "organic" meat, doesn't make the act in and of itself sustainable, just like buying and driving a hybrid isn't sustainable if you're not going to drive any less. In pure terms of GHG footprint, vegetarians and vegans have a much lighter step than meat-eaters no matter how you cut it. And, most vegetarians I know are very conscious of eating local and organic produce.

"...vegetarians and vegans have a much lighter step than meat-eaters no matter how you cut it...."

 Eggs, and dairy are just as environmetnally intensive as meat. Like meat, they are animal products. It comes down to how much animal product you consume.  And your footprint is not "much lighter" than your neighbors. It is only a fraction of a percent different:

http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/img6.gif

One of the problems we face is that we eat too darn much of the stuff.  We all know about different ethnic foods where "a little tiny bit of meat goes a long way."  But to demand cutbacks in industrial meat suppliers is the wrong way to do it - we need to educate people first.

And Bio-D, things like meat, eggs, and dairy products just store the caloric value of grain, grass, and other stuff, however inefficient.  If you eat 30 pounds of grain, beans and veggies a day, you're pretty much equal to lesser amounts of meat in a balanced diet that really tastes good, without the farts and bloats.  Read Michael Polan?

http://twitter.com/yomimi

(Try as I may, I still cannot understand how carbon-offsets can reduce CO2 emmissions. But they do make me feel better)

> Protein.

The only beings benefitting from this happy meat, grass-fed, cafe-free, organic, hormone-free, sustainable murder market are the producers, because they can do very little for the animals and charge a whole lot more for the products. The secondary beneficiaries are the consumers, because they can pat themselves on the back and feel like they are doing something good for the animals. You want to do something good for the animals, then stop creating, enslaving, and eating them!

Enough of the excuses-go vegan!

What I find even more interesting is that while many consider eating animals as unclean, spreading disease, absorbing toxics, and generally being nasty, fruits, nuts, and vegetables CAN KILL YOU.  The recalls over the last 5 years for scallions, spinach, peanuts, jalapenos, were stark reminders that non-meat products can be lethal.  So obviously there is no high ground with respect to safety, and the diluted and weak "organic" labeling doesn't mean much except that prices can be hiked. 

I'll still go with natural, grass-fed beef and eat it sparingly as possible.  If it kills me, well, I'll at least have a smile on my face.

It should not be about the food killing you, but you killing helpless, sentient beings for your own selfish purposes.

"If it kills me, well, I'll at least have a smile on my face." Yeah, I bet serial killers have smiles on their faces too while torturing and murdering their victims.