Cowspiricy....must watch documentary

crackcrack30

Watched this last night ....can't help but be moved by this, a real peak into the future and a recommended watch for all beef and dairy farmers, more of a heads up than the usual head in the sand about beef & dairy (fish) , the growth of the world population and how it will be fed within 30-40 years. one of the biggest beef farmers in the US has is say.

Timmaay

Ya trying to troll ha? Food Inc was better in my view!

crackcrack30

No not trolling, farming both sides of this family going back generations...

Hard and foolish to ignore this though,,, It could leave a lot of farmers high and dry with a few policy changes and a turn of consumer habits overnight.

It's content can't be ignored I think....

RightTurnClyde

Link??

crackcrack30

give me a minute...sorry

this website..... Viooz..... im sure there are more, can't remember which site I streamed it off sorry

evolving_doors

crackcrack30 wrote: »

Watched this last night ....can't help but be moved by this, a real peak into the future and a recommended watch for all beef and dairy farmers, more of a heads up than the usual head in the sand about beef & dairy (fish) , the growth of the world population and how it will be fed within 30-40 years. one of the biggest beef farmers in the US has is say.

and what was the upshot of it?

celtic_oz

claim is that 51% of global greenhouse gases are caused by the meat industry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B-_xH0Xmho

crackcrack30

That,s just one claim of many in the documentary.... Another hinted at is that the major beef and dairy co-ops are funding the likes of green peace and others for their silence with regard to pollution and deforestation..
The silence from some of the big environmentalist organisations is deafening on the subject when approached..

selectamatic

http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2057584407/1

Thread here for ye lads.
When someone shows me how to viably grow 70acres of crops in place of rocks and rushes in North Roscommon without irreparably damaging my local environment I'll be the first to realise the error of my ways but until then I think my few Angus cattle are probably the greenest farming option available to me.

crackcrack30

selectamatic wrote: »

http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2057584407/1

Thread here for ye lads.
When someone shows me how to viably grow 70acres of crops in place of rocks and rushes in North Roscommon without irreparably damaging my local environment I'll be the first to realise the error of my ways but until then I think my few Angus cattle are probably the greenest farming option available to me.

That just appears to be a thread of random opinions

XR3i

i read that in the paper recently, that a cow makes more carbon monoxide than a diesel 20

crackcrack30

A hefty carbon tax per kg at the factory gate on your angus might change your mind if some people get their way.... the added expense to the shelf price of the meat would send people back to only eating meat once a week (sunday) like the middle of the last century...

Timmaay

crackcrack30 wrote: »

That,s just one claim of many in the documentary.... Another hinted at is that the major beef and dairy co-ops are funding the likes of green peace and others for their silence with regard to pollution and deforestation..
The silence from some of the big environmentalist organisations is deafening on the subject when approached..

https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-is-the-movie-Cowspiracy here's some bedtime reading for ya!

My view point, yep modern livestock farming most certainly appears to contribute to climate change, to the extent that is portrayed in this documentary though?, the research presented above certainly suggests alot of the "facts" are well blown out of proportion. The silence in regard to environmental groups, makes for very compelling viewing I'll admit, however again probably is very bias and probably edited to maximise their own point of view. However it wouldn't actually surprise me if there is a reasonable truth to all that given the insane lobbying power of the meat industry in the USA.

XR3i

crackcrack30 wrote: »

A hefty carbon tax per kg at the factory gate on your angus might change your mind if some people get their way.... the added expense to the shelf price of the meat would send people back to only eating meat once a week (sunday) like the middle of the last century...

i would agree with that but lads/ladies who are working hard have to eat a few steaks a week,


unless theres some vegetarian alternative?

freedominacup

celtic_oz wrote: »

claim is that 51% of global greenhouse gases are caused by the meat industry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B-_xH0Xmho

Ok I've sat through it. Never getting that time back but however, what has that movie for to do with Irish dairy and beef production other than to give a few pr people some pointers on differentiating our products from mainstream US production? I'd stack a gallon of my milk up against 10lbs of whatever Californian veg your having yourself any day. Anywhere farmers are subsidised heavily to buy water by the "acre foot" is going to be hard pressed to compete with this area for environmental impact. An acre foot for the uninitiated is around 265,000 gallons and they would generally buy a lot more than one per acre. This is before we talk about the carbon release from turning over soil a couple of times per year, the CO2 emmissions from the oil based chemical sprays for weed control, disease control, and pesticides. Not to mention huge quantities of chem fert again oil based plus the oil burned with every pass that machines have to make over cropped land. We on the other hand no longer bother with ploughing when our pastures need to ve renewed once every seven to ten years. Simply direct drill. Very little CO2 release with that system.

yosemitesam1

Havent watched the video but if methane only lasts 12-15 years in the atmosphere is its importance being overplayed, ie only an increase in animal numbers will make any difference to temperatures which should be much smaller than assuming the whole lot stays there.
Land use change accounts for most of the emissions, so if more direct drilling+ better rotations were introduced on tillage land and grassland was managed properly the majority of those emissions could be substantially reduced and reversed altogether in a lot of cases.

crackcrack30

Only watched it once and there was alot of info but i think they mentioned 100 years for methane in the athmosphere....

One of the stand out points is that China hasn't even got beef or dairy on their menu in a meaningful way yet .......but they will & when they do that's another billion mouths to feed...

Like any 'factual' documentary I'm sure there are holes somewhere in the mix but Farmers in my opinion have more to loose & gain than anyone else in the matter of food production and should be ahead of the curve at all times.............. rather than having the rug pulled out from under them at a later stage. Watch the full Documentary

kowtow

crackcrack30 wrote:

That just appears to be a thread of random opinions

If we keep it going for a while we'll have all the material we need for a sequel.

_Brian

For me it just reaffirms that the ultra intense factory farming and production of meat is a poor model.
It's not new news.

It's hardly a shock that grass fed beef is better for the environment and every move towards intensification of the process is bad for the environment and the same goes for dairy.

Does it mean that all farming is wrong - of course not but major factory farms are bad for the environment, bad for the animals and the food produced is of lesser quality.

Markcheese

Heard somebody on rte radio 1 avout 2 saturdays ago with similar lines,
First up they're not all wrong...
But 1 thing that stuck with me was a comment about feeding animals grain is making grain prices for human food artifically high.... agricultural commodities prices are low, grain prices have been low for years .. if grain prices went much lower no one would grow it ( I know thats not exactly how markets work) ...

laoch na mona

what I always take away from these kind of documentaries is that scale is not a good thing for the environment, obviously some land is not suited to tillage, nothing will change that. At the same time the environmental downsides of intensive farming outweigh the benefits.

The problem is both sides lose sight of the detail the environmentalists pretend all livestock systems are the same while farmers ignore the environmental damage caused by some aspects of farming