Indian Pirates should campaign against the use of meat as a food source

@vik any citation to justify that claim? vegetable prices => less resource => due to more animal agriculture .. I want the science and statistics,on which you said earlier you are depending your argument on.

Can't the lack of supply in vegetables be accounted to other important factors, like land misuse etc, before we point towards animal agriculture? Banning meat seems to be against the natural way of human life, who were (and still are) omnivores.. Sure, situations changing would need man to adapt. But here, I don't think quitting meat eating is the agreeable compromise.

@balasankarchelamat If animal agriculture occupies 1/3 of the total ice free land on the planet - then I think it's pretty fair to say that would effect the supply and price of vegetables. The numbers (1/3 of all land) are colossal and in no way represent a "natural way" of human life.
Even if we talk about a natural way of life - meat consumption would usually be down to necessity - that is not where we are now - and it cannot feed 7 billion people.

"Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth and increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."
http://www.unep.org/resourcepanel/Portals/24102/PDFs/PriorityProductsAndMaterials_Report.pdf

Additionally we should also give some thought to the fish
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/15/tuna-and-mackerel-populations-suffer-catastrophic-74-decline-research-shows

So, would people here agree with the suggestion of @praveenarimbrathod ? This could be a compromise that allows us to agree in a proposal. I would also accept the position of being against meat exports.

@praveenarimbrathod would you also adopt the same position for imports?

With another mob murder being reported today, I feel I have to reluctantly back down from my position so as not to link Indian Pirates with any of the sentiment of the Nationalist who seem hell bent on stoking communal violence in the name of their religious food preference. Shame really, but am digging my bunker ready for the post apocalyptic future. Ping me offline if you want a space in it!

All cattle, whether raised for milking, ploughing or the slaughterhouse, emit methane as part of their digestive process.

http://scroll.in/article/764422/

How much methane a cow belches depends on its diet. An assessment of methane emissions from cattle across India’s agro-ecological regions showed that cattle that were on production diets to optimize their breeding, milking or working emitted more methane than those on growth and maintenance diets.

India released as much carbon dioxide equivalent of greenhouse gas from its rice paddies in the period between 1990 and 2012 as its non-dairy cattle belched.

If methan IS such a big problem , why not use it to our benefit? ..
And it looks like there are people other than us who care about the same issue.. check this website out.. http://www.environmentalengineering.in/Biogas.htm

The Project has two parts.

Ist part Deals in separating impurities such as moisture, Carbon dioxide and Hydrogen sulfide and generating pure Methane from Biogas.

IInd part Deals in Filtering, compressing and filling Methane in a Gas Bottle i.e. a CNG Dispenser making it suitable as an IC Engine fuel.

@arjun good luck collecting that methane!

@praveenarimbrathod this is not an accurate comparison. You cannot for example, compare the CO2 output of rice production vs non diary cattle, without comparing the food output from both.
When you compare the actual amount of food produced from rice vs non diary cattle and then factor it against greenhouse gas production - you will see again that it makes no sense at all (in greenhouse gas terms) to use meat as a food source.
There are of course the remaining arguments of deforestation, river and sea pollution etc.

@vik you sound offended :| .. just so you know, my previous post wasn't meant to offend anyone

@vik , I cannot agree with you on "I think the real culprit of high priced vegetables is likely lack of resource - as that resource is being used for meat export.". Price of farm products in India is deeply linked to governance and economics. Government lure the farmers into producing in large quantities by promising them MSP. When they produce food government refuse to procure the product and farmers are left with no choice but to sell them to private wholesalers. Thus large quantity of food that should have been available at subsidised price is actually available at market price. Thus, the increase in price.

@abhijithb I think you can find local policies that will have upward impacts on the cost of vegetables - but we're talking here of a volume and scale that is global in nature.

If animal agriculture occupies 1/3 of all usable land (United Nations http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/News/2006/1000448/index.html) but provides only around 8% of the world calorie intake (FAOSTAT, 2009) - can you understand how that effects supply/demand/price of crops?

I'll say it again for emphasis. 1/3 of all of the land on earth to provide 8% of the calorific intake of the world population - that's not smart, for anyone, anywhere.

@arjun I wasn't offended :) I was being a little sarcastic perhaps. But my point remains - great idea to use the methane - but virtually impossible to collect it!

World Health Organisation declares processed meats a category 1 carcinogen:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/26/bacon-ham-sausages-processed-meats-cancer-risk-smoking-says-who

Now you wouldn't give your kids cigarettes for breakfast would you?

@vik , What about protien? http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=92

Also, "But my point remains - great idea to use the methane - but virtually impossible to collect it!"???

I have spent my entire childhood watching my neighbour cook food only using Bio Gas. It is very much possible.

While we debate the ill effects of meat products, we need to also understand the current situation, where meat bans are being made for a completely different reason, RELIGION.

If we ever reach a consensus against Meat we'll only be supplying reasons that this religious brigade can use to justify their Opposition to Meat as a Food Source, which stems from their very privileged sense of righteousness.

This thought has come to me in the last week or so, isn't Banning Meat or Beef equal to practicing Untouchability, because if what I consume something effects your sense of purity, that thought is on the same lines of Someone of higher caste feeling impure because of being touched by or having someones lower caste's shadow falling on them.

I know @vik is too evolved and hasn't got any Religious Agenda, Having met him, I am amply convinced he's no where close to the Saffron brigade that started banning meat.I didn't realize that @Vik was the same guy I met at SFD Mumbai hence my reactions of asking if he was doing this for religious reasons at the start of this thread. Just thought I put this out there...

My Point here is if we continue down this path and dig out logical, scientific reasons of why Meat shouldn't be used as food source, The only thing we could achieve is handing out a camouflage for the Saffron Brigade who want this for a totally different reason, and thus we'll be party to an evolved form of discrimination which can be equated to abolished (but continuing) forms of discrimination like untouchability. So in the interest of Social Justice, we should pause this discussion here.

thanks

Alex

@abhijithb ah - the old protein argument - I was wondering when that would rear is head. The major part of the protein argument actually comes from marketing by the meat industry - who have tried to frame this belief that somehow meat is required to get sufficient protein into a persons diet.

If you read the figures you have posted, you will see that soya bean is more protein dense than many meat products.

Here are more vegan foods that have more protein than beef:
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/natural-health/soy-free-vegan-foods-that-have-more-protein-than-beef/

@abhijithb As for BioGas - to be completely clear, what I am getting at here is - how are you going to collect the biogas from farting and belching animals?

I can think of developing a contraption for each animal to wear. I would suggest however, that it would better to have less grazing livestock and use some of that land to plan trees for fuel.

Timber for fuel is fairly carbon neutral if you replant after cutting down.

@vik how much is the calory value of a cow, if we include the milk into the equation.

I agree with @gounder , we cannot be blind to what is happening around us.

@gounder yeah - I am feeling what you are saying, but i am conflicted over which is the greater argument.

I made a comment last week after the latest "meat murder" https://www.loomio.org/comments/818980/

I remain conflicted though.

Yes, we can say this gives capital to the crazy brigade - but the environmental destruction and largest mass species extinction since the dinosaurs sort of make me feel like taking the argument away from the crazies and making it much more intellectual, factual / based in science.

If this is not a campaign for the Indian Pirates then I totally understand that, but I think this is exactly the sort of organisation that should challenge things like the meat ban but provide truth, facts and evidence.

The meat ban is pretty meaningless in regard to the scale of the problem - and those people have not even thought about the problem. It's knee jerk right wing politics at it's worst. But I am not sure that should silence us..

@praveenarimbrathod it depends on the breed - diary cows have been specifically bred for high yield. I don't think you can add these two things together easily.

Diary cows are generally different breeds than those used for meat.

@vik Most vegan food are poor sources of protein. For example, pulses regarded widely as protein source has only 25% protien by weight and 18% by DV. Soya may be more efficient than beef but it still does not rank as a top source of protien.

Bio Gas

My neighbour had a simple method of flushing cow dung from cattle shed into his bio gas plant. He even collected dung from the places he took his cows to rear for use as manure. Coincidentally, I and @praveenarimbrathod were joking that where does this methane problem come from? From farting cattle?

I think this sort of a campaign is unsustainable, disregards individual freedoms and is usually reliant on selective data.

Additionally, while we use milk, we cannot give up dairy. While we do dairy, we cannot prevent beef. If we have beef, no one in India will agree to banning anything else.

Relevant reading https://aamjanata.com/animal-husbandry-slaughter-and-economic-viability-in-five-images/

Regardless of the merits of the argument, IMO, India is not even ready for this debate.Campaigning will be a waste of tie on a non-debate.

@vidyut I concur, India does not seem ready for the debate. I am concerned for the future of my children however - they may no longer have the luxury to debate as they fight their neighbours for rations on a rapidly overheating planet.

India does not seem ready to debate female infanticide, rape inside and outside of marriage, homosexuality, gender discrimination and many many other things that are seemingly the domain of educated liberals.

@praveenarimbrathod If you oppose export of meat, it will mean opposing export of beef as well. India uses cows massively for dairy, has taboos about eating the meat and would WASTE all that ecologically expensive meat. This is already happening with the cow slaughter bans. Beef is the biggest export among meats (we eat mostly everything else).

@vidyut I agree, banning exports is not an option. It would also mean we break the interdependancy of nations. I withdraw my argument.

@vik Given the condition of the country, I am more worried that my kid will grow up an orphan because his mother pissed off the wrong people. We have worse and more urgent problems. To put it mildly. With or without meat, the problem with food is not supply, but the lack of equitable distribution. The world may be producing enough grains for all, but India is able to produce enough meat without having to import it, unlike grains. In other words, we aren't feeding our grains to our cows - the way the beef industry does in the west - for fattening for meat. Our meat production is largely a byproduct of our dairy industry. There are many facets to the debate, if one insists on having it. Using data from India is a bonus, because a lot of practices in India don't happen to the affluent and often wasteful standards of the west (which they can afford because prices are better + govt support is excellent).

For the record, most of the cattle feed in India is bran, oilseed cakes, green fodder, hay and straw. Most of which are either byproducts or grow in areas not occupied by crops (though sowing green fodder is increasing because of depleting public grazing because of land grabs and forests also because of land grabs, mining, industrialization, etc). In effect, India pretty much raises its meat on waste.

@gounder "The only thing we could achieve is handing out a camouflage for the Saffron Brigade who want this for a totally different reason"..... I second that

@vik This is not to say no grains are fed to livestock, but that they are used far less than you'd think from reading western statistics.

@gounder @arjun the saffron brigade using this as camouflage is probably the only useful thing from this debate, IMO. Have had it happen several times on Twitter. I let them dig themselves into a ditch establishing just how expensive dairy is. Then say since we won't give up milk, do you think the beef ban is ethical when it WASTES so many resources already spent on raising the meat? :p

@vidyut I thought india was a net exporter of meat to the rest of the world though?

I guess I pissed off the wrong people a long while back and they didn't come for me yet, so I'm feeling safer about it these days!

Anyway, I accept the overall point you make - this may not be the place for this particular debate at this moment in time.

If anyone else has anything to add please do - failing which I propose closing the thread.

@vidyut haha I think I know what you are talking about.. Nice one.. Also, I think you should type it out on detail what you were telling us the other night about why banning beef would be a stupid move and how it would affect the poor.. Was quite a thought.. But then this thread is not about beef ban..so maybe somewhere else.. Maybe a short article on aamjanata ?

@vik http://www.fao.org/docrep/article/agrippa/665_en-15.htm#P519_30733 for an idea of quantities.

@arjun ;) already done
https://aamjanata.com/animal-husbandry-slaughter-and-economic-viability-in-five-images/
https://aamjanata.com/the-gobar-economy-finding-economic-value-in-barren-cattle/

@vidyut THAT WAS QUICK! :p.. Shall put on my reading glasses right away!

@vidyut there is cause for concern right there - resource went into those exports, I would argue that's wasteful. The majority of those animals are not a bi-product and I would suggest that the poultry particular would be grain fed in significant proportion.

As the economy grows more people will get into that export market - and like everywhere else - it's not unlikely that India will end up in a similar place re: land and resource usage by the meat industry.

@vik it ain't pissing off anyone if no one got pissed. It is merely stating an opinion that didn't bother them :p

Actually, @vik, those animals are most certainly a byproduct for dairy farming. Keeping the alive will consume more resources than killing them, and their creation cannot be prevented till we are able to have artificial insemination that only produces female offspring.

It is true poultry is grain fed. Most commonly hardy and excellently healthy Indian millets that grow pretty much anywhere and are (sadly) relatively less used for human consumption.

About: "As the economy grows more people will get into that export market - and like everywhere else - it’s not unlikely that India will end up in a similar place re: land and resource usage by the meat industry."

You cannot do activism to prevent something because it could become a problem, when already problem status things abound. So far, economy isn't growing enough to encourage any such thing. In fact, it is contracting. As current policies stand, India is unlikely to end up in a similar place, because current policies are very much into strangling farming and promoting big business. We are talking of privatizing forests. They aren't going to get overgrazed, they are going to be razed - which the ministry has already decided sounds better as "reforestation" instead of the normal term "deforestation".because of course, ancient, diverse forests of robust, mature trees supporting countless animals, insects and birds are the same thing as planting a few young saplings. Livestock in India is consistently dropping.

Highly recommend reading official data on the country. The livestock census is a good document to keep an eye on.

*** chickens don't really count toward grazing land being depleted, because they don't graze.

@vidyut poultry still occupies land (well battery farms) and also land for growing grain and if you see the production figures, so do all the other animals that have nothing to do with dairy.

I think it's overreach to try and say that land is not suitable for growing food for human consumption but the soil is OK to produce animal grain. I would like to see how you reach that conclusion and the figures behind it.

The efficiency of the production of meat is the fundamental here. Yes in some cases cows can be fed of waste, yes in some cases they may graze on waste land, in some cases chickens might eat grain produced from poor soil. But, the total resource going into their production is hugely inefficient compared to per calorie production of other foods.

I notice no one has mentioned water consumption, I would have thought that was a very important consideration for India.

@vidyut yes, big business - when they join the party it might be a better time to have this debate. I think you will find that's the major cause everywhere else.

I have been involved in direct action and activism before to draw attention to things that might happen - also we are regularly having discussion around topics that are not major issues in India yet.

If we are only concerned with things within the boundaries of India then Intake your point.

@vik
"I think it’s overreach to try and say that land is not suitable for growing food for human consumption but the soil is OK to produce animal grain. I would like to see how you reach that conclusion and the figures behind it."

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=FqJrsjI97hsC&lpg=PA4&ots=QQ-vUUiiej&dq=Millets%20arid%20land&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q=Millets%20arid%20land&f=false

@vidyut Not sure if I am reading this correctly, but the study you point to seems to suggest that the arid climate in Maharastra makes the soil suitable for growing millet. The varieties of millet in the study are all suitable for human consumption.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/t0818e/t0818e01.htm

I think that adds more credence to my argument. Feed all that millet to animals and you will get less food for humans than feeding that millet to humans?

It would add credence to your argument if your millet consumption was actually that much. Of course, you could force ban on raising meat, causing millet prices to crash and people to buy because it becomes dead cheap.... and farmers could go and suicide, or let the land remain barren again.

There is a certain arrogance to knee-jerkism - the practice of one fix nirvana promotion that ignores that economies are ecologies of money, habits and more. When man has engaged in animal husbandry for thousands of years, the idea that taking it out of the equation will have only good impact is like saying one animal going extinct has no ecological impact because well, that was a pest animal (for humans).

There are millions employed in the meat industry. Countless animals evolved to live in symbiosis with man with no real ability to survive in the wild - for that matter, the "wild" areas themselves are shrinking. It isn't just the meat industry that uses livestock, it is everything from transport to weaving and pharmaceuticals to fertilizers. Milk is excellent nutrition for children. Animals are woven into our existence, not some isolated bad guy island with no impact on anything else. For that matter, meat as food predates even agriculture. The idea that one factor - greenhouse gasses or two - greenhouse gasses and water - are adequate reason to undo how mankind evolved to feed itself and insert whatever the latest health/environment fad is.... is myopic.

@vik You may also want to read up on the health impact of carbohydrates and sugar. Because that is what people will be consuming in greater numbers in your grand plan for the world. Expect higher numbers of health problems related to the metabolic syndrome - which are already a bigger threat than greenhouse gasses. The rise of diabetes and heart attacks in the population had been mapped by someone to coincide with increased consumption of refined sugar and white flour consumption some 4-5 years ago (this is also how your non-smoker, non-drinker, vegetarians with no medical history of heart attacks get heart attacks in their thirties as well) - let me see if I can find the link.

Vegan diets have been linked with nutritional deficiencies. Fail to see how turning the whole world vegan to reduce a portion of greenhouse gasses will keep us alive longer.

@vidyut wow - this is getting a bit agro (no pun intended), I am happy to continue to debate the point - but I don't think there is a need to resort to insults. I am not being arrogant or knee jerkish, my points are backed up with well founded data. You provided the data on millet - it just happens to prove my point.

I do not have a world master plan and neither is this a one fix nirvana position. What I am asking here is should Indian Pirates support this position?

I will be discussing other proposals here that are all in line with the prevention of environmental disaster and the mass extinction of the planet. I have been on the front line of this type of work since I was a teenager taking part in direct action with Greenpeace as the risk of violence, arrest and incarceration many times. These things are really, really important to me - but I am not forcing anyone to be like me.

Talking of extinction - yes I feel bad for the reared animals that would not be reared in a meat industry free world but I feel much worse for the species that are extinct already or heading that way.
http://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation
http://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation#impacts

These animals are not the product of farming and genetic cross breading by humans - I believe we should value them above strains produced my man.

Now to sugar and carbs. I am well versed in the impacts of sugar as others here can confirm as I have probably moaned on at them about sugar intake and particularly fizzy drinks. So I agree sugar is really, really bad.

A really good plant based diet however - doesn't involve you eating lots of carbs and sugar - so I'm fairly sure that we're good on that front.

I can present the data on vegetarianism if you want to read it.

Please also present your data regarding the vegan diet. I have a friend who is a polish body builder and bsd kernel hacker - he's vegan too and has a lot to say on this point. I'll invite him here. I know many, many people who are vegan - and I assure you they are not nutritionally deficient.

Finally - to turn the whole world vegan is not the point - but if it we're it would be to:

• ensure there is enough water to drink for the human population
• ensure that greenhouse gases are reduced to prevent a catastrophic extinction event
• ensure that rising sea levels do not leave even less land for humans
• ensure that deforestation of the amazon by the meat industry is reversed and bio diversity protected
• ensure that the poisoned rivers and seas are returned to acceptable levels of ammonia.
• foster a greater degree of connection between humans and nature

I don't think we have a consensus on this topic with almost everyone sitting on the fence or against the what @Vik has proposed.

We can end this discussion may be pursue it at another time.

regards,

Alexander Gounder

@gounder good call, lets do that!

I think it is a good debate to have, given the issues plaguing the country as well.

@vik I am surprised to hear you not want to turn the world vegan. The argument is lifted straight out of vegan propaganda. Not to mention wanting to remove meat "as a food source" sounded pretty absolute.

As George Carlin put it very eloquently, there is no need to save the planet. It existed well before us and will outlast us. It is mankind we are trying to save, by ensuring conditions remain favorable to us.

Most claims of healthy nutrition from vegan diets come from people who are already very health conscious and usually supplement their food with nutrients not easily found from vegan sources (Vitamin B12 for example). In the west, being a "vegan" is what one calls a considered lifestyle choice.

In the absence of a considered lifestyle choice (usually accompanied by cutting refined foods and exercise at the very least), what we have is an extremely limited diet, and the claims of health on a vegetarian diet appear to be exaggerated. For example, some of India's most determinedly vegetarian communities have terrible obesity as well as other health issues. Obviously, removing meat as a source of food isn't going to result in a considered vegan diet or vegetarian diet (because I seriously doubt India will or should give up milk). It is merely going to remove diversity from the food sources. Protein/fat is, overall a superior nutrition than carbohydrates/sugar - particularly refined, in the contexts of health issues today.

There is a reason the debate usually skips water, and the reason is that a lot of vegetarian food preferences consume obscene amounts of water. For example, Sugarcane accounts for about 4% of farmed land in Maharashtra and consumes 71% of available irrigation. You could solve Maharashtra's drought by banning sugarcane, which you never could by banning meat as a food source. The government is, in fact trying to ban/reduce sugarcane growing as a measure to combat drought.

(Incidentally, most of these sugarcane growers form the SSS - which is threatening to dump cattle in cities because of the beef slaughter ban - because banning slaughter will require watering and feeding all those cattle)

And not just terrible obesity, but under-weight and under-nutrition as well. Gujarat, for example - among the most determinedly meat-averse states and known for "development" - fares terribly on the front of malnutrition, even as upper class Gujaratis struggle with obesity (and in India, obesity is still largely an upper/middle caste problem, unlike the US)

@vidyut By starting the discussion I hope to get people to consider their own consumption patterns and perhaps reduce them.

The b12 argument is old and disproved. The latest research points to a link between vitamin D and B12 - ie low vitamin D reduces the ability to bind B12 and results in low B12.

In the west, low b12 levels in vegetarians can also be linked to excessively clean vegetables in supermarkets - otherwise you can get sufficient b12 each day from the dirt on the vegetables that you eat.

As for water - if you irrigate in a sensible way - you don't have a problem. If you channel irrigate then I guess it's really inefficient. Agriculture needs to irrigate in a smarter way.

@vidyut India is following the US closely - so expect obesity everywhere soon. The US diet of cheap meat and coke seems to be very popular with the middle class - but that's where it started in the US and the UK too.

@vik

This is very interesting

"As for water - if you irrigate in a sensible way - you don’t have a problem. If you channel irrigate then I guess it’s really inefficient. Agriculture needs to irrigate in a smarter way."

You are saying this about a crop known to require massive quantities of water, but not in favor of a ban. It is a cultivated, manmade crop (for the record).

On the other hand, there is no attempt to discuss how livestock farming could be water efficient or reduce impact on environment (for example composting through a gobar gas unit instead of open heaps). And this is even as fodder for growing livestock shares the remaining 29% with all crops (actually, fodder crops aren't grown on irrigated land at all in Maharashtra - they mostly utilize poor quality land and gamble on rainfall, since there is no specific need to follow a season as long as green fodder happens). But unlike meat industry, sugarcane needs "reform", not ban.

Why so? Sugarcane is inherently more virtuous than meat?

@vik India is trying to follow US. But we have achieved the inequality to surpass US already. 1% Indians own 50% of India's wealth, as opposed to 34% (or 37% - I forget which) in the US. This makes it very unlikely that Indians could follow a nutrition path that takes them to obesity wholesale by the time we catch up with the US.

@vik, it isn't "resorting to insult" to suggest knee-jerkism is not useful. It is merely an observation on nature of activism when it borrows concepts without the intellectual rigor to test them against environments they recommend them for or considering their impact on the whole.

You could choose to be offended, or accept a blunt but so far factually correct criticism that you have not yet come up with any argument you arrived at yourself, nor have you provided evidence relevant to an Indian context while advocating a pretty profound adoption by us all. On the contrary, you have dismissed how conditions in the US and India vary greatly in terms of use of resources. For example, there is no such thing as a cattle ranch in India - which is the backbone of the meat industry in the US.

@vidyut sugar cane requires between 1500 and 3000 litres of water per kg of food. Beef production requires 16,000 litres of water per kg of food.

I think it's difficult to find great efficiencies - the animals have to drink.

Agree though - that if sugar can is inefficient then it could be replaced with a better crop.

I think your wrong about the US obesity position - it's the poorest people who are fed on high fat, high sugar diets there and it's a pattern being replicated across the world very quickly.

If i read back through what you are saying is factually correct, for example your data on millet - it's not actually correct. To call data from the UN "vegan propaganda" is fairly inflammatory IMO - so that's why I'm finding the approach a bit offensive.

In any event - we are poles apart on this discussion and so it's best to move on.

I would propose a different approach that might suit more people and be a better compromise from my somewhat more extreme view:

"Indian Pirates should should campaign against processed meats as a food source"

@vik I agree we are poles apart on this issue. At least continents apart. In India, there is no such thing as "beef production" in the sense of raising cattle for it - the beef we produce is largely a byproduct of the dairy industry - we grab unwanted adults from the dairy industry and slaughter them to "produce" beef - thus actually SAVING water that would have to be given to them had they been alive. We breed cattle for milk. Male and infertile female buffaloes get culled. This should happen with cattle too, but sadly religious taboos and politics erected on them gets in the way increasingly. We do not spend water on "raising beef". We spend it on dairy. The non-milk livestock is a byproduct of breeding for dairy. For example, the breeds raised for beef abroad don't even have a presence in India. Here the only imported breeds worth mention are the Jersey/HF cows with high milk yields (and their crosses with indigenous ones). This mythical 16,000 liters is the story of proper cattle farms with diets specially for fattening cattle. This does not exist at all in India for the data to be applicable. This is why the beef we export is carabeef, while we have almost three times the number of cows as buffaloes - we aren't "beef producing" at all - we are doing dairy and culling the surplus. Not slaughtering them will only raise water requirements. I don't know how to explain this to you further. I give up.

@vidyut I don't think at any point I was talking of just beef production - I am talking of animal agriculture in general.

To be clear, I totally understand what you are trying to explain. If we isolate diary and have no beef production other than the slaughtering of old diary cows once they are past their useful life for milk production - then yes the water consumption is more like 1000 to 3000 litres and on par with vegetable production.

There must however be some hidden cattle ranches somewhere I guess as I am not sure how India surpassed Brazil in terms of beef exports without them. That's a lot of buffalo, I wonder how many are male:
http://time.com/3833931/india-beef-exports-rise-ban-buffalo-meat/

@vik, if we isolate dairy and have no beef production other than male cattle (dairy cows are prohibited by law most places, sadly), water consumption isn't 1000 to 3000 liters, we SAVE water. That is the whole point.

I know you are talking about meat production as a whole, but the statistics you refer to focus largely on beef because that is the most resource intensive and the whole argument uses those numbers. Including "sugar cane requires between 1500 and 3000 litres of water per kg of food. Beef production requires 16,000 litres of water per kg of food."

There are no hidden ranches. India surpassed Brazil in terms of beef exports because we export carabeef - like I said, and buffaloes are culled so that males are NEVER over 20% of females. Usually more like 10%. In other words, 80% of male buffaloes in the country - at a minimum are culled. India is a large country compared with Brazil with a strong dairy culture. India currently has 1,08,702 thousand buffaloes - 92,599 thousand females and 16,103 thousand males. The gender gap is achieved through slaughter. That is a lot of buffaloes. Each buffalo yields about 150kg of meat at a minimum.

Hope that makes sense.

@vidyut OK - so what you are saying is that these buffalo are naturally occurring wild herds that are not bred by the industry?

Then I have to accept your point - that makes a policy that we could advocate for the rest of the world :)

@vik no. I will restrict myself to educating you like you are a 10 year old and ignorant about reproduction while providing expert skepticism on dairy practices.

The usual process of lactation is after delivery. Getting a buffalo (or cow) to lactate is the whole point of dairy farming. This means that female buffaloes spend most of their fertile life pregnant or lactating. Delivery means little babies - which can be male or female. Females grow and create more little babies. Males consume resources (which you don't like, unless it means slaughter) till they are slaughtered. In other words, the males are bred because their mothers are impregnated in order to deliver them and produce milk. Byproduct of dairy farming. Which is why I spoke of slaughter being necessary unless we are able to selectively breed females very early on in the thread.

You can wake up one who is sleeping, not one who pretends to sleep - old Marathi saying.

And I am fed up of this debate and unsubscribing from this thread. Anyone interested has plenty of data so far, and I genuinely doubt you (@vik) are interested in the merits of the arguments at all.

@vidyut I was being serious in my previous comment - I wasn't having a pop at you. Let's leave it here though. I am actually interested in the merits of the arguments - maybe a face to face discussion in the future, should we get chance, will convince you of that.

@vik, if you were serious, my apologies. It just seemed extremely unlikely that anyone would expect herds of wild buffaloes that were only males - where would they manifest from?

You should drop in sometime. If you're really serious about social and environmental issues, I guarantee you, you'll be in for the night of your life - in a purely intellectual way :D

@vidyut cool, sorry we seem to have got off to such a bad start and yes, I am very, very serious!

@vik no harm, no foul. I'm short tempered, but fortunately hold no grudges. Nor am I easy to get along with, so.... takes two to clap....