i think the article also argues that if we went the other way around by eating beef instead of beans, more land would be freed up.[snippet pasted below]

of course, that's problematic. land under beans cultivation is likely capturing more atmospheric nitrogen and use of less chemicals and erosion etc. it stores better. economically viable as the dried beans are less of a supply chain headache and hence smaller foot print.

further, grass ..like paddy rice and wild rice..are actually better than grain or beans if grown in alluvial plains. fruit trees can be long lived, provide calories and create habitat. a lot of food can be grown indoors and aquaponically thereby allowing us to rewild and regenerative our degraded lands. and this includes grazing animals. and of course, there is meat and dairy grown in fermentation tanks and also: cultured meat made from in vitro cells of animals.

the argument in the article is ridiculous. the real problem is that people dont know how to cook delicious vegetarian food. beans is the last item on my menu if it has to be vegetarian.

eco anxiety can be alleviated by knowledge of food, nutrition and vegetarian cuisine. i was hoping that the article would spark some discussion.

[...] To understand why the climate impact of beef alone is so large, note that the image at the top of this story is a sea of soybeans in a silo in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. The beans belong to a feed lot that holds 38,000 cattle, the growth and fattening of which means dispensing 900 metric tons of feed every day. Which is to say that these beans will be eaten by cows, and the cows will convert the beans to meat, and the humans will eat the meat. In the process, the cows will emit much greenhouse gas, and they will consume far more calories in beans than they will yield in meat, meaning far more clearcutting of forests to farm cattle feed than would be necessary if the beans above were simply eaten by people.

This inefficient process happens on a massive scale. Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of red meat, holds around 212 million cattle. (In June, the U.S. temporarily suspended imports of beef from Brazil due to abscesses, collections of pus, in the meat.) According to the United Nations, 33 percent of arable land on Earth is used to grow feed for livestock. Even more, 26 percent of the ice-free terrestrial surface of Earth is used for grazing livestock. In all, almost a third of the land on Earth is used to produce meat and animal products.

This means much less deforestation and land degradation if so many plant crops weren’t run through the digestive tracts of cattle. If Americans traded their beef for beans, the researchers found, that would free up 42 percent of U.S. crop land.

“The real beauty of this kind of thing is that climate impact doesn’t have to be policy-driven,” said Harwatt. “It can just be a positive, empowering thing for consumers to see that they can make a significant impact by doing something as simple as eating beans instead of beef.”

She and her colleagues conclude in the journal Climatic Change: “While not currently recognized as a climate policy option, the ‘beans for beef’ scenario offers significant climate change mitigation and other environmental benefits, illustrating the high potential of animal to plant food shifts.” [..]