Talk:Environmental impacts of animal agriculture

Should be “Environmental impact of livestock”?

I propose the scope of this article be widened and it be renamed to “Environmental impact of livestock” because it will be easier to find global sources: for example cites and statistics for the impact of cattle sometimes do not breakdown beef cattle from dairy cattle, and chickens for eggs may not be distinguished from chickens for meat.

Your thoughts? Chidgk1 (talk) 08:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Or “Environmental impact of farmed animals” is another possibility Chidgk1 (talk) 08:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

It's not because of the animals per se but because of farming them. I feel "Environmental impact of animal agriculture" would be better. Rasnaboy (talk) 08:36, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I think that is a really good idea. I guess "livestock" is the right term here (even though not everyone would know what it is). "farmed animals" might also work. Perhaps look around on Google and determine the WP:Commonname? In any case it would be good to change it from "meat production". Keep in mind also potential overlap with greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. And do we need a sub-article for climate impacts of livestock eventually? Not everyone might expect climate impacts to be a subset of "environmental impacts"? The climate impact of livestock is actually massive - I think people are only slowly realising this and becoming aware of it. Perhaps rather than protesting in front of coal mines (example Lützerath) people should protest in front of meat and dairy farms... EMsmile (talk) 08:53, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the article may have some overlap with the actual agriculture article, but given animal agriculture is far more impactful than plant agriculture or any other sector, there would be several issues that could be exclusively discussed only in this article. We don't need a "climate impacts" sub-article but a sub-section within this article would take care of that. Rasnaboy (talk) 09:19, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Rasnaboy I don't understand whether you support or oppose my proposal. Chidgk1 (talk) 15:57, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I do support it. :) I just suggested the title to be "Environmental impact of animal agriculture" (please see my earlier replies). Rasnaboy (talk) 16:23, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Also environmental impact of fishing is covered in that article, whereas there is no equivalent for eggs and milk as far as I know. Have renamed as you suggested. Chidgk1 (talk) 16:48, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

How can you tell the difference between methane gas’s? humans create methane gas as well.Dogs and cats create methane gas as well. Should we get rid of them too? Also if cows produce so much methane why isn’t it harnessed and used to create energy? 173.2.146.255 (talk) 22:54, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I assume your first question means how can you tell where methane is coming from. Point a methane detector at your gas valve or whatever you suspect is giving off methane. Don't know if that works for cows. For more details about cows see the Climate Trace website. By the way if you could improve articles such as Infrared open-path detector that would be great

2nd question - the amount of methane produced by mammals other than Ruminants is very very small.

3rd question - if you have a great idea about how to capture the methane from cows belches don’t write it here Chidgk1 (talk) 07:44, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: ERTH 4303 Resources of the Earth

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2023 and 15 April 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): AllisonStacho (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Marissaokum, Juwanm.

— Assignment last updated by ChloejWard (talk) 03:40, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Hello @AllisonStacho

Good choice of article and your arrival is timely.

@EMsmile rightly says that Environmental impacts of animal agriculture#Greenhouse gas emissions should be in the lead and @Jarfuls of Tweed rightly says it should not just be a copy of the text in the body of the article. Perhaps you would like to have a go at summarizing the section into a paragraph or two for the lead? Chidgk1 (talk) 06:29, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

The Neo-Malthusian concept

I moved the below here as it depends on 20th century sources and seems to be going off topic a bit

The Neo-Malthusian concept proposes that there will be an increased demand for food supplies with population growth, which will lead to the inability to sustain a healthy population. The rate of human population growth is outpacing that of the food supply, which is growing at a slower pace. Mohan Roa suggests that if the world's population exceeds the threshold of the amount of food needed to sustain it, there is a risk of famine. Yet, reducing the birth rate among humans could prevent a significant impact on the global food supply. In 1952, India launched an official family planning program to reduce the population growth rate, which promoted the use of IUDs, vasectomies, and female sterilization. Chidgk1 (talk) 15:11, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

References

Scope of the article

Hello @CarlFromVienna

I wonder if you accidentally reverted more of my changes than you intended? Was it just the tree planting and rewilding you consider out of scope? Chidgk1 (talk) 14:25, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

The article is about the impacts of animal agriculture or reduction of these impacts. A lot can be done to improve the global eco system like rewilding, planting trees, capturing CO2 from the air and whatnot. All these things are not an "impact" of animal agriculture, nor do they reduce this impact directly. What they do is repair an ecosystem after the damage has been done. But the source of this damage can be all kinds of causes, say mining, logging for wood, or CO2 emission from industry. That's why these general ways to improve ecosystems are out of scope for this article. CarlFromVienna (talk) 07:25, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Combing the Archive

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2023 and 8 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Seattleski (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Seattleski (talk) 17:09, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Removing the "Pigs" subsection and linking the article in "See also"

Chidgk1, its been a while, and its nice to see that you are still working on improving the article. I previously removed the pigs subsection because it seemed to merely redundantly repeat the information that was already in the rest of the article. The Pigs subsection does not seem to help the overall article. The rest of the current article's information is pretty well categorized already, i think, and the addition of the Pigs subsection ruins the flow of the categorization by creating overlap between subsections. Do you think we should remove it, and add it to the "See also" instead? Why or why not? Jarfuls of Tweed (talk) 08:25, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Although you are right that pigs are mentioned 3 times before that section those mentions do not explain why pigs are a problem. That is why I think the excerpt should stay in. However I would be interested in hearing a 3rd opinion (especially from China as there are so many pigs there). Chidgk1 (talk) 19:02, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think people will open this article to look at pigs specifically, and thus, I think that the pigs subheading will not get read by people visiting the article. I think people will want to know the overall impact on a specific category (such as GHG emissions or water usage) when they open this article rather than a specific animal. And if they did want to know about that animal, they would go to that page. If you think there is relevant information about pigs that need to be in this article, I think it should be redistributed into the other subsections of this article rather than clumped at the end. Jarfuls of Tweed (talk) 01:35, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps @Seattleski can give a 3rd opinion and if necessary edit this Chidgk1 (talk) 13:03, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Should there be a section or mention of environmental racism associated with animal agriculture?

I've been doing research about the disproportionate environmental effects of the industry on communities of color and low-income communities and was wondering if this would be the right place to include these details. These details could potentially go into the environmental impact section or there could be another section altogether explaining the ways in which communities are affected. Seattleski (talk) 17:18, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

@Seattleski I feel like where you placed your information is good. If you want to give it its own subheading, that would also be good, especially if you have more research on that area which you want to add. Jarfuls of Tweed (talk) 19:39, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Actually, I think it is better if you distribute it into the already present subheadings rather than give it its own subheading even if you add more information on the topic. Jarfuls of Tweed (talk) 20:36, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Need clarification on following wordings

"For the livestock industry, inspections focused primarily on CAFOs. Of the 32 other industries, (including crop production) had a better 5-year environmental record than the livestock industry, 2 had a similar record, and 25 had a worse record in this respect." I'm confused, can naybody help rephrase them? thanks.--ThomasYehYeh (talk) 12:09, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I boldly deleted it and some other US specific stuff around it as it was all based on a year 2000 cite Chidgk1 (talk) 17:41, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

the mentioning of [A 2023 study published in Nature Food found that a vegan diet reduced...]

That happens at least 5 times in different sections of this article, could it be an advertisement or advocation? ThomasYehYeh (talk) 00:05, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you and have removed the 5 times that the magazine was mentioned (but left the rest of the statements intact). EMsmile (talk) 15:35, 31 December 2023 (UTC)