this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Like an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population, I don’t digest lactose well, which makes the occasional latte an especially pricey proposition. So it was a pleasant surprise when, shortly after moving to San Francisco, I ordered a drink at Blue Bottle Coffee and didn’t have to ask—or pay extra—for a milk alternative. Since 2022, the once Oakland-based, now Nestlé-owned cafe chain has defaulted to oat milk, both to cut carbon emissions and because lots of its affluent-tending customers were already choosing it as their go-to.

Plant-based milks, a multibillion-dollar global market, aren’t just good for the lactose intolerant: They’re also better for the climate. Dairy cows belch a lot of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide; they contribute at least 7 percent of US methane output, the equivalent emissions of 10 million cars. Cattle need a lot of room to graze, too: Plant-based milks use about a tenth as much land to produce the same quantity of milk. And it takes almost a thousand gallons of water to manufacture a gallon of dairy milk—four times the water cost of alt-milk from oats or soy.

But if climate concerns push us toward the alt-milk aisle, dairy still has price on its side. Even though plant-based milks are generally much less resource-intensive, they’re often more expensive. Walk into any Starbucks, and you’ll likely pay around 70 cents extra for nondairy options.

. Dairy’s affordability edge, explains María Mascaraque, an analyst at market research firm Euromonitor International, relies on the industry’s ability to produce “at larger volumes, which drives down the cost per carton.” American demand for milk alternatives, though expected to grow by 10 percent a year through 2030, can’t beat those economies of scale. (Globally, alt-milks aren’t new on the scene—coconut milk is even mentioned in the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata, which is thousands of years old.)

What else contributes to cow milk’s dominance? Dairy farmers are “political favorites,” says Daniel Sumner, a University of California, Davis, agricultural economist. In addition to support like the “Dairy Checkoff,” a joint government-industry program to promote milk products (including the “Got Milk?” campaign), they’ve long raked in direct subsidies currently worth around $1 billion a year.

Big Milk fights hard to maintain those benefits, spending more than $7 million a year on lobbying. That might help explain why the US Department of Agriculture has talked around the climate virtues of meat and dairy alternatives, refusing to factor sustainability into its dietary guidelines—and why it has featured content, such as a 2013 article by then–Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, trumpeting the dairy industry as “leading the way in sustainable innovation.”

But the USDA doesn’t directly support plant-based milk. It does subsidize some alt-milk ingredients—soybean producers, like dairy, net close to $1 billion a year on average, but that crop largely goes to feeding meat- and dairy-producing livestock and extracting oil. A 2021 report by industry analysts Mintec Limited and Frost Procurement Adventurer also notes that, while the inputs for dairy (such as cattle feed) for dairy are a little more expensive than typical plant-milk ingredients, plant alternatives face higher manufacturing costs. Alt-milk makers, Sumner says, may also have thinner profit margins: Their “strategy for growth is advertisement and promotion and publicity,” which isn’t cheap.

Starbucks, though, does benefit from economies of scale. In Europe, the company is slowly dropping premiums for alt-milks, a move it attributes to wanting to lower corporate emissions. “Market-level conditions allow us to move more quickly” than other companies, a spokesperson for the coffee giant told me, but didn’t say if or when the price drop would happen elsewhere.

In the United States, meanwhile, it’s a waiting game to see whether the government or corporations drive down alt-milk costs. Currently, Sumner says, plant-based milk producers operate under an assumption that “price isn’t the main thing” for their buyers—as long as enough privileged consumers will pay up, alt-milk can fill a premium niche. But it’s going to take a bigger market than that to make real progress in curbing emissions from food.

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[–] clegko@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Because most plant juice tastes like shit and has the wrong mouth-feel for most things we use cow milk for. Its not rocket surgery.

[–] pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not vegan or even vegetarian, so I feel pretty impartial on this. My partner uses oat milk for their coffee, and over the years I just got used to using it straight, or in cereals, etc. Now I greatly prefer it. It's just "milk" for me now.

Never thought it would happen, but getting cow milk when I'm out feels off - that mouth-feel you mention; just doesn't sit right anymore. It really is an acquired taste.

[–] lordgoose@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Right there with you. I've been living the plant milk life for years at this point and cow milk just tastes so... water-y for lack of a better explanation.

[–] clegko@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Have you considered heavy cream? /s

[–] rurutheguru@lemmings.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My wife says she can "taste the cow" in the milk, in the same way she could "taste the goat" in goat milk before moving to plant based milks.

I know exactly what she means though, it's a weird aftertaste that tastes 'wild' in the same way you can differentiate wild game from beef or pork.

However, it seems only people who have been off cow milk for a while can identify this element.

Yeah! That's the perfect way to put it, thank you. It's like a foreign extra flavour - a certain cowiness that I didn't notice growing up. Cow milk used to taste like "default milk," where everything else was a variation on that normal base. But now it's one of the "other" milks, because I taste it so infrequently.

[–] Anonymousllama@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Spot on. People are out here trying to play like almond, oat, soy and every other milk substitute is exactly the same as dairy based milk, it's not and will not ever be, they're different products

Also pretending that people swapping from dairy to alternate milks will somehow impact the looming climate crisis is also pretty disingenuous

[–] threeduck@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

If we all went vegan we'd reduce food based emissions by 70%, which is 15% of the entire planets GHG emissions. Not to mention recovering 75% of farm land.

It really is a no brainer if you want to make a difference. And if I, "a rural New Zealander who grew up on a dairy farm who said he'd never eat a vegetarian meal in his life" can convert to veganism based on the logic of it, surely anyone could.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

there is no reason to think farmland would be "recovered" or converted to any less- environmentally destructive use.

[–] threeduck@aussie.zone 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ready for another reply where I used /u/commie's clever abilities to reply to an argument? Prepare yourself for an amazing analytical response!

"I disagree"

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

this is poisoning the well

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If we all went vegan we'd reduce food based emissions by 70

I doubt it.

[–] Sodis@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why? Because all the animal herders will still produce lots of meat at a loss and then just burn everything no one wants to eat?

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i don't believe the methodology used to calculate emissions from animal agriculture is appropriate: every examination i've done has attributed emissions to animals that are actually conservation, like feeding cattle cottonseed and then attributing the impacts of cotton grown for textiles to cattle.

[–] Sodis@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But then you doubt the number and not the general effect of reducing carbon emissions by switching to a plant-based diet, right? Because it is pretty obvious, that growing plants and then feeding those plants to animals is way more inefficient than eating the plants without extra steps.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

a lot of what is fed to animals are parts of plants that people can't or won't eat. there may be some reduction but i don't believe it can be anywhere near 70%

[–] Sodis@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you have any sources on hand? It's hard to google for this stuff without running into sites by PETA etc, which are too biased for my taste.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

i don't know of any broad surveys across crop categories but i'm pretty familiar with soy

https://ourworldindata.org/soy

you can see that 17% of all soybeans becomes oil. but a soybean is only about 20% oil altogether. in order to extract that much oil, we must press about 85% of the global crop of soybeans. the vast majority if the soy fed to livestock is the industrial waste from that process. you can see in that chart it's called "soy cake" or "soy meal".

elsewhere in this thread i mentioned cottonseed.

[–] Sodis@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But then humans can also eat that soy meal to get their proteins. It's pretty tasty, I eat it regularly.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

people do eat soy meal but they eat very little of the amount produced. if the vast majority of it weren't fed to livestock it would just be waste.

[–] Sodis@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We are talking about a switch to a predominantly vegan diet. People need to get the protein they got from meat from somewhere else.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i think that's a hard sell for most people and i frankly just don't see it happening. do you have a plan to make that happen?

[–] Sodis@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, if the first step happens (people going vegan), then other protein sources will be automatically in demand. A huge chunk of protein powder nowadays is whey, that can be easily substituted by soy, because of the sufficient amino acid profile of soy.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

if the first step happens (people going vegan)

this is what I'm looking for a plan to accomplish.

[–] DarthFrodo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

in order to extract that much oil, we must press about 85% of the global crop of soybeans. the vast majority if the soy fed to livestock is the industrial waste from that process.

I've already told you that we can produce plant-based meat or soy protein for other uses from that, which you conceded, and you still call it "industrial waste". Why are you knowingly spreading misinformation?

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

not only can we do that: we DO that. but there frankly isn't enough human use for that, so it would be wasted if we didn't feed it to animals.

[–] DarthFrodo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If the rest of the plant would be wasted, it would be more economical to just grow another plant that's more efficient for oil production (canola, sunflower), not soybeans which are incidentally the crop highest in protein.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/area-per-tonne-oil

It's not grown in such quantities because it's essential but simply because there's demand for the extra protein from factory farms right now.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

soybeans are grown for nutrient fixation in rotation with corn. they're more of a soil crop than an oil crop.

[–] DarthFrodo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Among the cereals, the most prominent as a source of energy is corn. Between 70% and 80% of its production is used as a feed ingredient worldwide.

https://www.veterinariadigital.com/en/articulos/importance-of-corn-in-animal-production/

"We need animal agriculture because we need to grow the feed plants to grow more feed plants for animal agriculture"

We've come full circle.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Among the cereals, the most prominent as a source of energy is corn. Between 70% and 80% of its production is used as a feed ingredient worldwide.

this can be true while, at the same time, soybean oil's byproduct is soy meal that would be wasted if it weren't fed to animals.

[–] DarthFrodo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've already addressed that argument above.

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[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“We need animal agriculture because we need to grow the feed plants to grow more feed plants for animal agriculture”

this phrase never appears in your source or anywhere else in this thread. what are you quoting?

[–] DarthFrodo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's your argument put in another way

soybeans are grown for nutrient fixation in rotation with corn. they're more of a soil crop than an oil crop.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

no, it's a strawman of my argument.

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[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you see how much crops we need to grow and fresh water we need to feed a cow, you'd see how inefficient meat is.

70% of all the crops we grow is to feed our livestock.

Meaning for 1/3 on our plate, we use more than double the resources than the other 2/3 combined.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago

70% of all the crops we grow is to feed our livestock.

that's a lie

[–] threeduck@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm going to use your sound logical deductions and reasoning skills to reply to your comment in kind, ready?

I doubt it

Yeah? Well I doubt THAT.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

you can doubt whether i doubt something but i am the authority on whether i doubt something so self-reporting my doubt is the strongest evidence that can be gathered in support of the claim.

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