Talk:Environmental impact of cattle

Merge into Environmental impacts of animal agriculture?
I understand why this was split away from the main article on Cattle, but I don't see why this needs to be standalone. Right now, it is close to unreadable due to all the graphs taking up so much space, and I doubt this is likely to improve much. Further, these graphs talk about a lot more than just cattle, and would be far more useful in that article as well. There is also relatively little text (and it seems like it can be condensed and made substantially smaller still), so the merge shouldn't be difficult to do. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 13:10, 2 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I think the subject is notable enough for a standalone article but as I won’t be doing much to improve it I will not oppose or revert if you merge Chidgk1 (talk) 13:34, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Even if it is only 4% of global GHG that is still an awful lot - more than Brazil for example Chidgk1 (talk) 12:10, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
 * @Chidgk1 The exact percentage really doesn't matter as far as article maintenance is concerned. What matters is - How are people most likely to actually find this information in the first place? Here, |Environmental_impact_of_pig_farming|Environmental_impacts_of_animal_agriculture|Environmental_impact_of_cattle the answer is very clear - Environmental impacts of animal agriculture is overwhelmingly the article which people end visiting. Moreover, it's not just to do with article age, either - I included Environmental impact of pig farming specifically to show that it's much, much older than the animal agriculture article |Environmental_impact_of_pig_farming|Environmental_impacts_of_animal_agriculture|Environmental_impact_of_cattle see here, and yet, it still got overtaken almost immediately. Thus, it's clear we need to merge both of those into Environmental impacts of animal agriculture to make sure this information is actually visible.


 * Don’t merge I have now changed my mind and am against merging. Because the topic is notable enough to have its own article and I believe it will be expanded over the years. No objection to excerpting the lead or any other sections e.g. to Environmental impacts of animal agriculture Chidgk1 (talk) 13:56, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Support merge. I support the merger proposal by InformationToKnowledge because the current content of environmental impact of cattle is a real mess (overlaps with the article on Environmental impacts of animal agriculture) and a clean up could be done as part of the merger. If at any point in future, the content about cattle becomes large and detailed, it could be split off again. But for now, I think merging it into Environmental impacts of animal agriculture would be an improvement. A redirect from environmental impact of cattle could be placed to the right section within that article. EMsmile (talk) 11:17, 11 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Support merge. While cattle emissions are notable enough for their own article due to their scale, the details around this are very similar to other farmed ruminants e.g. sheep. And besides the methane emissions, most of what applies to intense cattle also applies to intense pig and chicken farm impacts. In order for this article to avoid duplication with Environmental impacts of animal agriculture it could be changed to "Methane emissions of cattle", which is probably better as a section in the to-be-merged-with article.
 * (Honestly I'll lean towards supporting anyone who wants to pick up the hard task of removing duplicated content) Sklabb (talk) 17:50, 16 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Support merge per above, overlapping content.---Ehrenkater (talk) 09:58, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Way forward from here? Should we try to get more inputs by posting on WikiProject talk pages? Or @Chidgk1 would you be OK with being overruled on this one? EMsmile (talk) 18:02, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * 3 to 1 - I gracefully concede defeat Chidgk1 (talk) 08:34, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Well it's not a vote (WP:NOTVOTE) but thanks anyway. Now we just need someone to carry out the merger. :-) EMsmile (talk) 10:43, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I've carried out the merger. I invite everyone to take another look and help reduce any duplication that the merger might have introduced. Some of the content that is currently under "cattle" could probably also be moved up to other parts of the article. EMsmile (talk) 08:28, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Intensification and methane
I moved the below here for discussion as the cite is from 2011 and I suspect the info is out of date. I will cite a much more recent study which mentions intensification so please have a read of that and edit as you think fit.



One of the cited changes suggested to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is intensification of the livestock industry, since intensification leads to less land for a given level of production. This assertion is supported by studies of the US beef production system, suggesting practices prevailing in 2007 involved 8.6% less fossil fuel use, 16.3% less greenhouse gas emissions, 12.1% less water use, and 33.0% less land use, per unit mass of beef produced, than those used in 1977. The analysis took into account not only practices in feedlots, but also feed production (with less feed needed in more intensive production systems), forage-based cow-calf operations and back-grounding before cattle enter a feedlot (with more beef produced per head of cattle from those sources, in more intensive systems), and beef from animals derived from the dairy industry. Chidgk1 (talk) 10:23, 27 March 2024 (UTC)