Beef Sucks

That's why the world depends on making beef suck less.

I’ve written a lot about the insanely destructive qualities of cattle, and the importance of shifting diets towards fake meat and even chicken to save the Amazon and the climate. But beef is delicious, so my new essay is about the importance of making cattle somewhat less insanely destructive. Willie Sutton robbed banks because that’s where the money is, and we need to fix ranching because that’s where the emissions are. I visited the Amazon to see how ranchers there are trying to do better.

Here's what I found.

Before I visited Brazil, I thought it would be really hard to figure out how to make cattle less destructive, but once that was figured out, pretty easy to spread less destructive practices. It’s actually the opposite. Give me a degraded pasture and a bunch of money, and even I can probably increase its beef yields 400 percent. I’m just not sure how to make the bunch-of-money part happen. Climate aid and carbon markets are not yet providing incentives for the right kind of changes.

I’ve stopped eating beef for climate reasons, but as you’ll see I relapsed while I was in Brazil, because I’m weak, and, well, when in Brazil, I guess. Our species isn’t going to quit beef anytime soon, so we’re going to have to fix beef.

Anyway, enjoy the piece; I’ve gotta admit I’m kind of proud of the photography, too. And I’m starting to poke around Substack Notes, so please follow me (is that how it works?) there, too. At some point, I promise I’ll start emitting regularly.

P.S. I don’t have many areas of expertise, but one of them is financial crises, so I took a break from food and climate to write about first crisis in 15 years in The Atlantic.

Here's my defense of bailouts.