What’s the environmental impact of replacing red meat in our diet?
If we were to replace red meat protein with grains we would have to farm additional land mass equivalent to the size of Victoria and Tasmania combined. Land currently used for livestock production isn’t necessarily suitable for cropping or other agricultural activity. Also, grain crops are annuals, not perennial plants. There is, therefore, very limited opportunity for crops to develop root systems that will sequester carbon into the soil. Replacing beef with kangaroo meat has been suggested, however it’s not that simple. A cow produces ten times more meat than one kangaroo. Each year we process eight million cattle, to get the equivalent amount of edible kangaroo meat 80 million kangaroos would need to be killed every year. That’s 20 million more than the total Australian kangaroo population.
