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Those fossil fuels emit what otherwise wouldn't be available in the carbon cycle.

A cow that's fed on gras and farts emits nothing that that gras didn't pick up and contributes virtually nothing to climate change in the long term.

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I imagine the fertilizers used for the grass to support the quantity and quality of the cows’ output require quite a bit of fossil fuels.

Otherwise, I wonder if non fertilizer supported grass could support sufficient cows to satiate demand (which has not even peaked yet).

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Oh true and we consequently need to eat less cow meat, more different meat and/or have less people.

but focusing on that is shifting blame in an innefectual way of course. Pointing at cow farts puts the pressure on the individual and seeks to dampen effects in the short term. Pump up less or no fossil fuels with actual long term thinking and those fertilisers will automatically become more expensive. At that point tho our oversized animal herd becomes harder to support and beef becomes automatically a lot more expensive whilst at the same time the manure becomes more important.

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I didn’t say animal agriculture, I said “cow farts”. The animal agriculture figure listed on that Wikipedia page includes all ruminant livestock (mainly cattle, sheep, and goats).

Also, from that Wikipedia article:

There is accumulating research and data showing that oil and gas industry methane emissions – or from fossil fuel extraction, distribution and use – are much larger than thought.[35][36][37][38][39]

Still, my “astronomically dwarfs” looks to be overstating it by a wide margin.

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> Then again, farm plants are a further 18%.

Yeah, but they also provide 80% of the world's calories to animals' 20%

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> farm plants are a further 18%

Apparently mainly rice growing. I knew paddy fields were bad, but I didn't know they were that bad. Per calorie I am sure it is more like a tenth that of ruminants, perhaps less, but still worth replacing with other carbohydrates.

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All the more so since rice is relatively poor in nutrients.
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Rice is better than wheat or corn, just because of the fiber content and relatively low glycemic index.

Complete rice also carry lisine (although less than beans) which is a really hard amino acid to get on a vegetarian diet.

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Isn’t it the case that much of the land used to grow rice is good for little else?
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With corn based feeding.
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