bit OT but peripherally related anecdote: when I was a kid my grandfather raised cattle in fields bounding a stream through our property. Perhaps counter-intuitively that stream always ran clear at that time. There were many fewer trees along the stream, no thick brush growths, and no algae or other obnoxious water plants. Fish and crayfish we’re plentiful and while we never found beaver to be desirable, they existed. Now those fields are all cropped and exactly the opposite is true of the stream. I’m sure some of the changes are due to fertilizer runoff but others r simply due to cows not trampling and eating stuff in and along the stream. The point is that when folks talk about “more sustainable planet” when contemplating supplanting cows with plants, they are not considering the full range of ecosystem effects. Some creatures are favored over others in either circumstance. I’m not saying one is better than the other, only that they are different and creatures “sustained” in one are not “sustained” in the other.
I suppose someone might be inclined to chime in about things would be different yet if “organic” farming was practiced and I have no doubt that’s true but that imaginary world doesn’t exist.
