alt Hacker NewsHow are pigs, rabbits, goats and venison more sustainable? Unless you mean eating meat twice a year.
I live in a farmer family; our cattle needs around one hectare each, because we don't feed them processed food, only grass; because concentrated food is even less sustainable, and more importantly, more expensive than letting them roam (fenced areas)
Rabbit is not sustainable. There were some people trying to commercially rise and sell them and it didn't work. They would need concentrated food, which is expensive.
Goat meat is much more expensive than cows because they are less efficient than cows and pigs and chicken. I know two people who rise goats to sell them, and it doesn't make them money; really, they do it because they kind of like the critters as a pet project.
Only pigs and chickens are more sustainable, precisely because of theirinhumane(?) short life and their genetics. They are very efficient meat producers.
I know poor people who rise chickens and pigs; those animals take longer to reach "maturity", and the meat is not tender; but since the animals are eating whatever they scavenge, it can't be done at scale; again, we would eat meat like twice a year (This might be an exageration, but chicken pig and cow farms really produce all the meat we eat; of those only cows eat grass under the sun)
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Pigs are huge blobs of meat.
Families would raise one pig they would slaughter once a year and it would be a regular source of preserved meat and fat over the following year.
All of this was pre "green" revolution so it has to be carbon neutral at that level of consumption(which is admittedly lower than that of most people these days).
Eating meat once a year is an exaggeration when it comes to pork.
By sustainable I mean its impact on the environment, animals and humans. I don't mean how profitable or easy it is.
Rabbit is one of the most sustainable livestock. It requires less food to produce more rabbits and they don't need much land. A single female produces ~50 kits per season, taking 8-12 weeks to come to market. Ironically, they aren't considered livestock by USDA, so you can skip most of the red tape. As far as feed goes, there are many options that will depend on the farmer; pelleted feed is the best but most costly, so you can mix in either foraging or supplement with various other feeds like different hays, oats, etc. Whether it's economical depends on a number of factors, but there's over 3,000 rabbit farms in USA right now.
Same with goats, very sustainable. In many places like islands, goat is the preferred livestock as it requires less land and feed. And obviously you can forage goats in places most animals won't since they'll eat nearly any plants.
Pigs (and other livestock) historically were raised through the year and only slaughtered in winter. It's the last 100 years that has completely changed how and when people in the West eat meat, people's assumptions about how we must farm, how we must eat, etc. Our diets don't have to remain the way we are. For example, since Chinese people prefer to eat pork, they actually have half the world's pig livestock. We like beef so we have a lot of cows. It could've been reversed if our cultural tastes were different. Similarly, we could just eat less meat, and our tastes would develop towards the whole universe of non-meat foods.