>Could you please enlighten me on how land gets fertilized on it's own without grazing herbivores to create a proper soil micro-biome?
You just keep their shit, let it decay, microorganisms flourish, and then spread it over the fields. Also switching plants regularily helps keeping decent amount of nitrogen in the soil.
>Sure cows need grazing land, but they don't require all the external inputs an industrial soybean farm, for instance, needs
This only works for extensive breeding, which is no more than 20% in the usa [1]. Sure, these eat hay in the winter, but thats not sufficient to keep animals fat enough. Inside their diet basically is the same as others, which is 50kg of corn silage, and some 2-5 kg of dehydrated soy protein. Per day. Good luck producing as much waste as a cow during her life time.
nb : I live and studied veterinary medicine in Europe, where we don't grow soy and import it from south america mostly (USA grows a lot already, idk if its autosufficient though). So yeah, deforestation exists so we can eat beef :)
You just keep their shit, let it decay, microorganisms flourish, and then spread it over the fields. Also switching plants regularily helps keeping decent amount of nitrogen in the soil.
>Sure cows need grazing land, but they don't require all the external inputs an industrial soybean farm, for instance, needs
This only works for extensive breeding, which is no more than 20% in the usa [1]. Sure, these eat hay in the winter, but thats not sufficient to keep animals fat enough. Inside their diet basically is the same as others, which is 50kg of corn silage, and some 2-5 kg of dehydrated soy protein. Per day. Good luck producing as much waste as a cow during her life time.
nb : I live and studied veterinary medicine in Europe, where we don't grow soy and import it from south america mostly (USA grows a lot already, idk if its autosufficient though). So yeah, deforestation exists so we can eat beef :)
1 - http://www.beefusa.org/beefindustrystatistics.aspx " feedlots with greater than 1,000 head capacity account for 81% of all cattle on feed". These mega farms don't do extensive breeding.