Why? Every step you move up the food chain requires roughly 10x as much inputs as outputs. To get a pound of protein from a cow you have to feed it 10lbs of plant protein. Almost all cattle feed comes from farms, just like your veggies. Anywhere we grow soybeans and hay for cattle could easily be converted to growing fruits and vegetables for human consumption. There’s a small loss of efficiency by growing human-quality food instead of cattle food in these spaces, but its nothing in comparison to the loss of resources from trying to raise cattle.
Almost none of the meat we eat is truly free-range - it all gets fed farmed produce that comes from farms that could grow food for humans in a fraction of the space.
They don’t need to be. Stop raising livestock and you no longer need to feed them, which allows us to use the remaining land to feed humans. But livestock only make up a small percentage of human diets, so we can actually give back a ton of land to nature and still easily feed everyone.
a large portion of the land used to raise livestock are grasslands. what portion of feed they are given is also, largely, crop seconds or industrial byproduct. the source for your owid link is largely poore-nemecek, a paper I would trust to tell me the co2e of co2
I’d like to see a source for “what portion of feed they are given is also, largely, crop seconds or industrial byproduct”. The vast majority of information I have seen on this topic is that we produce more crops specifically to feed animals than we do to feed humans. Which, just from an energy perspective, is completely logical to me.
I don’t see how this supports your argument that eliminating livestock would not reduce land usage. 76% of soybean production is going to animal feed, do you really think that percentage would not reduce if you switched it over to providing food for humans?
69% is a byproduct of soybean oil production. most people don’t want to eat soy cake. some people already do, but not enough to eat the entire crop. giving that to livestock is a conservation of resources.
soy beans are an excellent example: they’re not grown for livestock. they are grown for people, and what is fed to livestock is industrial byproduct that would otherwise be waste.
I’m dubious that there is enough room for plants, but not meat
Why? Every step you move up the food chain requires roughly 10x as much inputs as outputs. To get a pound of protein from a cow you have to feed it 10lbs of plant protein. Almost all cattle feed comes from farms, just like your veggies. Anywhere we grow soybeans and hay for cattle could easily be converted to growing fruits and vegetables for human consumption. There’s a small loss of efficiency by growing human-quality food instead of cattle food in these spaces, but its nothing in comparison to the loss of resources from trying to raise cattle.
Almost none of the meat we eat is truly free-range - it all gets fed farmed produce that comes from farms that could grow food for humans in a fraction of the space.
it’s not clear that grasslands could (or should) be converted to human crops.
They don’t need to be. Stop raising livestock and you no longer need to feed them, which allows us to use the remaining land to feed humans. But livestock only make up a small percentage of human diets, so we can actually give back a ton of land to nature and still easily feed everyone.
https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
a large portion of the land used to raise livestock are grasslands. what portion of feed they are given is also, largely, crop seconds or industrial byproduct. the source for your owid link is largely poore-nemecek, a paper I would trust to tell me the co2e of co2
I’d like to see a source for “what portion of feed they are given is also, largely, crop seconds or industrial byproduct”. The vast majority of information I have seen on this topic is that we produce more crops specifically to feed animals than we do to feed humans. Which, just from an energy perspective, is completely logical to me.
here is soy !
you see the “soy cake” bit? that’s the byproduct of soybean oil.
I don’t see how this supports your argument that eliminating livestock would not reduce land usage. 76% of soybean production is going to animal feed, do you really think that percentage would not reduce if you switched it over to providing food for humans?
69% is a byproduct of soybean oil production. most people don’t want to eat soy cake. some people already do, but not enough to eat the entire crop. giving that to livestock is a conservation of resources.
soy beans are an excellent example: they’re not grown for livestock. they are grown for people, and what is fed to livestock is industrial byproduct that would otherwise be waste.
What do you think animals eat?
industrial waste, crop seconds, and grazed grass, mostly