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That graphic at the end is a great way to explain how much area is used for our meat eating habit. Think of all the land which is not being used for... anything

That graphic at the end is a great way to explain how much area is used for our meat eating habit. Think of all the land which is not being used for... anything else. We are truly ecologically privileged to be able to create such a huge impact in order to eat meat. Incredible.

gweinberg 8y ago
A lot less impressive when you recognize most grazing land isn't much good for anything else.
- Karrot_Kream 8y ago
  Is it not good for housing?
  - fipple 8y ago
    Not really, because it’s not near any jobs.
    - CorpOverreach 8y ago
      Isn't that a bit of a catch-22 though? It's not near any jobs because... there's no one out there. Why would you start a business there?
      - mandelbrotwurst 8y ago
        Chicken or the egg, eh?
        maxerickson 8y ago
        Chicken, egg, resource or harbor.
      - fipple 8y ago
        There are no jobs out there because it’s not a good place to urbanize. Settlement usually requires some combination of natural resources, navigable waterways, fresh water, protection from weather, protection from attack, or other inherent traits. The cattle grazing land in the middle of the country doesn’t have any of these.
  - gweinberg 8y ago
    There's a bunch of grazing land in the bay area. It tends to be really hilly. Not hilly like where we live, but seriously hilly. Besides, we need the open space. Can't have houses everywhere, this isn't LA.
  - jschwartzi 8y ago
    You could put all the factories and jobs you want out there and I still wouldn't have anything to do with the tract home nightmare that would create.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  It would be great for sequestering carbon dioxide (in the form of trees), which is really what most of it probably should be used for. Instead we're depleting the topsoil, using up all our non-renewable water, and poisoning the oceans. All for basically no reason.
  - cwingrav 8y ago
    Most of that land out West is too dry for many trees. There are some really interesting experiments for improving scrub plant growth using wavy rollers (water collects at bottom of rippled soil), but the fuel to plow that much land would probably do more harm than good.
    - jay-anderson 8y ago
      Yes! I think a lot of people miss the water part. The land will not grow a lot of the plants we eat or large trees without irrigation. However cows and other animals can eat the scrub that grows there naturally so it makes some sense to raise cattle in these areas. It'd be interesting to see that pasture range broken out a bit more (feed lots, open grazing land, etc.). That said, I'm all for lowering our overall meat consumption. The amount of land for cattle and land for food for cattle is huge.
      - tspike 8y ago
        I was under the impression cattle require a lot of water, is that incorrect?
        AngryData 8y ago
        They drink a decent bit, but most of the calculated water usage comes from the water used to grow alfalfa and feed.
        jethro_tell 8y ago
        A grazing beef cow will drink about 7-10 gallons during the day. If it is hot, they will drink 25. Wheat yields around 1LB for 130 -150 gallons over the growing season. An avocado (1lb) requires about 90 Gallons over the growing season. There are a lot of things to factor into this, crop yields aren't static and there are a lot of other things that can change the yields. Cows have legs, so you don't have to 'irrigate' them, they just have to be pastured within a couple thousand feet of water, and you can set up temporary solar pump + water trough if you have water within a couple miles. Beef Cattle will give you 5-600 lbs of meat at about 1200 Calories per pound, with an average grazing time of 12 months. works out to 150cal/gallon. Avocado has about 700+ cal per pound so about 8cal/gallon. (I'm not as sure on this, it could be lower as a 'medium' avocado is about 1/3 of a pound, but I've never grown avocados so I don't know the exact here.) Calories in a whole grain wheat is about 1500/lb, so 1500/150 is about 10cal/gallon. So it's kinda relative, but the only way you're going to harvest edible nutrients from scrub land is buy herding or hunting grazing animals that process the stuff with 4 stomachs. There's a larger question of the value that grazing provides and if we need that as a food source. Before modern farming and shipping, if you lived in a semi-arid scrubland style climate, you were very much dependent on some type of animal to turn that stuff into a digestible food source for you.
- torpfactory 8y ago
  It is a pretty significant diversion of land from a natural state though. Cattle grazing, thought it isn’t an ecological disaster like dam building, is quite different than leaving the land untouched. Plus, a good portion of the country’s good farmland is diverted to growing feed for those animals. Think of it like: how many acres have been changed from a natural ecosystem to an artificial one for meat eating.
  - pathseeker 8y ago
    >Cattle grazing, thought it isn’t an ecological disaster like dam building, is quite different than leaving the land untouched. Leaving the land untouched is even more 'ecologically privileged' than using it to make expensive food. >Plus, a good portion of the country’s good farmland is diverted to growing feed for those animals. Growing feed (hay/grass) is much easier than growing things like almonds. If a farmer could grow something humans would pay for directly rather than hay, they would.
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      Given the colossal and uneven levels of subsidies in US agriculture, I'd be reluctant to draw any conclusions about what the market is willing to bear.
      - Fjolsvith 8y ago
        The farmers here in Kansas are crying because the subsidies are being cut right and left. It's going to shake up the agricultural market big time. Plus, all the grain storage facilities are still mostly full from last year and we're looking towards another bumper crop from all the rainfall this year.
      - adventured 8y ago
        US agriculture subsidies are not colossal in fact. They're about $20-$25 billion per year. They shouldn't exist at all ideally, however given the immense size of the US agriculture market, and how critical it is to keeping hundreds of millions of people alive, it's hardly a concerning sum. By contrast, EU farm subsidies in a smaller economy are three times that size. If the US farm subsidies are colossal, I'm not sure what you'd call 3x colossal.
megaman22 8y ago
Go look at the land that's being used as open range pasture out west. If it was not being used for grazing cattle, it would not be used for anything anyway. Most of it was buffalo country two hundred years ago, so it's not like it's really changed.
- GW150914 8y ago
  Back in “the day” 20 to 30 million bison roamed the US. Today there are more than 94 million cattle in the US, and that’s actually down from a peak of 130+ million in the mid seventies. A lot has changed! Those bison were also wild, lived much much longer lives than farmed cattle which spend part of their lives in feed lots. The bison were also part of the broader ecosystem, hunted by wolves, and in general a net negative emitter. The modern cow is not, especially when time on feed lots and eventual transportation pre-post slaughter are factored in. Modern cattle are after all, part of an industry which pollutes in addition to the cows themselves, while bison just lived and died on the plains.
  - AngryData 8y ago
    You should also factor in the fact that the average buffalo are bigger than the average cow. Buffalo are around the size of a holstein cow, the most common dairy cow, but most of the meat cattle we raise are near half the size/weight of them.
- gweinberg 8y ago
  Yeah, the chart gives the impression that land is land, and we just decide how to use it. But there are good reasons land is used the way it is. Farmland in the midwest is really really flat, with thick rich soil. A lot of forest land is pretty steeply sloped, with not so much soil. And so on.
  - tomjakubowski 8y ago
    In other words: even if mushrooms grow on it, land is not fungible.
pokemongoaway 8y ago
So you think we should be able to pack in more humans, and have then eat soy? There are other models, like Joel Salatin's farming techniques, to provide sustainable and healthy animal products.
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
There are tens of millions of bison that would be grazing that land had they not been wiped out.
autokad 8y ago
as others pointed out, it cant be really used for anything else. I'll also add to that, look how much of the rocky mountains was listed as 'pasture / range'

gweinberg 8y ago

A lot less impressive when you recognize most grazing land isn't much good for anything else.

Karrot_Kream 8y ago
Is it not good for housing?
- fipple 8y ago
  Not really, because it’s not near any jobs.
  - CorpOverreach 8y ago
    Isn't that a bit of a catch-22 though? It's not near any jobs because... there's no one out there. Why would you start a business there?
    - mandelbrotwurst 8y ago
      Chicken or the egg, eh?
      - maxerickson 8y ago
        Chicken, egg, resource or harbor.
    - fipple 8y ago
      There are no jobs out there because it’s not a good place to urbanize. Settlement usually requires some combination of natural resources, navigable waterways, fresh water, protection from weather, protection from attack, or other inherent traits. The cattle grazing land in the middle of the country doesn’t have any of these.
- gweinberg 8y ago
  There's a bunch of grazing land in the bay area. It tends to be really hilly. Not hilly like where we live, but seriously hilly. Besides, we need the open space. Can't have houses everywhere, this isn't LA.
- jschwartzi 8y ago
  You could put all the factories and jobs you want out there and I still wouldn't have anything to do with the tract home nightmare that would create.
Alex3917 8y ago
It would be great for sequestering carbon dioxide (in the form of trees), which is really what most of it probably should be used for. Instead we're depleting the topsoil, using up all our non-renewable water, and poisoning the oceans. All for basically no reason.
- cwingrav 8y ago
  Most of that land out West is too dry for many trees. There are some really interesting experiments for improving scrub plant growth using wavy rollers (water collects at bottom of rippled soil), but the fuel to plow that much land would probably do more harm than good.
  - jay-anderson 8y ago
    Yes! I think a lot of people miss the water part. The land will not grow a lot of the plants we eat or large trees without irrigation. However cows and other animals can eat the scrub that grows there naturally so it makes some sense to raise cattle in these areas. It'd be interesting to see that pasture range broken out a bit more (feed lots, open grazing land, etc.). That said, I'm all for lowering our overall meat consumption. The amount of land for cattle and land for food for cattle is huge.
    - tspike 8y ago
      I was under the impression cattle require a lot of water, is that incorrect?
      - AngryData 8y ago
        They drink a decent bit, but most of the calculated water usage comes from the water used to grow alfalfa and feed.
      - jethro_tell 8y ago
        A grazing beef cow will drink about 7-10 gallons during the day. If it is hot, they will drink 25. Wheat yields around 1LB for 130 -150 gallons over the growing season. An avocado (1lb) requires about 90 Gallons over the growing season. There are a lot of things to factor into this, crop yields aren't static and there are a lot of other things that can change the yields. Cows have legs, so you don't have to 'irrigate' them, they just have to be pastured within a couple thousand feet of water, and you can set up temporary solar pump + water trough if you have water within a couple miles. Beef Cattle will give you 5-600 lbs of meat at about 1200 Calories per pound, with an average grazing time of 12 months. works out to 150cal/gallon. Avocado has about 700+ cal per pound so about 8cal/gallon. (I'm not as sure on this, it could be lower as a 'medium' avocado is about 1/3 of a pound, but I've never grown avocados so I don't know the exact here.) Calories in a whole grain wheat is about 1500/lb, so 1500/150 is about 10cal/gallon. So it's kinda relative, but the only way you're going to harvest edible nutrients from scrub land is buy herding or hunting grazing animals that process the stuff with 4 stomachs. There's a larger question of the value that grazing provides and if we need that as a food source. Before modern farming and shipping, if you lived in a semi-arid scrubland style climate, you were very much dependent on some type of animal to turn that stuff into a digestible food source for you.
torpfactory 8y ago
It is a pretty significant diversion of land from a natural state though. Cattle grazing, thought it isn’t an ecological disaster like dam building, is quite different than leaving the land untouched. Plus, a good portion of the country’s good farmland is diverted to growing feed for those animals. Think of it like: how many acres have been changed from a natural ecosystem to an artificial one for meat eating.
- pathseeker 8y ago
  >Cattle grazing, thought it isn’t an ecological disaster like dam building, is quite different than leaving the land untouched. Leaving the land untouched is even more 'ecologically privileged' than using it to make expensive food. >Plus, a good portion of the country’s good farmland is diverted to growing feed for those animals. Growing feed (hay/grass) is much easier than growing things like almonds. If a farmer could grow something humans would pay for directly rather than hay, they would.
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    Given the colossal and uneven levels of subsidies in US agriculture, I'd be reluctant to draw any conclusions about what the market is willing to bear.
    - Fjolsvith 8y ago
      The farmers here in Kansas are crying because the subsidies are being cut right and left. It's going to shake up the agricultural market big time. Plus, all the grain storage facilities are still mostly full from last year and we're looking towards another bumper crop from all the rainfall this year.
    - adventured 8y ago
      US agriculture subsidies are not colossal in fact. They're about $20-$25 billion per year. They shouldn't exist at all ideally, however given the immense size of the US agriculture market, and how critical it is to keeping hundreds of millions of people alive, it's hardly a concerning sum. By contrast, EU farm subsidies in a smaller economy are three times that size. If the US farm subsidies are colossal, I'm not sure what you'd call 3x colossal.

megaman22 8y ago

Go look at the land that's being used as open range pasture out west. If it was not being used for grazing cattle, it would not be used for anything anyway. Most of it was buffalo country two hundred years ago, so it's not like it's really changed.

GW150914 8y ago
Back in “the day” 20 to 30 million bison roamed the US. Today there are more than 94 million cattle in the US, and that’s actually down from a peak of 130+ million in the mid seventies. A lot has changed! Those bison were also wild, lived much much longer lives than farmed cattle which spend part of their lives in feed lots. The bison were also part of the broader ecosystem, hunted by wolves, and in general a net negative emitter. The modern cow is not, especially when time on feed lots and eventual transportation pre-post slaughter are factored in. Modern cattle are after all, part of an industry which pollutes in addition to the cows themselves, while bison just lived and died on the plains.
- AngryData 8y ago
  You should also factor in the fact that the average buffalo are bigger than the average cow. Buffalo are around the size of a holstein cow, the most common dairy cow, but most of the meat cattle we raise are near half the size/weight of them.
gweinberg 8y ago
Yeah, the chart gives the impression that land is land, and we just decide how to use it. But there are good reasons land is used the way it is. Farmland in the midwest is really really flat, with thick rich soil. A lot of forest land is pretty steeply sloped, with not so much soil. And so on.
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  In other words: even if mushrooms grow on it, land is not fungible.

pokemongoaway 8y ago

So you think we should be able to pack in more humans, and have then eat soy? There are other models, like Joel Salatin's farming techniques, to provide sustainable and healthy animal products.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

There are tens of millions of bison that would be grazing that land had they not been wiped out.

autokad 8y ago

as others pointed out, it cant be really used for anything else. I'll also add to that, look how much of the rocky mountains was listed as 'pasture / range'