You are right! If you are a subsistence farmer you NEED to have cows, goats, pigs, and/or chickens to make up for the fact you can't grow 12 months a year and m

You are right! If you are a subsistence farmer you NEED to have cows, goats, pigs, and/or chickens to make up for the fact you can't grow 12 months a year and most of what you grow isn't edible by people. However subsistence farming is extremely land inefficient requiring 5 acres per person it feeds. This means that the maximum supportable human population is roughly 2.4 billion using subsistence farming. Also, allowing animals to graze over fields used for growing food results in food borne illness and crop disease. (Usually anthrax and E-coli) Typically if you are going to use animal based fertilizers they must be sterilized and composted ahead of time unless you don't mind poisoning people. Meat IS a luxury though. It's significantly more expensive per calorie than vegetable crops. (At least twice as expensive for the cheapest meat) It also uses about twice as much land as vegetable crops. Often subsistence farmers end up taking animals to market rather than slaughtering and eating themselves because they can get so much more food that way. https://www.primalsurvivor.net/much-land-need-self-sufficient/#:~:text=Even%20though%20a%20lot%20of,and%20a%20long%20growing%20season https://www.primalsurvivor.net/much-land-need-self-sufficien.... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081229200736.htm#:~:text=FULL%20STORY-,Researchers%20have%20discovered%20that%20grazing%20animals%20such%20as%20deer%20and,of%20native%20grasslands%20in%20California https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081229200736.h.... https://extension.psu.edu/common-diseases-of-grazing-beef-cattle https://extension.psu.edu/common-diseases-of-grazing-beef-ca...