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> However, the majority of meat we eat today comes from factory farming, and the majority of the feed for those animals comes from... traditional crop farming.

> However, the majority of meat we eat today comes from factory farming, and the majority of the feed for those animals comes from... traditional crop farming. This is incorrect. Cattle is fed primarily on grass. They are grain finished to increase weight at the end. A lot of that space is unusable as crop fields. Also a lot of animal feed is based off of plant byproduct, corn husk, wheat "What most livestock in the world mostly don’t eat is grain fit for human consumption." "What most livestock in the world mostly eat is grass and other forages and crop ‘wastes’ and by-products." Additionaly: > This study determines that 86% of livestock feed is not suitable for human consumption. If not consumed by livestock, crop residues and by-products could quickly become an environmental burden as the human population grows and consumes more and more processed food. http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/home/en/news_archive/2017_More_Fuel_for_the_Food_Feed.html http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/home/en/news_archive/2017_More... There is a legitimate usage of livestock, they can graze in areas not suitable for crop production (especially sheep and goats). They can consume and digest plant matter that we cannot (which is the whole point of utilizing livestock in the first place). I think in general (as an American) we eat too much meat. And the consumption needs to go down (and it's been staying flat which is saying something). But I think that livestock has a very useful purpose of converting non-crop farmable lands and plant based byproducts into useful food.

garden_hermit 5y ago
What the OP is talking about mostly is factory farming, where cows will likely not eat very much grass, and where animals will not be free to graze. I think most people would agree that traditional livestock farming is a much better system, ethically and environmentally, but it would struggle to meet global demand.
- eitland 5y ago
  > but it would struggle to meet global demand. Probably correct. I guess meat consumption should go down. However as someone who has worked on farms and even studied farming at least here in Norway there is plenty of room for increasing meat production from traditional farming, it just isn't economically viable in most cases. I personally could agree to see meat prices rise 10 or 20% overnight if I knew the price difference would go to the farmers and especially if more of it went to the ones who use their resources reasonably.
mumblemumble 5y ago
> A lot of that space is unusable as crop fields. It may be unusable as crop fields, but grazing it often prevents it from developing into a richer ecosystem that might be able to support a greater variety of wildlife and sink more carbon dioxide. A rather extreme example of this somewhat famously happens down in Brazil, but there's also a not completely off-the-wall hypothesis that this phenomenon also at least partially explains the Little Ice Age. IIRC, the basic goes that the American peoples relied heavily on a version pasture-based livestock agriculture, which involved limiting the growth of forests in order to ensure plenty of grassland for large bison herds. The wave of plague that killed people off after European contact meant that the pasture land was no longer being maintained, and began to revert back to forest. This, in turn, sucked so much CO2 out of the atmosphere that it altered the world climate.
- virtue3 5y ago
  I would argue that you can't point to a single source like that in ecology. Grasslands are the way they are due to draught as well. They have dry periods, and during these they catch on fire and the whole thing burns down. > "A grassland can become either a desert or a forest if conditions like temperature, amount of rainfall, how often fires occur and how many herbivores live in these areas change. As more and more trees grow in a grassland, it is sometimes called a savanna." https://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/grassland#:~:text=Forest%20and%20grassland%20often%20border,grass%20will%20rapidly%20take%20over https://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/grassland#:~:text=Fore....

garden_hermit 5y ago

What the OP is talking about mostly is factory farming, where cows will likely not eat very much grass, and where animals will not be free to graze. I think most people would agree that traditional livestock farming is a much better system, ethically and environmentally, but it would struggle to meet global demand.

eitland 5y ago
> but it would struggle to meet global demand. Probably correct. I guess meat consumption should go down. However as someone who has worked on farms and even studied farming at least here in Norway there is plenty of room for increasing meat production from traditional farming, it just isn't economically viable in most cases. I personally could agree to see meat prices rise 10 or 20% overnight if I knew the price difference would go to the farmers and especially if more of it went to the ones who use their resources reasonably.

mumblemumble 5y ago

> A lot of that space is unusable as crop fields. It may be unusable as crop fields, but grazing it often prevents it from developing into a richer ecosystem that might be able to support a greater variety of wildlife and sink more carbon dioxide. A rather extreme example of this somewhat famously happens down in Brazil, but there's also a not completely off-the-wall hypothesis that this phenomenon also at least partially explains the Little Ice Age. IIRC, the basic goes that the American peoples relied heavily on a version pasture-based livestock agriculture, which involved limiting the growth of forests in order to ensure plenty of grassland for large bison herds. The wave of plague that killed people off after European contact meant that the pasture land was no longer being maintained, and began to revert back to forest. This, in turn, sucked so much CO2 out of the atmosphere that it altered the world climate.

virtue3 5y ago
I would argue that you can't point to a single source like that in ecology. Grasslands are the way they are due to draught as well. They have dry periods, and during these they catch on fire and the whole thing burns down. > "A grassland can become either a desert or a forest if conditions like temperature, amount of rainfall, how often fires occur and how many herbivores live in these areas change. As more and more trees grow in a grassland, it is sometimes called a savanna." https://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/grassland#:~:text=Forest%20and%20grassland%20often%20border,grass%20will%20rapidly%20take%20over https://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/grassland#:~:text=Fore....