5 ms·

You can't eat the plants that are eaten by the animals. Not all pastures can be converted to fields, and converting the rest will actually reduce biodiversity

by chr1 5y ago

You can't eat the plants that are eaten by the animals. Not all pastures can be converted to fields, and converting the rest will actually reduce biodiversity and cause more sustainability issues.

_Microft 5y ago
Only a fraction (and sometimes even tiny fraction) of the land is needed to supply the same amount of protein and calories when replacing animals sources with plant sources. That means that you actually will not need to convert all these pastures to fields because they are just not needed anymore. Here are charts that compare land use of different foods normalized per calorie / grams of protein: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-protein-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-protein-poore If you want to know more, type "land use" into the search box of https://ourworldindata.org https://ourworldindata.org and pick an article of your choice.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  This is incredibly misleading. I live in a community with ranches and farms. The ranchland looks like nature. Other than cows here and there, it's wildland. Coyotes, mountain lions, hawks, and all sorts of wildlife abound. The farms are manicured flat with row crops, irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. Farming is vastly more destructive to the natural environment. "Land use" measured in abstract square feet is not a useful concept.
  - _Microft 5y ago
    > The farms are manicured flat with row crops, irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. Farming is vastly more destructive to the natural environment. You might be surprised but 40% of all (cereal) crops are produced to feed animals. That would almost completely go away except a bit to compensate for the loss of meat. See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cereal-distribution-to-uses?stackMode=relative&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cereal-distribution-to-us...
    - cheese_goddess 5y ago
      So we'd be left with the other 60% and then we'd have to increase the production to make up for the decrase in production of meat. That's a very slim margin of improvement. The other thing we could do of course is to avoid feeding animals with crops like soy and corn, and instead let them browse freely and eat the wild grasses and shrubs that they would eat normally, if humans didn't feed them more "efficient" feeds. Obviously that would mean a significantly reduced number of farmed animals, but that's a feature, not a bug. Perhaps we can all agree on this: the true plague is industrial meat production.
  - radec 5y ago
    I would argue this is incredibly misleading. What percentage of meat or dairy comes from pasture animals? You can't fulfill a country like the US's meat and dairy demand with pasture raised animals. So realistically we are talking about factory farmed animals. If we are talking about factory farmed animals then it goes back to the needing these nature destructing farms you are talking about just to feed animals that then feed humans, this is not an efficient system.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - cheese_goddess 5y ago
      > What percentage of meat or dairy comes from pasture animals? Meat and dairy are separate considerations. Even in industrial farming, meat animals and dairy animals are raised separately and often belong to different breeds. They are certainly treated differently. So for example, where I'm staying, about 80% of the dairy products are made with the milk of sheep and goats in small farms where the animals range freely, in the summer, and eat stored wild grassses as hay in the winter. On the other hand, most of the meat consumed is chicken and pork and of those animals, at least the chicken are kept in large battery operations. I don't know about pig farming. Also, where I stay there are very few cows, most of them raised for dairy, and the country has one of the smallest, if not the smallest number of cattle in Europe. It's in South Europe, but I don't want to say exactly where. Anyway when you ask questions like the one above, please consider that the conditions you know from the Americas are not the same in all of the rest of the world, and that most of the rest of the world simply does not eat as much meat, of all kids, as Americans (and by "Americans" I mean people in the US, Argentina and Brazil). > You can't fulfill a country like the US's meat and dairy demand with pasture raised animals. "Demand", maybe not. But "need"? It seems to me that this can be done perfectly well simply because the amount currently consumed is extravagant. People in the US eat way too much meat, per capita, compared to almost everyone else in the world, including most industrialised nations. My selection below: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person?tab=chart&time=latest&country=DEU~FRA~GBR~USA~ARG~BRA~CHN~ESP~ITA~TUR~JPN~KOR~BEL~NLD~CAN~CHL~GRC~POL~SWE~CHE~SAU~ZAF~BGD~IND~IDN~IRN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person?ta... Nobody needs to eat that much meat. If there is "demand" for it, that is the matter that should be addressed. Why do people want to eat so much meat? There is something incredibly wrong in the data above, when you look at how the US, Argentina, Spain and Brazil eat, compared to the other industrialised countries in the chart.
  - rdedev 5y ago
    > I live in a community with ranches and farms. The ranchland looks like nature. That depends on the land. Cattle and rainforests don't go together well
  - oscardssmith 5y ago
    The problem is that for every acre of ranch, you need 5 to 10 acres of farm to feed the ranch.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    Clearing forest for ranches has been (and continues to be) among the most ecologically destructive activities in the history of the world, especially in tropical places where it directly replaces rainforest. In the USA (excluding Alaska), something like 1/4 of all land area is directly used for animal grazing land, and something like 2/3 agriculture production goes to producing animal feed. These take huge amounts of water, fuel, and other resources. Beef production in particular is one of the leading causes of global climate change via CO2 emissions. I love steaks and hamburgers as much as the next person, but we shouldn’t pretend it has a low environmental cost.
- cheese_goddess 5y ago
  >> Only a fraction (and sometimes even tiny fraction) of the land is needed to supply the same amount of protein and calories when replacing animals sources with plant sources. That's a quick dodge, but still, a dodge of the OP's point: you can't eat all the plants that animals eat. For example, I eat primarily sheep and goat and their dairy products. The goats eat shrubs and the sheep browse inedible grasses. In fact, funny story, but I know a girl (not me) who tried to eat the grass the sheep were eating and her mouth filled with sores. I mean duh. Anyway ruminants have four stomachs just so they can digest plant matter that is impossible for omnivores to digest. Industrially farmed animals are fed soy and corn, that can be digested by humans, but those are not those animals' natural feed. Left to their own devices, outside of factory farming, browsing freely, farm animals would exclusively eat plants that are inedible to humans and so they would convert plant matter to food way, way more efficiently than any human stomach ever could. Four stomachs and rumination is the most efficient plant-to-meat production mechanism known to anyone.
  - _Microft 5y ago
    Yes, it is true that we cannot eat all the plants that animals can but it is only "technically true" in the sense that it does not not really matter.

by chr1 5y ago

You can't eat the plants that are eaten by the animals. Not all pastures can be converted to fields, and converting the rest will actually reduce biodiversity and cause more sustainability issues.

_Microft 5y ago

Only a fraction (and sometimes even tiny fraction) of the land is needed to supply the same amount of protein and calories when replacing animals sources with plant sources. That means that you actually will not need to convert all these pastures to fields because they are just not needed anymore. Here are charts that compare land use of different foods normalized per calorie / grams of protein: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-protein-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-protein-poore If you want to know more, type "land use" into the search box of https://ourworldindata.org https://ourworldindata.org and pick an article of your choice.

stickfigure 5y ago
This is incredibly misleading. I live in a community with ranches and farms. The ranchland looks like nature. Other than cows here and there, it's wildland. Coyotes, mountain lions, hawks, and all sorts of wildlife abound. The farms are manicured flat with row crops, irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. Farming is vastly more destructive to the natural environment. "Land use" measured in abstract square feet is not a useful concept.
- _Microft 5y ago
  > The farms are manicured flat with row crops, irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. Farming is vastly more destructive to the natural environment. You might be surprised but 40% of all (cereal) crops are produced to feed animals. That would almost completely go away except a bit to compensate for the loss of meat. See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cereal-distribution-to-uses?stackMode=relative&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cereal-distribution-to-us...
  - cheese_goddess 5y ago
    So we'd be left with the other 60% and then we'd have to increase the production to make up for the decrase in production of meat. That's a very slim margin of improvement. The other thing we could do of course is to avoid feeding animals with crops like soy and corn, and instead let them browse freely and eat the wild grasses and shrubs that they would eat normally, if humans didn't feed them more "efficient" feeds. Obviously that would mean a significantly reduced number of farmed animals, but that's a feature, not a bug. Perhaps we can all agree on this: the true plague is industrial meat production.
- radec 5y ago
  I would argue this is incredibly misleading. What percentage of meat or dairy comes from pasture animals? You can't fulfill a country like the US's meat and dairy demand with pasture raised animals. So realistically we are talking about factory farmed animals. If we are talking about factory farmed animals then it goes back to the needing these nature destructing farms you are talking about just to feed animals that then feed humans, this is not an efficient system.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - cheese_goddess 5y ago
    > What percentage of meat or dairy comes from pasture animals? Meat and dairy are separate considerations. Even in industrial farming, meat animals and dairy animals are raised separately and often belong to different breeds. They are certainly treated differently. So for example, where I'm staying, about 80% of the dairy products are made with the milk of sheep and goats in small farms where the animals range freely, in the summer, and eat stored wild grassses as hay in the winter. On the other hand, most of the meat consumed is chicken and pork and of those animals, at least the chicken are kept in large battery operations. I don't know about pig farming. Also, where I stay there are very few cows, most of them raised for dairy, and the country has one of the smallest, if not the smallest number of cattle in Europe. It's in South Europe, but I don't want to say exactly where. Anyway when you ask questions like the one above, please consider that the conditions you know from the Americas are not the same in all of the rest of the world, and that most of the rest of the world simply does not eat as much meat, of all kids, as Americans (and by "Americans" I mean people in the US, Argentina and Brazil). > You can't fulfill a country like the US's meat and dairy demand with pasture raised animals. "Demand", maybe not. But "need"? It seems to me that this can be done perfectly well simply because the amount currently consumed is extravagant. People in the US eat way too much meat, per capita, compared to almost everyone else in the world, including most industrialised nations. My selection below: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person?tab=chart&time=latest&country=DEU~FRA~GBR~USA~ARG~BRA~CHN~ESP~ITA~TUR~JPN~KOR~BEL~NLD~CAN~CHL~GRC~POL~SWE~CHE~SAU~ZAF~BGD~IND~IDN~IRN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person?ta... Nobody needs to eat that much meat. If there is "demand" for it, that is the matter that should be addressed. Why do people want to eat so much meat? There is something incredibly wrong in the data above, when you look at how the US, Argentina, Spain and Brazil eat, compared to the other industrialised countries in the chart.
- rdedev 5y ago
  > I live in a community with ranches and farms. The ranchland looks like nature. That depends on the land. Cattle and rainforests don't go together well
- oscardssmith 5y ago
  The problem is that for every acre of ranch, you need 5 to 10 acres of farm to feed the ranch.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  Clearing forest for ranches has been (and continues to be) among the most ecologically destructive activities in the history of the world, especially in tropical places where it directly replaces rainforest. In the USA (excluding Alaska), something like 1/4 of all land area is directly used for animal grazing land, and something like 2/3 agriculture production goes to producing animal feed. These take huge amounts of water, fuel, and other resources. Beef production in particular is one of the leading causes of global climate change via CO2 emissions. I love steaks and hamburgers as much as the next person, but we shouldn’t pretend it has a low environmental cost.
cheese_goddess 5y ago
>> Only a fraction (and sometimes even tiny fraction) of the land is needed to supply the same amount of protein and calories when replacing animals sources with plant sources. That's a quick dodge, but still, a dodge of the OP's point: you can't eat all the plants that animals eat. For example, I eat primarily sheep and goat and their dairy products. The goats eat shrubs and the sheep browse inedible grasses. In fact, funny story, but I know a girl (not me) who tried to eat the grass the sheep were eating and her mouth filled with sores. I mean duh. Anyway ruminants have four stomachs just so they can digest plant matter that is impossible for omnivores to digest. Industrially farmed animals are fed soy and corn, that can be digested by humans, but those are not those animals' natural feed. Left to their own devices, outside of factory farming, browsing freely, farm animals would exclusively eat plants that are inedible to humans and so they would convert plant matter to food way, way more efficiently than any human stomach ever could. Four stomachs and rumination is the most efficient plant-to-meat production mechanism known to anyone.
- _Microft 5y ago
  Yes, it is true that we cannot eat all the plants that animals can but it is only "technically true" in the sense that it does not not really matter.