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I see this repeated over and over, but I never see any hard data, only graphs. I was under the impression that we use the non eatable parts of crops (i.e. the l
by anhner 5y ago
I see this repeated over and over, but I never see any hard data, only graphs. I was under the impression that we use the non eatable parts of crops (i.e. the leaves, discarded fruit parts, roots etc.) to feed livestock, and grassy, unarable hills are also included in this stat. So it all boils down to being extremely efficient (we can't eat the parts of the plants that we discard, and we also can't eat grass from the lands where we can't plant anything else, so we feed them to animals to transform them into more food, throwing them away would be a waste).
I haven't seen any info that clearly states "this land is exclusively used to plant x squared miles of grain that will be only fed to livestock".
Also, from your link, it is clear that livestock AND fisheries produce 31% of the agricultural greenhouse gasses, while crops produce 27%, so not that big a difference.
- shafyy 5y agoThat's not true. More than 80% of soy production is used as animal feed. Similar story for corn and other grains. > Also, from your link, it is clear that livestock AND fisheries produce 31% of the agricultural greenhouse gasses, while crops produce 27%, so not that big a difference. I'm not sure which part you're referring to. But a big chunk of crop that we grow is directly used as animal feed.
- anhner 5y agoDo we really feed the cows the actual whole soy plant? That sounds incredibly wasteful to me. Or is it just that the parts of soy that we can't eat (stalk, leaves, husks, discarded beans after processing into tofu/milk/etc.) that comprise 80% of the plant, while the rest we consume ourselves?
- unparagoned 5y agoDo you have any evidence that we only use edible parts of the plant? I'm fairly sure that there are crops that are solely grown to feed animals.
- gdubs 5y agoCheck out the Carbon Farming Solution - it’s essentially an encyclopedia of land use and its effects on Climate. Incredibly well researched, and doesn’t present anything as a panacea. The tl;dr is that while pastures and agroforestry can be more sustainable, natural forests are still nearly impossible to beat in terms of carbon sequestration.