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You’re assuming the current owners of the land are also going to disappear? If not then why wouldn’t they use the land for other productive purposes. If it’s cu

You’re assuming the current owners of the land are also going to disappear? If not then why wouldn’t they use the land for other productive purposes. If it’s currently farm land then they would simply change crops. Or maybe they would sell it to a developer who will build a car dependent suburb.

virgildotcodes 4y ago
If they could find other productive purposes sure, but the point of the change from the environmental perspective is that it would reduce demand for agriculture as a whole, that's the heart of why it would be such a big boon for the environment. According to the FAO[1], grazing land for animals and cropland dedicated to producing animal feed represent almost 80% of all agricultural land globally. "Feed crops are grown in one-third of total cropland, while the total land area occupied by pasture is equivalent to 26% of the ice-free terrestrial surface" Given food conversion ratios[2], where you lose roughly 90% of the energy you put into each step up the food chain, the lower we eat on it the lower the amount of energy input we need, which at the bottom of our food chain are those crops and grasslands. Once we remove the heavily inefficient middlemen which are animals, we are left with a drastic reduction in the amount of agricultural land and output needed. I'm not sure how many of these companies and farmers could find another use for their grassland and farmland, as it's not like people will be able to just up their consumption of food by several multiples, and I'm not sure what other sort of productive purposes beyond food production the majority would be able to find. So yeah, once there's no demand and it's no longer profitable, a large amount of that agricultural land seems like it would just be allowed to lay fallow or be rewilded, which would be really beneficial to the environment for many reasons.[3] [1]https://www.fao.org/animal-production/en/ https://www.fao.org/animal-production/en/ [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level [3]https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/explore-rewilding/what-is-rewilding/why-we-need-rewilding https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/explore-rewilding/what-i...

virgildotcodes 4y ago

If they could find other productive purposes sure, but the point of the change from the environmental perspective is that it would reduce demand for agriculture as a whole, that's the heart of why it would be such a big boon for the environment. According to the FAO[1], grazing land for animals and cropland dedicated to producing animal feed represent almost 80% of all agricultural land globally. "Feed crops are grown in one-third of total cropland, while the total land area occupied by pasture is equivalent to 26% of the ice-free terrestrial surface" Given food conversion ratios[2], where you lose roughly 90% of the energy you put into each step up the food chain, the lower we eat on it the lower the amount of energy input we need, which at the bottom of our food chain are those crops and grasslands. Once we remove the heavily inefficient middlemen which are animals, we are left with a drastic reduction in the amount of agricultural land and output needed. I'm not sure how many of these companies and farmers could find another use for their grassland and farmland, as it's not like people will be able to just up their consumption of food by several multiples, and I'm not sure what other sort of productive purposes beyond food production the majority would be able to find. So yeah, once there's no demand and it's no longer profitable, a large amount of that agricultural land seems like it would just be allowed to lay fallow or be rewilded, which would be really beneficial to the environment for many reasons.[3] [1]https://www.fao.org/animal-production/en/ https://www.fao.org/animal-production/en/ [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level [3]https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/explore-rewilding/what-is-rewilding/why-we-need-rewilding https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/explore-rewilding/what-i...