4 ms·

The bulk of soy production is for cattle feed. https://ourworldindata.org/soy https://ourworldindata.org/soy

barrell 4y ago
This is quite a red herring. The bulk of soy production is waste, that we have managed to use for cattle feed, because they can upcycle it into consumable nutrients. If we got rid of all cattle, we would not reduce the amount of soybeans grown by 77%, just our utilization of what is grown.
- vnorilo 4y ago
  I don't know much about this particular thing. would be glad to read up on this if you share a good source.
  - pvaldes 4y ago
    Is easy to understand even without bibliography. Soy is an annual herb. It grows all the summer, invest everything on producing fruits in fall and then die in winter. Beans are the crop. Everything else must wait until they are ready, and by then it will be basically dry matter. Therefore all except the beans is a residual. Can still be recycled into more human food by herbivores, but we couldn't do it directly. We can't feed on dry stems, withered flowers or brown leaves.
  - barrell 4y ago
    I would highly recommend the book Sacred Cow. It has links to hundreds of studies within for further research. The authors, Diana rogers and Robb Wolf have been on many podcasts since it's release to discuss the topic. If you want specific studies I can go look up in the book but it sounds like your asking for further reading, not cited sources.
- imw 4y ago
  77% of soy beans are used as feed in animal fattening. The basic biology and ecology of trying to push calories through a lossy (25x!) step in the food cycle doesn't work out. If anyone wants to engage with the consequences of animal agriculture, this is a great starting point: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/climatechange/doc/FAO%20report%20executive%20summary.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/climatechange/doc/FAO%20repor...
  - barrell 4y ago
    Yes but before feeding the cow the bean we press it for soybean oil, which now accounts for a significant portion of calories consumed globally (somewhere around 10%, a quick search did not yield the study and I can't recall it exactly). What do you imagine we would do with the soy pucks that are produced after extruding the oil? Also, ruminants need non starchy, fibrous plant materials. I can't speak toward chicken and pork but I don't advocate people eat those. "86% of the global livestock feed intake is made of materials that are inedible by humans" - Sacred Cow, Diana Rogers, source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211912416300013 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221191241...
    - akiselev 4y ago
      30-70% of their food - depending on the region and local industry - is distillers grains [1]. That’s the waste from ethanol production, including biofuels and alcohol. Of that last 14% of human edible food, the vast majority is used at the end to fatten up the animals for slaughter. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains
    - imw 4y ago
      It doesn't reflect well on your argument that your quote doesn't appear in the source. "Results estimate that livestock consume 6 billion tonnes of feed (dry matter) annually – including one third of global cereal production – of which 86% is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans. In addition, soybean cakes, which production can be considered as main driver or land-use, represent 4% of the global livestock feed intake. Producing 1 kg of boneless meat requires an average of 2.8 kg human-edible feed in ruminant systems and 3.2 kg in monogastric systems. While livestock is estimated to use 2.5 billion ha of land, modest improvements in feed use efficiency can reduce further expansion." Even the source you are citing agrees that after massaging the numbers as much as possible it's still 3x less efficient to produce calories for human consumption by feeling animals.
      - barrell 4y ago

This is quite a red herring. The bulk of soy production is waste, that we have managed to use for cattle feed, because they can upcycle it into consumable nutrients. If we got rid of all cattle, we would not reduce the amount of soybeans grown by 77%, just our utilization of what is grown.

vnorilo 4y ago
I don't know much about this particular thing. would be glad to read up on this if you share a good source.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  Is easy to understand even without bibliography. Soy is an annual herb. It grows all the summer, invest everything on producing fruits in fall and then die in winter. Beans are the crop. Everything else must wait until they are ready, and by then it will be basically dry matter. Therefore all except the beans is a residual. Can still be recycled into more human food by herbivores, but we couldn't do it directly. We can't feed on dry stems, withered flowers or brown leaves.
- barrell 4y ago
  I would highly recommend the book Sacred Cow. It has links to hundreds of studies within for further research. The authors, Diana rogers and Robb Wolf have been on many podcasts since it's release to discuss the topic. If you want specific studies I can go look up in the book but it sounds like your asking for further reading, not cited sources.
imw 4y ago
77% of soy beans are used as feed in animal fattening. The basic biology and ecology of trying to push calories through a lossy (25x!) step in the food cycle doesn't work out. If anyone wants to engage with the consequences of animal agriculture, this is a great starting point: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/climatechange/doc/FAO%20report%20executive%20summary.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/climatechange/doc/FAO%20repor...
- barrell 4y ago
  Yes but before feeding the cow the bean we press it for soybean oil, which now accounts for a significant portion of calories consumed globally (somewhere around 10%, a quick search did not yield the study and I can't recall it exactly). What do you imagine we would do with the soy pucks that are produced after extruding the oil? Also, ruminants need non starchy, fibrous plant materials. I can't speak toward chicken and pork but I don't advocate people eat those. "86% of the global livestock feed intake is made of materials that are inedible by humans" - Sacred Cow, Diana Rogers, source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211912416300013 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221191241...
  - akiselev 4y ago
    30-70% of their food - depending on the region and local industry - is distillers grains [1]. That’s the waste from ethanol production, including biofuels and alcohol. Of that last 14% of human edible food, the vast majority is used at the end to fatten up the animals for slaughter. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains
  - imw 4y ago
    It doesn't reflect well on your argument that your quote doesn't appear in the source. "Results estimate that livestock consume 6 billion tonnes of feed (dry matter) annually – including one third of global cereal production – of which 86% is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans. In addition, soybean cakes, which production can be considered as main driver or land-use, represent 4% of the global livestock feed intake. Producing 1 kg of boneless meat requires an average of 2.8 kg human-edible feed in ruminant systems and 3.2 kg in monogastric systems. While livestock is estimated to use 2.5 billion ha of land, modest improvements in feed use efficiency can reduce further expansion." Even the source you are citing agrees that after massaging the numbers as much as possible it's still 3x less efficient to produce calories for human consumption by feeling animals.
    - barrell 4y ago