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Unfortunately, UNEP does not address the unpleasant truth here either. The biggest destroyer of nature is intensive livestock farming, especially for meat produ

Unfortunately, UNEP does not address the unpleasant truth here either. The biggest destroyer of nature is intensive livestock farming, especially for meat production. Today, about 40% of the inhabitable land is used for feeding livestock. Removing subsidies in this area could very quickly bring back biodiversity, fight climate change and increase food security worldwide. Unfortunately, for many, eating meat has become like a fetish and such measures are politically almost impossible to implement. Here some more data about this: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use#half-of-the-world-s-habitable-land-is-used-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/land-use#half-of-the-world-s-habi...

foobarian 3y ago
The diagram included in that document is fantastic, thank you.
ianai 3y ago
So they use 77% of their available land to produce 37% of their protein and 18% of their calories. Imagine how much cheaper calories would be if the land dedicated to plants were simply doubled. Thus eliminating a huge amount of starvation.
- FredPret 3y ago
  The thought of that many lentils makes me gag. Cows and sheep can easily live on land not suitable for crops. Livestock is a way to essentially turn unproductive, dry grassland into meat.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    What you're missing is that half of the year they live on soy from deforested Amazon. https://ourworldindata.org/soy https://ourworldindata.org/soy And that "unproductive dry grassland" used to be natural habitat for wildlife, until we took it from them, and more often than not used to be forested. The potential for carbon storage afforesting those areas is huge, so huge that we could store our entire 1.5˚C carbon budget in them. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4 https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000010 https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal... Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agriculture_production_as_a_major_driver_of_the_Earth_system_exceeding_planetary_boundaries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...
  - triceratops 3y ago
    So I take it you buy exclusively free-range grass-fed meat and dairy?
    - baremetal 3y ago
      No I started raising my own beef. Restorative agriculture for the win. I won't be eating crickets or vegan burgers or whatever zealots think I should eat. Or be deprived of eating.
      - triceratops 3y ago
        Sorry for the late reply and you aren't the person I responded to originally, but good for you! Have an upvote
- gamblor956 3y ago
  If we had the technology to turn all that grazing land into farmable land, we could support a global population in the tens of billions. The whole point of livestock is that they can be raised on land that isn't farmable (i.e., cattle for meat or milk), or food that isn't otherwise edible (i.e., pigs and chickens). For most of their lives cattle in the U.S. are raised on land that isn't suitable for farming, and only get fed soy or corn-based feed in their last few weeks to fatten them prior to slaughter.
  - throw0101a 3y ago
    > For most of their lives cattle in the U.S. are raised on land that isn't suitable for farming, and only get fed soy or corn-based feed in their last few weeks to fatten them prior to slaughter. Can the land that is used to grow feed crop (soy, corn) be used to be used to grow other things that humans can eat directly? Or can the soy or corn be used by humans directly as opposed to the 'intermediary' of cattle? If the 'cattle land' be used for other animals that are more efficient (?) in turning plants into protein? (Chicken, pigs, goats, sheep, etc.)
    - gamblor956 3y ago
      Feed crop is only used to feed cattle during the last few weeks of their life; the majority of their weight comes from grazing on unfarmable pasture land. Can the land that is used to grow feed crop (soy, corn) be used to be used to grow other things that humans can eat directly? Humans can eat corn and soy directly... If the 'cattle land' be used for other animals that are more efficient (?) in turning plants into protein? Not unless you can genetically engineer chicken and pigs to eat grass and weeds. Goats and sheep are less efficient at turning plants into protein, which is why the bulk of our mammalian meat production is cattle and not sheep or goat.
agentgumshoe 3y ago
There are ways to fix this of course without moving to not eating meat of course. Meat eating is not a 'fetish' in any significant way, much as it suits some agendas to make it seem so. I could claim that about any product or food... I agree on removing subsidies though, they encourage the wrong kind of outcomes and shortcuts.
- digging 3y ago
  > There are ways to fix this of course without moving to not eating meat of course. There are ways to avoid discomfort while walking with a thorn in your toe that don't involve removing the thorn, but why would you do them if you didn't have an irrational love for thorns?
  - baremetal 3y ago
    Speaking of avoiding discomfort. If you have a lawn, you should cultivate it with vegetables. It's easy to produce a surplus that you can share. Unless you want to avoid putting any sweat equity in...
  - agentgumshoe 3y ago
    Silly analogy. If you're going to remove grazing animals, you might need to figure out how many new fields you'll need for the extra veg required and it's transport, figure out where wool and leather are going to come from, along with the dairy, pet food and all the other derivative products. But sure, we'll just magically stop meat (I think there are ways to easily reduce the need for so much feed without removing meat production) and go to meat free without causing any other issues. Environmental win-win to keep the population Ponzi growing
gregwebs 3y ago
The anti-meat take is always lacking in nuance Any of these types of things said about factory farmed meat is correct. For free-range meat, some of the production does cause habitat destruction. However, most animals are raised on land that is not highly productive for crop agriculture. For example dry areas where most crops will deplete water resources or very hilly areas that are more prone to erosion and harder to operate tractors on, etc (this is even mentioned in the our world in data link). So meat and crop production are not a zero sum game and can even be complementary (crop farmers used to always have chickens, etc). In a grassland environment one can maintain a close to natural environment with the birds and bees with the difference being that cattle are the only megafauna and cattle predators will be killed. Raising crops means completely altering the environment to an unnatural state that then this report tries to amend and killing all the gophers and other pests along with using pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other chemicals (yes organic farming can reduce this harm).
- myshpa 3y ago
  > The anti-meat take is always lacking in nuance The pro-meat take is (as always) lacking scientific basis for their claims, and ignores the biggest problems of the field, like biodiversity loss, deforestation, eutrophication/pollution, pesticide/herbicide use, ethical concerns etc. All science points in opposite direction from yours, no science exists supporting your claims. For scientific rebutal of your opinion see relevant part of the debate "Is livestock grazing essential to mitigating climate change?" between Alan Savory (a big proponent of rotational "regenerative" grazing) and George Monbiot. I watched it all, but am linking directly to the most relevant part. https://youtu.be/rhwEaCmQ2XE?t=1235 https://youtu.be/rhwEaCmQ2XE?t=1235 --- few links --- If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/ Meat eating could lead to habitat loss for 17,000 species by 2050 https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22287498/meat-wildlife-biodiversity-species-plantbased https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22287498/meat-wildlife-bi... Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-global-food-system-primary-driver-biodiversity-loss https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob... How Compatible Are Western European Dietary Patterns to Climate Targets? Accounting for Uncertainty of Life Cycle Assessments by Applying a Probabilistic Approach https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14449 https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14449 Which Diet Has the Least Environmental Impact on Our Planet? A Systematic Review of Vegan, Vegetarian and Omnivorous Diets https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4110/htm https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4110/htm Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2°C climate change targets https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357 Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...
lofaszvanitt 3y ago
Time to bless the populace with a who knows where it came from virus strain, that results in high uric acid/gout when eating meat. Problem solved. Let the insects come.
throwaway1777 3y ago
Switching to plant based alternatives won’t really fix the large fields of soy and corn that are the issue. We may need less to feed cattle then, but then we will need to produce more plant protein for direct human consumption or even bioreactors.
- triceratops 3y ago
  Soy is extremely high in protein. And we'd need to grow far less of it than we do now, because there's no conversion loss like with raising meat.
- myshpa 3y ago
  Human consumption of soy & corn is not the problem. > large fields of soy https://ourworldindata.org/soy https://ourworldindata.org/soy "More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products such as tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh" > fields of ... corn that are the issue Corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (40%) and as animal feed (36%) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-c... https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/corn-industries-sustainability-food-prices/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/corn-industries-susta... U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-corn-based-ethanol-worse-climate-than-gasoline-study-finds-2022-02-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-corn-based-e... > We may need less to feed cattle then, but then we will need to produce more plant protein for direct human consumption or even bioreactors Not at all. If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
jareklupinski 3y ago
if we're talking about the switch to lab-grown meat using plant proteins, lab-grown meat can be grown anywhere, it doesnt need wide horizontal pastures or grazing lands vertical vegetable farming didn't take off because of margins, but vertical meat farming might be possible, as the premium on meat might make the economic equation of growing soy on level three to feed cells on level two before shipping them out in trucks on level one attainable
goda90 3y ago
The key word you used is "intensive". Livestock are animals in too, and we can use techniques to harvest animal products while maintaining a balance in the ecosystem. You can see this in grazing management to turn desert back into grasslands in Africa. And instead of spraying insecticide that runs off and kills things downstream, we can pasture chickens in the same fields we grow crops and they'll happily turn those insects into eggs and meat. Intensive agriculture is fighting nature. We can work with nature instead for both crops and animal products and still get great yield.

foobarian 3y ago

The diagram included in that document is fantastic, thank you.

ianai 3y ago

So they use 77% of their available land to produce 37% of their protein and 18% of their calories. Imagine how much cheaper calories would be if the land dedicated to plants were simply doubled. Thus eliminating a huge amount of starvation.

FredPret 3y ago
The thought of that many lentils makes me gag. Cows and sheep can easily live on land not suitable for crops. Livestock is a way to essentially turn unproductive, dry grassland into meat.
- myshpa 3y ago
  What you're missing is that half of the year they live on soy from deforested Amazon. https://ourworldindata.org/soy https://ourworldindata.org/soy And that "unproductive dry grassland" used to be natural habitat for wildlife, until we took it from them, and more often than not used to be forested. The potential for carbon storage afforesting those areas is huge, so huge that we could store our entire 1.5˚C carbon budget in them. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4 https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000010 https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal... Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agriculture_production_as_a_major_driver_of_the_Earth_system_exceeding_planetary_boundaries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...
- triceratops 3y ago
  So I take it you buy exclusively free-range grass-fed meat and dairy?
  - baremetal 3y ago
    No I started raising my own beef. Restorative agriculture for the win. I won't be eating crickets or vegan burgers or whatever zealots think I should eat. Or be deprived of eating.
    - triceratops 3y ago
      Sorry for the late reply and you aren't the person I responded to originally, but good for you! Have an upvote
gamblor956 3y ago
If we had the technology to turn all that grazing land into farmable land, we could support a global population in the tens of billions. The whole point of livestock is that they can be raised on land that isn't farmable (i.e., cattle for meat or milk), or food that isn't otherwise edible (i.e., pigs and chickens). For most of their lives cattle in the U.S. are raised on land that isn't suitable for farming, and only get fed soy or corn-based feed in their last few weeks to fatten them prior to slaughter.
- throw0101a 3y ago
  > For most of their lives cattle in the U.S. are raised on land that isn't suitable for farming, and only get fed soy or corn-based feed in their last few weeks to fatten them prior to slaughter. Can the land that is used to grow feed crop (soy, corn) be used to be used to grow other things that humans can eat directly? Or can the soy or corn be used by humans directly as opposed to the 'intermediary' of cattle? If the 'cattle land' be used for other animals that are more efficient (?) in turning plants into protein? (Chicken, pigs, goats, sheep, etc.)
  - gamblor956 3y ago
    Feed crop is only used to feed cattle during the last few weeks of their life; the majority of their weight comes from grazing on unfarmable pasture land. Can the land that is used to grow feed crop (soy, corn) be used to be used to grow other things that humans can eat directly? Humans can eat corn and soy directly... If the 'cattle land' be used for other animals that are more efficient (?) in turning plants into protein? Not unless you can genetically engineer chicken and pigs to eat grass and weeds. Goats and sheep are less efficient at turning plants into protein, which is why the bulk of our mammalian meat production is cattle and not sheep or goat.

agentgumshoe 3y ago

There are ways to fix this of course without moving to not eating meat of course. Meat eating is not a 'fetish' in any significant way, much as it suits some agendas to make it seem so. I could claim that about any product or food... I agree on removing subsidies though, they encourage the wrong kind of outcomes and shortcuts.

digging 3y ago
> There are ways to fix this of course without moving to not eating meat of course. There are ways to avoid discomfort while walking with a thorn in your toe that don't involve removing the thorn, but why would you do them if you didn't have an irrational love for thorns?
- baremetal 3y ago
  Speaking of avoiding discomfort. If you have a lawn, you should cultivate it with vegetables. It's easy to produce a surplus that you can share. Unless you want to avoid putting any sweat equity in...
- agentgumshoe 3y ago
  Silly analogy. If you're going to remove grazing animals, you might need to figure out how many new fields you'll need for the extra veg required and it's transport, figure out where wool and leather are going to come from, along with the dairy, pet food and all the other derivative products. But sure, we'll just magically stop meat (I think there are ways to easily reduce the need for so much feed without removing meat production) and go to meat free without causing any other issues. Environmental win-win to keep the population Ponzi growing

gregwebs 3y ago

The anti-meat take is always lacking in nuance Any of these types of things said about factory farmed meat is correct. For free-range meat, some of the production does cause habitat destruction. However, most animals are raised on land that is not highly productive for crop agriculture. For example dry areas where most crops will deplete water resources or very hilly areas that are more prone to erosion and harder to operate tractors on, etc (this is even mentioned in the our world in data link). So meat and crop production are not a zero sum game and can even be complementary (crop farmers used to always have chickens, etc). In a grassland environment one can maintain a close to natural environment with the birds and bees with the difference being that cattle are the only megafauna and cattle predators will be killed. Raising crops means completely altering the environment to an unnatural state that then this report tries to amend and killing all the gophers and other pests along with using pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other chemicals (yes organic farming can reduce this harm).

myshpa 3y ago
> The anti-meat take is always lacking in nuance The pro-meat take is (as always) lacking scientific basis for their claims, and ignores the biggest problems of the field, like biodiversity loss, deforestation, eutrophication/pollution, pesticide/herbicide use, ethical concerns etc. All science points in opposite direction from yours, no science exists supporting your claims. For scientific rebutal of your opinion see relevant part of the debate "Is livestock grazing essential to mitigating climate change?" between Alan Savory (a big proponent of rotational "regenerative" grazing) and George Monbiot. I watched it all, but am linking directly to the most relevant part. https://youtu.be/rhwEaCmQ2XE?t=1235 https://youtu.be/rhwEaCmQ2XE?t=1235 --- few links --- If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/ Meat eating could lead to habitat loss for 17,000 species by 2050 https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22287498/meat-wildlife-biodiversity-species-plantbased https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22287498/meat-wildlife-bi... Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-global-food-system-primary-driver-biodiversity-loss https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob... How Compatible Are Western European Dietary Patterns to Climate Targets? Accounting for Uncertainty of Life Cycle Assessments by Applying a Probabilistic Approach https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14449 https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14449 Which Diet Has the Least Environmental Impact on Our Planet? A Systematic Review of Vegan, Vegetarian and Omnivorous Diets https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4110/htm https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4110/htm Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2°C climate change targets https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357 Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

lofaszvanitt 3y ago

Time to bless the populace with a who knows where it came from virus strain, that results in high uric acid/gout when eating meat. Problem solved. Let the insects come.

throwaway1777 3y ago

Switching to plant based alternatives won’t really fix the large fields of soy and corn that are the issue. We may need less to feed cattle then, but then we will need to produce more plant protein for direct human consumption or even bioreactors.

triceratops 3y ago
Soy is extremely high in protein. And we'd need to grow far less of it than we do now, because there's no conversion loss like with raising meat.
myshpa 3y ago
Human consumption of soy & corn is not the problem. > large fields of soy https://ourworldindata.org/soy https://ourworldindata.org/soy "More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products such as tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh" > fields of ... corn that are the issue Corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (40%) and as animal feed (36%) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-c... https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/corn-industries-sustainability-food-prices/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/corn-industries-susta... U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-corn-based-ethanol-worse-climate-than-gasoline-study-finds-2022-02-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-corn-based-e... > We may need less to feed cattle then, but then we will need to produce more plant protein for direct human consumption or even bioreactors Not at all. If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

jareklupinski 3y ago

if we're talking about the switch to lab-grown meat using plant proteins, lab-grown meat can be grown anywhere, it doesnt need wide horizontal pastures or grazing lands vertical vegetable farming didn't take off because of margins, but vertical meat farming might be possible, as the premium on meat might make the economic equation of growing soy on level three to feed cells on level two before shipping them out in trucks on level one attainable

goda90 3y ago

The key word you used is "intensive". Livestock are animals in too, and we can use techniques to harvest animal products while maintaining a balance in the ecosystem. You can see this in grazing management to turn desert back into grasslands in Africa. And instead of spraying insecticide that runs off and kills things downstream, we can pasture chickens in the same fields we grow crops and they'll happily turn those insects into eggs and meat. Intensive agriculture is fighting nature. We can work with nature instead for both crops and animal products and still get great yield.