Livestock are highly optimized mobile nutrient concentrators and animal husbandry is an inconceivably ancient, nearly universal tradition. In traditional practi

Livestock are highly optimized mobile nutrient concentrators and animal husbandry is an inconceivably ancient, nearly universal tradition. In traditional practice, they collect nutrients in environments where human-edible crops aren't possible or efficient, can synthesize essential nutrients not available in local crops, and can store and supply nutrients when crops or stockpiles fail. All of those things are valuable and ecologically low-impact ways to provide resiliency to total human food supply. The motivating factor for stuff like this is not meat consumption itself, but the problems invented by industrial meat production, which falsely promises cheap, uniform meat to everyone everywhere -- promises just as falsely made by industrial agriculture. The idea of scaling industrial agriculture to displace industrial meat production (yours) is not really all that different than what's suggested in the article. It's still just a patchwork fix to a much bigger problem, which is that industrially producing Modern Western Diet for the entire world is an unsustainable idea in itself. If you want to advocate an environmentally conscious social change, it'd be to restore more geographically appropriate menus and not worry about whether people in (say) mountainous arid climates are eating local meats that could have been replaced by diesel-freighted Digicorn 3.0 shipped from Iowa.