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40% of lost calories globally are from beef, needing 33 cal of feed per 1 cal
- khelavastr 7mo agoWait til they evaluate calories to produce ensembles of separable blends of protein and fats and more...beef is pretty efficient
- capitainenemo 7mo agoSoybeans do pretty well a lot more efficiently. Not perfect, naturally, but close, and other stuff can cover gaps. Obviously not all land is good for crops, but a lot of land used for animals or animal feed could be used for crops.
- srslyTrying2hlp 7mo ago[dead]
- romuloalves 7mo agoBut the beef delivers way more nutrition and calories than the crop they eat.
- synasties 7mo agoThen can human process grass?
- charlesabarnes 7mo agoCattle feed is more than grass
- maerF0x0 7mo agoCorrect, but many lands like parts of Alberta and Texas are not very good for growing foods humans can eat. So you may as well get marginal additional calories out of the non-productive land via cellulose digesters.
- skeeter2020 7mo agodepends on the phase of development. Most beef is pasture fed for a significant period, maybe supplemented with extra feed in the winter, but still grass, etc. It's only near the relatively short end they are consolidated & finished at the feed lot.
- cute_boi 7mo ago> Most beef is pasture fed for a significant period Citations please. When i looked into internet [1] it says "approximately 95% of the cattle in the United States continue to be finished, or fattened, on grain" [1] https://extension.psu.edu/grass-fed-beef-production https://extension.psu.edu/grass-fed-beef-production
- deIeted 7mo ago[flagged]
- jvanderbot 7mo agoMost cows don't eat grass like a wandering herd. Most cows eat stuff we grow on farms that could grow stuff we can eat instead. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2024/december/ers-data-series-tracks-major-uses-of-u-s-land-with-a-focus-on-agriculture https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2024/december/ers-data-... and https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feed-grains/feed-grains-sector-at-a-glance#:~:text=The%20major%20feed%20grains%20are,of%20the%20country's%20total%20use. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feed-gr... Let me surface a more direct article: https://insideanimalag.org/land-use-for-animal-ag/#:~:text=1.,specifically%20used%20for%20animal%20feed. https://insideanimalag.org/land-use-for-animal-ag/#:~:text=1... Of the total land area of the contiguous 48 states, ~45% is used for animal ag. This includes: Land for grazing livestock at ~35%. Land for crops going specifically to animal feed at ~9%. Animal ag farmsteads at <1%.[1-3]
- WorkerBee28474 7mo agoThe first link you posted says that 29% of the land is used for pasture and 15% is used for crops (which will include both human and animal). So yes, most cows are eating grass like a wandering herd.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- morsch 7mo agoThe data doesn't prove either point. For all we know, a very low number of cattle are being grazed on those 29%. Or a lot of them. We don't know.
- duskwuff 7mo agoThat doesn't follow. The chart is counting the number of acres of land which are used for specific purposes, not the number of cattle being raised on that land. And the category you're counting as "pasture" encompasses rangeland as well, which is used at an extremely low density (often as low as 1 head of cattle per 10 acres).
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- deIeted 7mo ago[flagged]
- srslyTrying2hlp 7mo ago[dead]
- brightbeige 7mo agoActual title: Only half of the calories produced on croplands are available as food for human consumption
- whalesalad 7mo agoThis is a really big shocker to most people, especially in America. We see these big huge farmlands with rows and rows of corn. We hear the propaganda that farmers are the backbone of this nation and we can't live without them. Songs sing in our heads, "amber waves of grain, from sea to shining sea". People get a warm and fuzzy feeling. Country music psyop perpetuates this. Meanwhile a substantial portion (as noted here) is garbage. It's genetically modified crap from a fortune 100 company that requires fertilizer and herbicide from the same fortune 100 company and any seeds harvested contractually cannot be re-used so the grower needs to re-buy every year. And it's not for human consumption! A lot of it isn't even for animal consumption, it's for ethanol or other uses. Whole situation just kinda cracks me up.
- raincole 7mo ago> it's for ethanol or other uses ... and? I read it so far down. Now could you please kindly explain why this is "garbage"?
- wield_overhaul 7mo agoIn general, biofuels are a pretty inefficient use of land: https://ourworldindata.org/biofuel-land-solar-electric-vehicles https://ourworldindata.org/biofuel-land-solar-electric-vehic...
- roncesvalles 7mo agoI mean, it's both things. Humans are just really good at agriculture by now. Most countries, even those that we perceive as poor, produce crops well in surplus of their own nutritional needs and can often scale up to produce multiples more. It's no exaggeration to say we can support feeding 100x the human population with current agricultural land and techniques (assuming you can modify their diets). Largely due to GMO, fertilizers, and industrial farming.
- kshahkshah 7mo agoNot trying to be overly flippant... who cares? The paper opens with "to feed a growing population" without asking is that what we need? want? where we are actually heading to? Is feeding the world a real problem? I've yet to see compelling evidence that it really is except as a secondary effect of logistics, energy supply, and war. edit: I understand the environmental impacts. I think we should solve our energy problems first.
- cameldrv 7mo agoExactly. The current world population is 8.3 billion and is expected to peak at 10.3 billion in 2080 and then begin declining. Now, there are a number of other reasons we might have food shortages, but population per se I don't think is a significant factor.
- capitainenemo 7mo agoEven if food shortages aren't an issue, reducing the amount of land dedicated to food production is a win for ecosystems. Not saying people have to go vegetarian, but reducing meat consumption or using more efficiently produced meats (in terms of land use) would overall make the world a nicer and more interesting place. And, really, with the whole neu5gc thing, it might be that humans would be better off focusing on chickens and seafood anyway (clams being a pretty good option for seafood that is relatively environmentally friendly).
- tracker1 7mo agoGrass fed cattle can use land that is generally not fit for vegetation farming... because of excess rocks, etc. Ruminants that are being naturally (grass) fed are also regenerative in terms of soil health. They don't tend to "bulk up" as much as conventional (grain fed and/or finished) options though, so are more expensive to produce... the gas emissions are another issue that is largely different for grass fed, where the off gases are roughly the same as the grass's natural breakdown would release anyway. In terms of water use, naturally grass fed cattle are mostly using water that fell on the land as rain in terms of how much water they use. It's not much from municipal sources, unlike vegetation farming. Of course there are other ruminant options that are more efficient than cattle, such as goats and sheep, with similar benefits to the soil. It just bugs me that cattle gets such a bad repuation... especially in that it's one of the few things I can eat without issue.
- lkbm 7mo ago> If excess beef consumption were reduced to healthy quantities, as defined by the EAT-Lancet healthy reference diet, and substituted with chicken in forty-eight higher-income countries, the lost calories avoided would be enough to meet the caloric needs of 850 million people. It's really impressive how efficient chickens are compared to beef. Obviously thinks like legumes are way more efficient, but we've really bred chickens to be meat machines in a way we haven't with cows.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- LaurensBER 7mo agoIt absolutely is and in some ways we've only just started! Although we definitely shouldn't move fast and break things with living animals and our food supply;)
- vharuck 7mo agoThey aren't just amazingly efficient in converting calories to protein, they're great at eating things without much other (agricultural) value to us. They eat the invasive spotted lantern fly!
- Brendinooo 7mo agoTrue for chickens in general! But the Cornish Crosses in the factory farms probably never see a lanternfly, and wouldn't want to get away from the feeder long enough to go after one.
- darth_avocado 7mo agoThis is the kind of proposal that might fly well when it comes to the discourse over meat. People say “but we could be growing other crops instead of feed for cows”. Well yes, but you need protein in the diet. You can’t grow potatoes and veggies and expect people to survive only on that. Then there’s the question of land utilization. Historically cattle was raised for meat and dairy where agriculture was more difficult as compared to grazing cows, sheep, goats etc. The modern corn, soybean and alpha alpha farms may be able to grow other crops, but would they be able to support the crops that are needed in nutrition? Chicken and other more efficient substitutions may be the answer here.
- onetokeoverthe 7mo ago[dead]
- WorkerBee28474 7mo ago> To feed a growing population, it is essential that the global agri-food system be managed to efficiently convert crop production into calories for human consumption. It's really not. Efficiency is the enemy of redundancy. Countries want food security, so they must therefore produce excess calories.
- analyte123 7mo agoIt’s really, really not. Crop land per capita has been going down for decades despite richer diets, and all the biofuels and livestock feed [1]. Let’s not forget that advanced drugs to stop people from overeating the abundant food are a $60 billion and rapidly growing market. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cropland-per-person-over-the-long-term?time=1950..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cropland-per-person-over-...
- ux266478 7mo agoI think it's important to a point, to be pedantic. But yes, global food production is well over the hurdle of production volume to "feed everyone", even for highly redundant crop yields. The remaining challenge is purely logistical and of course combating unchecked profit motive that's become malignant.
- 9rx 7mo agoGlobal food production now produces more than enough calories to feed everyone, but still hasn't figured out how to produce enough nutrients to feed everyone.
- ux266478 6mo agoI'm not really sure that holds. Carb-heavy grains form the bulk of global food production, but meats, legumes, fruits, etc. are still massively overproduced. Of course, I think you get at something very important to recognize which is that modern industrial variants of vegetables/fruits are bred in favor of crop yield, size, shelf-stability and visual appeal/consistency. Many of those contribute to lower nutrient densities. I don't think it matters as far as getting enough micronutrients is concerned, but speaking from a lot of experience, "heirloom" produce is absolutely superior in terms of texture and flavor. It's not even close. I think we could really stand to put more effort into making robust food supply chains without turning everything into bland mush.
- andrewclunn 7mo agoHmm, I wonder if beef is more expensive than chicken to reflect the inefficiency in its production? Oh it is. So it must then be that people just prefer the flavor and taste of it as compared to cheaper meats then.
- throwpoaster 7mo agoWe have more than enough calories globally, although Africa has more starvation now than it did a decade ago. What we need is nutrient density. 0% of those feed calories have, eg, creatine. 100% of the beef calories do.
- throwaway7644 7mo agoThis is the metabolic version of inflation: subsidized, hollow calories used to mask a decline in actual nutritional value. Fiat Food
- readthenotes1 7mo agoThis is already covered in the Soylent Green protocol isn't it? An alternate take: if calorie efficiency is so important we should focus on consumption more than production.
- ttoinou 7mo agoAnother alternative take : calories don't exist, food don't contain "calories", we can't isolate a system to count calories in and out. It's mostly believing something because society claims others supposedly serious people think think they exist.
- Argonaut998 6mo agoYes and calories as labelled aren't "true calories" either. Not all calories are equal.
- gradus_ad 7mo ago"lost calories" as if having people consume animal feed to reduce total caloric loss is a good idea.
- zetanor 7mo agoWhat's the matter, honey? You've barely touched your corn in canola oil.
- missedthecue 7mo agoExactly. A major problem with the usefulness of these studies (many of which make it into major journals) is that they seldom account for the fact that a lot of animal feed and human food sources do not compete with each other. For example, cattle are fed processed corn stocks and leaves after the cobs are removed. Corn stalks and leaves would otherwise rot if not consumed by livestock. Cows do not compete with humans for this calorie source.
- motohagiography 7mo agoit seems disingenuous to problematize beef. it turns grass into human energy and also requires civilizational practices that create and preserve human dignity and animal welfare. mainly, the so called problem serves to centralize the problematizer themselves. their arguments from a position of centrally planning and managing food economies are intellectual tarpits. however, that our food supply and rural ways of life have the attention of the perpetually concerned is worthy of note. when they start with their opinions, mind your wallets and assets. in short, avoid.
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- hellojimbo 7mo ago> we need the calories to feed a growing population > population doubles > we need the calories to feed a growing population
- khelavastr 7mo agoAlso them: more adults globally eat too many calories
- dmitrygr 7mo ago> "needing 33 cal of feed per 1 cal" The calories cows eat are ... useless to humans. We cannot digest cullulose (grass) and most of the rest of the things we feed to cows. Anyone throwing this number around has an agenda, and is not objective
- joaohaas 7mo agoThe grass most cows eat also need to be planted. The point of this post is that we could be planting stuff we can eat so you don't have to 'pay' the conversion cost.
- trollbridge 7mo agoThe grass cattle can eat (which doesn't need to be planted; most people around me don't regularly plant their pasture) is not stuff people can eat, and can often grow in conditions that can't grow people-food. Specifically, they can eat stuff that doesn't require constant fertiliser inputs, where as people-food generally does need a lot of fertiliser inputs and needs more intensive herbicide/pesticide application. A balanced approach is to go, "Hmm, it's probably a good idea to raise cattle, chickens, and other animals, and also to grow all kinds of produce and staple crops as well."
- Aloisius 7mo agoThat depends entirely on where you are. In India, for instance, dairy cattle are fed almost exclusively on crop residues and by-products. Crop residues being what's left over in the field after you harvest and by-products being what would otherwise be waste left over after you process for human use. Elsewhere, in addition to crop residues/by-products, you also have natural grasslands that aren't planted or irrigated, legume feed grown between major crop seasons when you can't grow anything else that also replenishes the soil and feed grown on otherwise marginal land or barely managed land. Certainly some crops grown for cows would be edible by humans or the land repurposed for growing crops edible for people, but there's often a cost involved like heavier fertilizer requirements, pesticide use, water requirements, added infrastructure and/or labor.
- victorbjorklund 7mo ago
- shrubble 7mo agoThere are people who for various ideological reasons hate beef. If the market demands more chicken over beef, producers are perfectly capable of making a switch. Cows are able to make delicious beef from grass and thistles; that they are often fed other things is not a proof that eating cows is bad.
- trollbridge 7mo agoIndeed my cattle mostly eat weeds, and eat things my chickens can't really eat. I don't feed either of them mass-produced crops, which actually also have ecological consequences in terms of huge amounts of petrochemicals needed both to fuel tractors and combines and to keep fertilising, topsoil losses, the amount of herbicides and pesticides sprayed, and so on.
- foxyv 7mo agoDon't forget that cattle agriculture can make rainforests into wastelands. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378021000595 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802...
- tracker1 7mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- californical 7mo agoWell nobody is upset at the cows. We’re talking about excessive consumption of cows, in agriculture.
- tracker1 7mo ago[flagged]
- kaleinator 7mo agoSurprised how many people in the replies actually think their beef is grass fed.
- debo_ 7mo ago[dead]
- tracker1 7mo agoA large amount of beef is mostly grass fed and finished on a grain feed lot the last month of life.
- yesfitz 7mo agoGot a source for "last month of life"? Penn State University Extension says "...approximately 95% of the cattle in the United States continue to be finished, or fattened, on grain for the last 160 to 180 days of life (~25 to 30% of their life), on average."[1] Oklahoma State University Extension also cites a study that compares "growth and carcass attributes of calves finished for 98 to 105 days in a grass system or a legume system"[2] That puts us between 3 to 6 times longer than you stated, and gives us the context for how much of the average cattle's life that is. (USDA Prime, Choice, and Standard are all 30 to 42 months. Select is under 30 months.[3]) 1: https://extension.psu.edu/grass-fed-beef-production https://extension.psu.edu/grass-fed-beef-production 2: https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/finishing-beef-cattle-on-the-farm#:~:text=a%20dirt%20lot.-,Table%203,-.%20Growth%20and https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/finishing-beef-cat... 3: https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/slaughter-cattle-grades-and-standards https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/slaughter-cattle-g...
- victorbjorklund 7mo agoThe world is bigger than US. A minority of the world is US.
- mcv 7mo agoYeah, but outside the US there are also a lot of grain fed cows.
- cat_plus_plus 7mo agoI don't eat grass.
- xvxvx 7mo agoStop filtering your nutrition through animals. It’s inefficient.
- foxyv 7mo agoTo add to that, it is environmentally destructive and cruel.
- Argonaut998 7mo agoYes let me eat 5.7kg of broccoli per day instead of 500g of beef to meet my protein macros
- Boxxed 7mo agoIt works both ways: "Yeah, let me eat 100kg of beef per day instead of 500g of broccoli to get my Vitamin C." But anyway, legumes are much more efficient source of protein than beef. I don't understand why you decided to compare against broccoli.
- recursive 7mo agoMaybe we should eat both then.
- Argonaut998 6mo agoSorry, let me eat 1.8kg of lentils instead. The point I was making is that there is a need for both.
- r_p4rk 7mo agoOkay but what are you eating after your weekly allowance of 500g red meat to avoid needlessly increasing your bowel cancer risk?
- Argonaut998 6mo agoNothing, like the 10s of generations before me.
- bryanlarsen 7mo agoCows eat grass. Humans use more calories digesting grass than they gain from eating grass, so cows are infinitely more efficient than humans at gaining calories from grass. And there are places in the world where growing human food would destroy the land. Semi-deserts like Texas and Montana. Grazing cattle there is a good idea. Bison would be even better because the native prairie there is adapted to bison, but cattle are a close substitute. But we eat a lot more cattle than Texas & Montana can support.
- sixhobbits 7mo agoI think a vast majority of the beef we eat is grainfed unless you're buying the super hip, small-scale, expensive stuff
- bryanlarsen 7mo agoIn my neck of the woods, the vast majority of the beef we eat is grass fed for most of their lives, but then grain finished. They only eat grain for the last month (out of 8 or so), but they put on most of their weight in that last month.
- 9rx 7mo agoThe vast majority is beef is finished on grain, but start on grass.
- ErroneousBosh 7mo agoHere in the UK, pretty much 100% of cattle are grass fed. In the winter, when there isn't enough grass, they're fed on silage (which is basically just grass cut and baled while still green, which turns it into kind of grass sauerkraut, which smells exactly like you'd expect) and "draff" or "spent grains" (depending on where you are) which is the stuff left over from brewing beer or the pot ale that goes to make whisky. It's all a pretty delicate balance, but ultimately what happens is you end up growing a bunch of things humans can't eat so that cows can shit solid gold all over the fields and chop it into the soil with their hooves. We eat because there's six inches of earth on the ground, it rains, clover grows, and cows (and pigs) shit solid gold.
- tracker1 7mo agoI think we need more ruminant animals raised on grass as a means of regenerative farming... I think beef largely gets a bad rap for a lot of reasons that largely don't hold to grass fed cattle farming.
- luqtas 7mo agothen your next step is to cite research from the guy who used to hunt elephants in Africa and it's the heirs of a multi-million livestock industry, doing TED talks about the topic meanwhile no independent or state funded research except their organization could replicate the findings over the decades?
- tracker1 7mo agoWhat happened to US grasslands when eliminating the majority of the ruminants from those lands? What has happened to the grassland reserves for Buffalo in MT since re-introducing and growing said populations?
- asdff 7mo agoI'm starting to see goat herds used a lot for wildfire brush abatement for large business properties on steep hillsides (not sure if I've seen an individual residential lot goat-abated but maybe it happens too). Normally hard and dangerous work for people with power tools, but the goats seem happy and in their element.
- tracker1 7mo agoI've seen it on undeveloped (or, I should say not yet developed) land in a few places... Would be cool to see more of this.
- stevenally 7mo agoDepends how the farming is done.... https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertification_and_reverse_climate_change https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertif...
- bluefirebrand 7mo agoSmall anecdote Since about 2019 I have been anemic. My iron levels were just a hair above being low enough to require an immediate infusion, and my doctor kept pushing me to eat more iron. She would often ask if I was a vegetarian or vegan, presumably she was assuming I was bad at it. I would always tell her the same thing. "I don't eat much beef but I do eat it" Last summer I was diagnosed with celiac. Suddenly it all makes sense. I'm low on iron because my gut cannot absorb it. So I start eating gluten free, and I start eating way more red meat than I used to, because building your iron levels takes a lot more iron intake than maintaining it. Now, about 8-9 months later I'm finally starting to feel better and my blood tests are showing my iron slowly creeping out of the danger zone My nutritionist tells me that recovering this quickly would have probably been just about impossible for a vegetarian or vegan, without having an iron infusion done. Anyways. Beef is kind of an important thing in our diets, that's all. Now that I'm back to a more normal level I'll go back to eating less of it, but I am now very conscious how important red meat is in a rounded diet Edit: I guess my point is that calories are only part of the picture when it comes to food and there are a lot of other concerns as well, which are arguably more important to being healthy. You get calories from basically anything food you eat (assuming it's not some kind of engineered zero calorie diet food) but other minerals and vitamins are harder to source.
- AlBugdy 7mo ago> My nutritionist tells me that recovering this quickly would have probably been just about impossible for a vegetarian or vegan, without having an iron infusion done. "probably been just about impossible" doesn't mean "impossible", it more likely means changing your eating habits to a point where you'd have to be really conscious and careful of what you eat iron-wise unlike someone without Celiacs (vegan or not) or someone who likes and can afford beef and can eat as much of it as they want. There are lentils, beans, tofu, dark leafy greens and other sources of iron. There are iron-fortified foods. IIRC there are other considerations that might prevent careless or food-addicted people from getting enough iron like vitamin C to help with the iron absorption or not eating foods that decrease it. There are plenty of vegans with Celiacs who manage their iron adequately. But even if you're one of those cases where iron needs to be supplemented, even IV - why not? If you disregard all the arguments against beef or animal products in general it's easy to make the argument that beef would be the best solution. This reads like appeal to authority (the nutritionist) but a lot of nutritionists take the easy road ("just eat beef") or aren't good at all (haven't kept up with research). That's true of the majority of doctors and the majority of programmers (something people here will be able to relate to in case they haven't realized how useless most doctors are). I've been in and out of hospitals for several relatives for years and have heard doctors tell me outright falsehoods that show they have a only basic understanding of something. That makes sense since those doctors must know about so much more than the patient (thousands of diseases, lots of scientific knowledge about biology) but with a depth-first search into a topic you can spot how most of them have either stopped reading new studies or have lost their motivation to explore all option or have just stopped caring for providing the best kind of care. I hope people here don't have to go through what I have. That was a bit of a tangent, but I already wrote it so I'll keep it as a mini-rant. > Beef is kind of an important thing in our diets, that's all. Now that I'm back to a more normal level I'll go back to eating less of it, but I am now very conscious how important red meat is in a rounded diet. That's not really true. I'm sure you could ask vegans or vegetarians or Hindus or anyone who doesn't eat beef but has Celiacs and you'd get a whole bunch of options for managing it. Sure, you'll find ignorant people who think eating fruits all the time is enough but that's the same kind of carelessness that leads to non-vegans eating the standard Western diet all the time or doing other basic mistakes. The same is true for almost everything. Almost nothing is "an important thing in our diets". People live without nuts or fruits or vegetables or legumes or meat or eggs or dairy (not all at once, of course, although I wouldn't be surprised if someone managed to avoid all these) and are able to manage pretty much any disease other groups of people can manage. > calories are only part of the picture when it comes to food True, people should care about the macros and micros. But with the internet it's trivial to do so both wrt learning what does what and how much is needed, and to track how much one eats from each.
- elzbardico 7mo ago[dead]
- ajsnigrutin 7mo agoTaylor swift is using her private jet to take out the trash to the curb, but hey, the "normal people" should eat less meat.
- elzbardico 7mo agoBeef gets a lot of bad rep in environment terms because developed countries grain fed it in intensive settings. But not all cattle in the world is raised like that.
- nprateem 7mo agoI recommend the book The Proof is in the Plants for a seemingly unbiased review of the literature. Dude cites study after study pretty much all with the same conclusion: Eating animal products is bad for your health.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7mo agoThe really good thing about this is that if we somehow do manage to "ruin earth" and lose a significant portion of agricultural production, we will just have less tasty food rather than starving to death. Food waste is another kind of "slack" in the food supply chain that would help. Imagine how the world would look if food supply was as optimized as e.g. microchips and then we got any kind of disruption... except now you starve rather than not being able to upgrade your car.
- HWR_14 7mo agoAre the calories used by biofuels and cattle even directly consumable by humans?
- balderdash 7mo agoisn't the obvious answer not to eat less beef but rather not produce beef super fast with grain feed. if the beef we ate came from grass lands + hay in the the winter it would cost more, but would dramatically reduce the crop consumption...
- ErroneousBosh 7mo ago> hay in the the winter Here in the UK, we use silage because the weather is a bit too variable to trust with letting hay dry out. It feels like it's probably more energy-dense and has more nutrition in it, you certainly don't need to feed as much. Other things that work well are sugar beet (grows well as part of a cycle of crop rotation, clears weeds pretty well) and all that barley left over from brewing beer and making whisky. Even soya-based cattle feed is made from the tough cellulosey bits that humans can't eat. If you want to try, I'm sure I can get you some - but maybe have something on hand for the inevitable constipation because it is all fibre.
- djgleebs 7mo agodon't care, not gonna eat bugs.
- djgleebs 7mo agoDon't care, I refuse to eat bugs and slop.
- broken-kebab 7mo agoExchanging e.g. grains for beef is not 'lost' anything, even if theoretically the former gives more calories. Nutritionally beef is just more valuable. Calories isn't the only thing we need apparently.
- Rekindle8090 7mo ago[flagged]
- metalman 7mo agofalse comparison, as most calories cattle consume are from things people dont eat, even if there are simmilar variets of plants that both people and animals eat, they are not interchangable. Animals also eat huge quantities of human food, that has been rejected through some technical consideration, just size, as many crops produce many fruits or vegetables that are iether too large or small to be processed, or are misshapen or damaged, cow dont care nom nom nom, gone by the ton, and the trucks are still comming. The true unforgivable waste is by people over eating, wasting, throwing away, and destroying good foog for countless beurocratic reasons.
- fallingfrog 7mo agoOk but don't cattle often browse on land that is too marginal for farming? And don't they eat grass? I don't know if this argument holds up.
- victorbjorklund 7mo agoAha. All the grass humans could eat instead of the cows. Not all land is great for growing crops at. Other land is just good for growing grass for cattle to graze on.
- ysleepy 7mo agoAh yes, beef is produced predominantly using grad fed cows? The feed is an agricultural product produced on farmland that could be used to produce food. I'm not a vegan or whatever, but get real with the impact of meat production.
- asdff 7mo agoAnother factor that these studies seem to miss from the beef question is the fact there is more pasture land than viable agriculture land. Beef are often grazing on marginal land that would not be fit for much else. Clearcutting the amazon to meet beef demand is one thing but that isn't the case for I'd guess most places they have been farming beef for the past 100 years.
- jruz 7mo agoAnd is not even taking water consumption into account. Or the annoying cowbells :)
- maxglute 7mo agoConversion efficiency is slippery slope to vegetarianism.
- rolph 7mo agotrophism is very much like manufacture. you always have to pay to continue the process, and sometimes to put it on hold. Transfer of Energy between Trophic Levels: https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/General_Biology_(Boundless)/46%3A_Ecosystems/46.02%3A_Energy_Flow_through_Ecosystems/46.2C%3A_Transfer_of_Energy_between_Trophic_Levels https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_Gene... Ecological efficiency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency
- burnt-resistor 7mo agoOne of the weakest and least persuasive arguments, like animal cruelty, against animal ag. Data will also never convince anyone that they're doing something dangerous or selfish especially when their salary or lifestyle can be justified and rationalized through denial and cognitive dissonance. The stronger arguments are: - Local air, water, and soil pollution. - Climate change 16±2% contribution. - Antibiotic resistant bacteria evolution because the antibiotics over used in livestock are typically used in humans through the mostly different veterinary supply chain but they're the same fundamental molecules. - Pandemic virus evolution due to both wildlife and (human, for now) workers getting very, very close to animals and animal waste crowded together creating a Petri dish. It's already happened several times throughout history.
- jlaporte 7mo agoTreating protein as calories is a category error. Fat and carbs are energy, properly treated as calories. Protein is not (in a non-starving person) used for energy, and it should be measured in grams not calories. The input calories weren't lost, they were converted to protein for use building body structure instead of energetic use. If the authors wanted to make an honest argument here, they would show the relative conversion of feed calories to animal protein across different livestock.
- enoint 7mo agoI think the authors are sincere; the original title is "Only half of the calories produced on croplands are available as food for human consumption". The commenters here are talking about beef, with very little reflection on 16% of our farmed calories devoted to biofuels.
- stefantalpalaru 7mo ago[dead]
- thedevilslawyer 7mo agoAs a sidenote for this audience - this is multiple magnitudes higher global warming impact than AI. If anything this and daily commutes optimization are the key ways software engineers can directly impact carbon, way more than AI as a tool.