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[Reelya]

That is a true explanation of how things are, but it's addressing profit optimization rather than the original question of food efficiency.

If the extra stuff we're feeding cattle wouldn't be useful economically even if we diverted it elsewhere then the original point is proven wrong, however. Also recall the UN study that only 14% of global cattle feed comes from human-edible food sources.

What you state here as the original question / argument, is that by eliminating all cattle/meat we can save X amount of food that could be eaten by humans. The UN study shows that only 14% of meat production even qualifies for that argument in the first place. So we're down to discussing whether the reduction of that 1/7th of meat production would actually yield food which we could eat, since the other 86% basically doesn't qualify - virtually everywhere people use animals for the specific goal of converting food sources we can't eat directly. Animals that eat exactly what we eat aren't economically useful. See the sheer lack of bothering to domesticate anything that needs to eat fruit for example.

That's kind of the entire point of why mixed plant/animal agriculture has been so successful. If plant-only diets were so much better at providing additional calories then they would actually have out-competed meat-based societies in the first place (you'd have more examples of militaristic regimes dictating vegetarianism if it was the case, in order to maximize population growth). It's the basic experiment of history in progress. Everywhere has always been competing with everywhere else to maximize the amount of food availability (very important factor in warfare for example), so it's arguable that the traditional mix of food sources is close to the optimal in terms of producing the most food.

[wierd]

I am going to call out the special pleading here.

The "No, it's REAAAALY about 'The land used to grow corn to feed the cows', not about "total land use"!!" is completely wrong.

See for instance, the arguments being made here.

https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/land-usage/

The large numbers they cite, is exactly the grassy fields I am pointing out.  To satisfy their argument, that land has to be repurposed; EG, that grass has to be exterminated and planted to rice, potatoes and such.


The argument stems from a faulty understanding of land and utility for that land, and focuses a-priori on a fixed objective of "Meat is bad! Plants good!".   The statistic cited is "Total land use."   It is definitively **NOT** "Land used to grow corn for feedlots."  The latter is special pleading-- and as Reelya points out-- does not really save the argument anyway.

Hilariously, their own site gives this section on objections:

Possible Objections

The article also goes on to address the possible objection of the numbers being ‘inflated’ by the cattle grazing land which is otherwise unsuitable for cultivation.

    A possible objection to the above conclusion is that beef production partly relies on pastureland in the arid west[ern United States], land that is largely unfit for any other cultivation form. [… T]he objection ignores other societal benefits those arid lands may provide, notably ecosystem services and biodiversity. It further ignores the ≈0.16 million km2 of high-quality cropland used for grazing and the ≈0.46 million km2 of grazing land [..] that can thus be diverted to food production. Even when focusing only on agricultural land, beef still towers over the other categories. This can be seen by excluding pasture resources and summing only crops and processed roughage (mostly hay and silage, whose production claims prime agricultural land that can be hypothetically diverted to other crops). After this exclusion, 1 Mcal of beef still requires ≈15 m2 land (Fig. 2A), about twofold higher than the second least-efficient [animal product] category.

In simple terms, even if you exclude the land the cattle grazes on it uses 15 square metres of land per thousand calories to raise beef (36.5 times as much as potatoes)! Potatoes by comparison use 0.41 square metres per thousand calories - Referenced Supporting Information PDF - S19.

But fails to acknowledge that you cannot grow potatoes on marginal land, but you CAN grow grass on it (and thus cattle.)  This is once again, specious special pleading. It also further fails to consider what "Silage" actually *IS*.  Silage is the ground up stalks and leaves of corn plants, left over after harvesting corn. (or maize/sorghum.)  It is a waste biproduct that is being diverted into an alternative food production pipeline that is not suitable for human consumption, that results from the direct use of land to produce a human consumption crop.

Again, special pleading, revolving around attempting to salvage the argument, rather than actually critically examining it.

[Reelya]

The final point of which is clearly apparent because say 1 kilo of potatoes costs say $1 where a kilo of beef costs about $10, despite taking up 36 times as much land. If it was merely about which thing you wanted to grow on the land you'd clearly choose the potatoes. Which by itself should be the proof that they can't grow potatoes there. Another way of looking at it, if it was merely about them putting cows on perfectly good land that could just grow potatoes, because of greed/profit, then they'd do that right now and stick cows in instead of potatoes in prime potato-growing regions rather than just have the cows out in the midwestern scrublands.

So the land isn't comparable and arguing about how much room things take up is silly. The potatoes are grown where they are because that's a prime potato-growing region, and it's more economical to put potatoes there instead of cows, and the cows are grown where they are because that's prime cow-growing region and it's more economical to put cows there instead of potatoes. In both cases, they choose whatever will make the most food for the least space, in that region, so saying there's some other potato-growing region where they have higher food density thus there's a problem with the cow grazing is a stupid argument

EDIT: also the biodiversity point isn't really relevant. with less grazing animals you'd need to compensate with more land turned over to intensive cropping, which may be worse for biodiversity in those regions. At least you can have native grasses growing in the pasture lands.

[wierd]

^^ BINGO.

Give the man a prize.

The biodiversity angle is further torpedoed, once you understand that the cattle eating the grass and tearing the sod up with their hooves as they wander around, is just a clever hack humans have done, to replace a less utlitiarian animal species (bison) with a more utilitarian species (cows.)  The ecosystem actually *REQUIRES* such grazing for it to remain healthy and vibrant.  It will die out in  just a few years without grazing going on; The bison were a keystone species for the ecosystem, that have been replaced with cows.

You would have to rip up all the roads and fencing out there in the boonies, and institute a massive bison reintroduction program, in order to KEEP the diversity that is currently sustained by cattle ranching.  Which would be enormously costly, where growing cattle is a net profit center.


Cattle ranching on grass pasture is a SUCCESS STORY, not a dire doom and gloom story about habitat destruction.

[WealthyRadish]

Sure, that land could go to growing additional corn or potatoes

Or it could not. Nobody's arguing in favor of overproduction. If people ate less meat, farmland could be returned to habitat, while the industrial production process no longer consumes enormous amounts of resources and pollution producing crops we don't need. Or again, if the availability of viable arable land declines in the future or the population continues to grow, then it could be used for growing food directly more efficiently than feeding livestock. That's the point.

You're arguing that much of the crops grown for animal feed aren't fit for human consumption, but the obvious reason is that they're growing varieties intended for use as animal feed (starchy varieties of maize in particular). Some of the animal feed comes from byproducts of other processes, like vegetable oils or distilling, but the "unfit for human consumption" crops don't include grass growing naturally on scrubland.

Here's the study cited from the vox article earlier in the thread:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015/pdf

At the global level, most crops grown are used for direct human consumption, where countries like India and China and every country with a low-meat diet overwhelmingly feed people directly with what they grow:

We find that on a global basis, crops  grown for direct  human consumption represent 67% of global crop production (by mass), 55% of global calorie production, and  40% of global plant  protein production(table 2). Feed crops represent 24% of global crop production by mass.

-- but in western countries, particularly the US, the increasing trend is to use intensive agriculture to inefficiently (in terms of pollution, water use, land use, and energy use) produce more meat:

During the study period [year 2000] the United States used 27% of crop calorie production for food, and only 14% of produced plant protein is used for food directly. More than half of crop production by mass in the United States is directed to animal feed, which represents 67% of produced calories and 80% of produced plant protein (table 2).

Again, some of this is use of byproducts from things like vegetable oil production or alcohol distilling, but much of it is the production of inedible varieties of maize intended for livestock. Not inedible because it's being grown on marginal land (it isn't), but inedible because the standards and requirements for human consumption are different. Given the common estimates of around 7kg of crops (this doesn't include the grazing also a part of the process) to produce 1kg of live-weight beef (really it's more like 0.6kg that's actually consumable) the point is that less food would need to be grown if people ate less meat.

This is the argument:

1) Arable non-marginal land is used in western countries (and to a far, far lesser extent elsewhere) to produce grain-fed beef in larger amounts than grazing on marginal grassland would produce, in order to satisfy western meat-heavy diets and growing amounts of meat consumed elsewhere
2) The industrial processes used in modern agriculture generate very large amounts of pollution, are the main cause of habitat destruction, and consume other resources (water, natural gas, energy, mineral fertilizers), on top of the large amounts of air and water pollution peculiar to livestock
3) Since the free market is obviously incapable of taking these costs into account, and general world food security in the future may become more strained, some vegetarians support reducing the amount of meat we produce and consume on this basis

That's the argument.

Whatever this is:

To satisfy their argument, that land has to be repurposed; EG, that grass has to be exterminated and planted to rice, potatoes and such.

But fails to acknowledge that you cannot grow potatoes on marginal land, but you CAN grow grass on it (and thus cattle.) 

-- nobody is arguing. It's misplaced outrage at nothing.

[wierd]

@ Radish:

How many publications do I need to cite, indicating that this is exactly what is being argued for, before you will accede?

Bland arguments about land use that fail to account for the devil living in the details, lead to exactly this conclusion, unless that devil is brought to dinner.  The argument "Nobody argues that" is a lie. It is argued quite frequently, and is quite central to many vegan dogmatic statements. 

Here is how it leads to that conclusion:

The assertion that cattle cultivation requires 30x as much total acreage as potato, carries implicit assumptions.  1) We could feed tremendously more people if we raised potatoes instead of cows (which I hope by now, Myself and Reelya have sufficiently driven home the absurdity of), and 2) It is desirable to not utilize that land for cattle production. (which again, I certainly hope I have been successful in pointing out quite clearly how this is not the case if you are at all interested in economically viable ecological preservation of native grassland biomes.)

If we feed in the prefaced rationale from your Vox article, this becomes quite clear.

Worldwide demand for crops is increasing rapidly due to global population growth, increasedbiofuel production, and changing dietary preferences. Meeting these growing demands will bea substantial challenge that will tax the capability of our food system and prompt calls todramatically boost global crop production.

EG, they are asserting that the primary motivator here, is a desire to get the most out of land utility, so that crop production can be maximized, because of the growing world population. Agreed so far? Let's continue then.

However, to increase food availability, we may alsoconsider how the world’s crops are allocated to different uses and whether it is possible to feedmore people with current levels of crop production. Of particular interest are the uses of cropsas animal feed and as biofuel feedstocks. Currently, 36% of the calories produced by theworld’s crops are being used for animal feed, and only 12% of those feed calories ultimatelycontribute to the human diet (as meat and other animal products).

Ahh--- DO note how they state "feed calories."  They do not seem to make the necessary distinction between where silage comes from, and its production as a calorie source.  Specifically, silage comes from crops havested WHILE GREEN.  This is things like sweet corn, mostly. Corn produces very few human-usable calories per acre, but produces considerably more "animal-usable" calories per acre.  This fact is precisely why it is leveraged as a fodder for cattle.  The appropriate question the Vox researcher needs to be asking, is not "How can those calories be used by humans", but instead "Is it possible to get more human-usable calories from land that grows corn well, by planting some other, more human-profitable (calorie wise) crop?"  That does not seem to be the question that they ask though.  Instead, they focus on cows for some reason.   As Reelya points out, quite correctly, their approach also does not pay any attention to economic concerns.  Corn silage is very inexpensive to process; the biggest cost center is the fuel and fertilizer needed to grow the corn plants it is made from (which is a burden shared with direct-to-human corn production, and is probably being calculated TWICE, because of laziness. That cost happens only one time, for BOTH crop components), and the fuel needed to chop it up and store it in a big metal silage bin.  Other than that, it's just ground up corn plants, fed to cows in the winter.  Without the cows eating it, there would be a cost center involved in how to dispose of the useless biomass.

Additionally, human-ediblecalories used for biofuel production increased fourfold between the years 2000 and 2010, from1% to 4%, representing a net reduction of available food globally.

This is at least a valid concern;  Biofuel is a nonstarter, economically.  It is really only produced because of kickbacks and subsidies.  It costs more energy to produce the fuel than you get back out of it.  It's a loss leader right out of the gate. It should not be done. Ever. (At least as concerns corn ethanol based biofuel anyway. Switchgrass, and other cellulosic ethanol production on the other hand? That's another ball of wax, and gets back to the "marginal land use" clusterfuck of willful misconceptions.)

In this study, we re-examineagricultural productivity, going from using the standard definition of yield (in tonnes perhectare, or similar units) to using the number of people actually fed per hectare of cropland.We find that, given the current mix of crop uses, growing food exclusively for direct humanconsumption could, in principle, increase available food calories by as much as 70%, whichcould feed an additional 4 billion people (more than the projected 2–3 billion people arrivingthrough population growth).

MY! Such a claim! Let's go examine their methods section!

Increasing  demand  for  meat  and  dairy  is  also  of  importance to the global environment because their productionrequires  more  land  and  other  resources  than  plant-basedfoods [8–10].

Awwww-- here we are back at "total land use" again.  Well, let's dig deeper, maybe they aren't being complete tools. Let's examine their citations.

Citation 8's abstract:

Abstract

Vast amounts of land are required for the production of food, but the area suitable for growing crops is limited. In this paper, attention is paid to the relationship between food consumption patterns and agricultural land requirements. Land requirements per food item that were determined in a previous study are combined with data on the per capita food consumption of various food packages, varying from subsistence to affluent, leading to information on land requirements for food. Large differences could be shown in per capita food consumption and related land requirements, while food consumption, expenditure, and the physical consumption of specific foods change rapidly over time. A difference of a factor of two was found between the requirements for existing European food patterns, while the land requirement for a hypothetical diet based on wheat was six times less than that for an existing affluent diet with meat.

Nope, that's totally total land use, that carries the implicit assumptions that are completely bogus.  NEXT.

Citation 9 abstract:

Abstract

Growing global population figures and per-capita incomes imply an increase in food demand and pressure to expand agricultural land. Agricultural expansion into natural ecosystems affects biodiversity and leads to substantial carbon dioxide emissions.

Considerable attention has been paid to prospects for increasing food availability, and limiting agricultural expansion, through higher yields on cropland. In contrast, prospects for efficiency improvements in the entire food-chain and dietary changes toward less land-demanding food have not been explored as extensively. In this study, we present model-based scenarios of global agricultural land use in 2030, as a basis for investigating the potential for land-minimized growth of world food supply through: (i) faster growth in feed-to-food efficiency in animal food production; (ii) decreased food wastage; and (iii) dietary changes in favor of vegetable food and less land-demanding meat. The scenarios are based in part on projections of global food agriculture for 2030 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO. The scenario calculations were carried out by means of a physical model of the global food and agriculture system that calculates the land area and crops/pasture production necessary to provide for a given level of food consumption.

In the reference scenario – developed to represent the FAO projections – global agricultural area expands from the current 5.1 billion ha to 5.4 billion ha in 2030. In the faster-yet-feasible livestock productivity growth scenario, global agricultural land use decreases to 4.8 billion ha. In a third scenario, combining the higher productivity growth with a substitution of pork and/or poultry for 20% of ruminant meat, land use drops further, to 4.4 billion ha. In a fourth scenario, applied mainly to high-income regions, that assumes a minor transition towards vegetarian food (25% decrease in meat consumption) and a somewhat lower food wastage rate, land use in these regions decreases further, by about 15%.
Research highlights

► FAO projections imply that global agricultural area may expand by 280 Mha in 2030. ► Faster growth in livestock productivity may decrease global area by 230 Mha in 2030. ► 20% substitution of ruminant meat may decrease area by an additional 480 Mha.

This actually looks like they are trying.  However, this is not an argument for veganism, but more toward reduction of meat consumption consistent with maintaining existing levels of meat production (which already leverage existing grass biomes maximally, and thus cannot be realistically expanded) in the face of rising demand-- BUT IGNORING ECONOMIC REALITY. (EG, as demand increases, the sale price of the product will increase, and the profit motive to produce the meat will increase. See Reelya's angle.) The only way to achieve their model is to impose artificial controls on the entire global market.  That is a non-starter.  NEXT.

Citation 10. Whole article available. (funny how they did not give a link.)

Here's the abstract though:

ABSTRACTWorldwide, an estimated 2 billion people liveprimarily on a meat-based diet, while an estimated 4 billion liveprimarily on a plant-based diet. The US food production systemuses about 50% of the total US land area, 80% of the fresh water,and  17%  of  the  fossil  energy  used  in  the  country.  The  heavydependence on fossil energy suggests that the US food system,whether meat-based or plant-based, is not sustainable. The use ofland and energy resources devoted to an average meat-based dietcompared with a lactoovovegetarian (plant-based) diet is analyzedin this report. In both diets, the daily quantity of calories consumedare kept constant at about 3533 kcal per person. The meat-basedfood system requires more energy, land, and water resources thanthe lactoovovegetarian diet. In this limited sense, the lactoovoveg-etarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet.

FUNNY HOW EVERY ONE OF THESE IS ABOUT TOTAL LAND USE.


I am being quite stark with this inquiry-- How many do I need to directly cite, before you will accede?  Because I will totally do it.

[andrea]

How about saying that nobody here is arguing that?

[wierd]

How about saying that nobody here is arguing that?

Which would be moving the goal post. I did not accuse people HERE of that position. I accused mainstream veganism's propaganda machine of it.

[WealthyRadish]

So all along it was about this:

Land required to feed 1 person for 1 year:
Vegan: 1/6th acre
Vegetarian: 3x as much as a vegan
Meat Eater: 18x as much as a vegan
- Cowspiracy

Fair enough, it's obviously misleading.

Where all the confusion originally got started is that this line of argument is not all clear from this:

The one that always kills me in the vegetarian playbook, is the "Resource use efficiency" fallacy.

Yes. Fallacy.  I will not budge on that, because that is what it is.

Specifically, the notion that "If we used the land we use for raising animals to grow direct-human-use crops instead, we could feed more people, and this is why you should be vegan and not an omnivore."

NO.

The "resource use efficiency" argument has valid points for water use, fertilizer, pesticides, water/air pollution, and arable land use for feeding people, on top of forest and wetland destruction for agriculture/ranching. The premise, "if we used the land we use for raising animals to grow direct-human-use crops instead, we could feed more people" is true anywhere that grows crops to feed livestock.

It's only false under the narrowed terms of thinking the "efficiency" is only possible through the "scrubland to potatoes" argument. The "cowspiracy" example does lazily use the misleading acreage numbers to imply something negative about a large area of land being required to feed a meat-eater, but the grain-fed resource and land use argument is by all appearances valid and you've evidently agreed with it all along. That's what makes this vitriolic reaction against a position you apparently actually agree with on all capital points so frustrating. Rolan said it better:

And ninja'd by wierd...  Okay, I guess we basically agree:

I therefor conclude that the argument is not only fallacious, but also specious.  Being properly informed about the situation causes one to see the ideal solution is one where beef is still produced commercially, exclusively through grass-fed operations.

I don't know what vegetarians were claiming that cattle grazing on marginal land were a waste of the land.  You say their argument doesn't specify what land they meant, then you seemed to assume the silliest option and tore into them for it.

[wierd]

The cowpsiracy view, with all its specious baggage, is frequently tendered.


But again, "People really should eat less meat" is hardly a contentious argument.  It is supported by medical literature, and a host of other bits of data.  The issue I have, is as I stated--

My beef (heh), is that the argument is one for "Veganism", not "ecologically sound dietary policy."

Again, "Outlaw feedlots" results in corn not being used for cattle (because all remaining operations will be grass fed, and full cows dont need to be fed corn, and further-- corn costs money, and grass grows for free.), which satisfies the "Use that land for human use instead."

However, it does not promote veganism.  Which is why it is never addressed as the superior solution it really is, for all the reasons I cited. (Habitat preservation, et al.)


I therefor conclude that the argument is not only fallacious, but also specious.  Being properly informed about the situation causes one to see the ideal solution is one where beef is still produced commercially, exclusively through grass-fed operations.  This provides economic incentive to retain prairie lands as prairie grass habitat, and removes the bane of feedlots (and I whole-heartedly agree they are a bane-- they cause soil erosion, ground water contamination, are high concentration centers for diseases necessitating the excessive use use antibiotics which promotes antibiotic resistant bacteria en-mass, etc---- They SHOULD be outlawed! They ONLY exist, because they are *Extremely Profitable* $$$) from the equation completely.  That ideal solution is *NOT* veganism though.

Should people eat less meat? Absolutely.
Should all the land used for cattle farming be used for soybeans? FUCK NO--  I think I just illustrated why that would be a terrible idea.

Eating LESS meat is not veganism.  Eating NO meat-- that is veganism.

The arguments about improper use of human food for use in feedlots (because of economic demand), is an argument about ecologically sound dietary policy. NOT VEGANISM.  One does not follow from the other, which I explicitly pointed out.

true enough;  However, the argument I mostly hear here in the US, is about beef production specifically.

While the US does produce pork, we do not do it on truly epic scales, like we do beef.  For that, you need to go to China.

I am personally of the opinion that pork is not a very good meat product to begin with, for a wide number of reasons. "It tastes good" is not a good reason, IMO, certainly not in the face of the many glaring impacts its widespread production causes.

Pork's wild habitat is indeed forest. Pigs are browsers, not grazers.  If left to go to their own devices, they revert to a more feral state with grizzled furry skin and nasty disposition, in just a few generations, because that is what survives in there.  They cannot be reliably or efficiently cultivated in a permaculture setting, as a consequence. (oak groves, as pointed out by Poo, are not actually permaculture, and the time it takes to put one into production is something like 20 to 50 years, depending on the oak species.)  Further, forests do not have very strong carry capacity, and attempting it would not produce a large supply, even under very idealized conditions.

BUT--- The argument is not "We should stop eating pork."  The argument is "We should stop eating *MEAT*".

Again-- about half of the cattle operations in the US are grass-feed operations.  Those operations serve ecologically important roles in preserving biodiversity, that would vanish instantly if the notion they purport was enacted, as pointed out.

I would be more apt to accept certain statements, if they were better worded, and not blanket statements taken from positions of ignorance, that are convenient and easy to regurgitate to others.  If you look into it, you will find that there are literally millions of acres of grass pasture allocated to cattle production (and that this number far exceeds the allocation for corn utilization);  Reallocating that to soybean use, would devastate a wide variety of local lifeforms. 

The amended argument should then be:

"All the land we use to grow corn and other feedstock for drylots should be used for human use instead."

To which, I would say "I agree. Drylots should not exist. (gives reasons why.)"

But if they then go "And this is why you should give up meat completely", I will then go "No, that does not follow."

The major underlying issue, is that you do not comprehend how the land use argument (devoid of details) results in the necessary outcome of grasslands being planted to soy, rice, and potato, and thus destroying biodiversity.  Failure to understand how the implicit assumption of "We could use that land, as population increases, to continue to sustain population increase" is inherently involved there, is what I have been trying to address.  All the major arguments, including 2 out of 3 sources used by the Vox article you cited, boil down to the "banal land use, devoid of details" use case, and are therefor specious, when it comes to the "We could improve yield 70% if we get rid of meat production!" claim.

In order to DO that, you have to use the land the cattle were using.  That means killing the grass.

[WealthyRadish]

The major underlying issue, is that you do not comprehend how the land use argument (devoid of details) results in the necessary outcome of grasslands being planted to soy, rice, and potato, and thus destroying biodiversity.

I'm not too bothered by my apparent stupidity, given that you've done nothing to demonstrate this. The land-use argument is about arable land, not marginal. Less arable land (and more importantly the industrial resource inputs) would be needed even for the strawman of compulsory vegetarianism.

You've latched onto the conflation of marginal and arable land by those sad vegans arguing from ignorance, and then casually do it yourself, explicitly here:

If you look into it, you will find that there are literally millions of acres of grass pasture allocated to cattle production (and that this number far exceeds the allocation for corn utilization);

-- but also by repeatedly insisting that the marginal scrubland could/would be turned into farms if we wanted to.

The point about all this being an argument for less meat rather than veganism or vegetarianism in particular is fine, just stick to that. You don't need this nonsense about destroying grassland for potatoes to make that point.

[wierd]

It's not nonsense though.

See the figures Reelya mentioned-- Removing all the utilization you are insisting on, would only reduce meat production by 14%.  You DO NOT get the 70% yeild increase on JUST that.

That is kinda the point here.  Don't be obtuse. 

The only way to get that +70% statistic, is to erroneously conflate the two. (Marginal and arable land)
Pointing out that conflation (and the impact that conflation would have, if it were enacted as policy), is not nonsense.

[WealthyRadish]

Backing up that basic intuition with a quick google shows a UN study that said 86% of what we feed cattle on isn't fit for human consumption, and this isn't US-specific. In fact there's no reason to think that the US is a special case on feeding cattle on grasslands. Everywhere has plenty of marginal land, other places no less than the USA.

“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."

That's not entirely the whole picture, though. A lot of said unfit feed is unfit because it is too starchy for human stomachs to break down, for example special breeds of maize, potatoe, and beets. But those are grown where one could grow strains of maize, potatoe, and beet that is suitable to human consumption.

You'd have to break it down into how much is stuff like hay that they make out of the non-edible stems and such of plants and how much is fruits(/tubers) grown for the purpose of feeding animals, whether eatable by humans or not.

You're arguing that much of the crops grown for animal feed aren't fit for human consumption, but the obvious reason is that they're growing varieties intended for use as animal feed (starchy varieties of maize in particular). Some of the animal feed comes from byproducts of other processes, like vegetable oils or distilling, but the "unfit for human consumption" crops don't include grass growing naturally on scrubland.

And I just noticed the edits rejecting the calorie study on the basis of land conflation. I'm done.

Edit:
In case anyone is still following this and curious, here's a site with plenty of data about grain production in the world, breaking down between food or feed usage. The disparity (at least for grains) is obvious, with far more grain being used for fodder than food. Look at the US food/feed with respect to maize, for instance. It's just grain, but still shows the point.

http://www.igc.int/en/markets/marketinfo-sd.aspx

[wierd]

It does, but there are some interesting things there too.

1) Food use also goes up steadily (but is indeed diverging sharply from feed use.)
2) That divergence is not made up for by any noteworthy additions from importation, or reductions in food use production. (So clearly this is not a zero-sum situation.)

This means that the additional production must be getting made up for somewhere.  Let's see if we can find out.

https://science.time.com/2013/02/20/as-crop-prices-rise-farmland-expands-and-the-environment-suffers/

Oh. I found it.

The extra production came from-- ERADICATING GRASS LANDS, EXTERMINATING GRASS, AND PLANTING CROPS.

JUST LIKE I FREAKING SAID.

SHOCKER.


At this point, I feel it necessary to remind what "Marginal" means.  It is a descriptor given to land, based on its economic utility, based on a current market environment.  Basically, how much does it cost to plant, and harvest from it-- vs what you can expect to get back in a return.  If the return of investment is too low, the land is classified as marginal.

In this situation, you had land that had PREVIOUSLY been classified as marginal, suddenly have an acceptable economic return associated with cropping on it, which is why it was sprayed with herbicides, and then planted as corn-- The prices for corn had gone up sufficiently to make it profitable to do so.  Up until that point, nobody had done so.

"marginal" has nothing to do with "scrubland" really, other than that scrubland is so poorly producing that it would take an act of god (or extremely outrageous demand, and subesquent astronomical returns to offset the investments needed to crop on it) to make it reasonable productive economically.


It is important that the costs to develop and crop on that land have not gone down.  Only crop prices have gone up sufficiently to offset them.  As this occurs, more and more habitat will be destroyed until only places like death valley remain, (or we run out of fresh water). 

The argument that "we can get XYZ more yield!", intrinsically is linked to this. Land that is producing grass, is producing a low economic value crop. That low economic value crop can produce a higher economic value crop though-- cattle.  Which is why large tracts of it are used for pasturage.  That utilization as pasturage actually helps protect those ecosystems, by providing economic incentive to keep them healthy.  Once that incentive is lost (such as through abolition of cattle ranching, or through increasing crop prices to the point where it is simply vastly more profitable to put the cows on drylots exclusively, and grow the high value corn crops on the increasingly marginal lands remaining), that habitat is burned, sprayed, and turned into whatever crop is in demand.

that is what happens. It is what always happens.  It is what has always happened.

I am perfectly down with abolishing feedlots, as stated.  They artificially drive up corn prices, which then motivate this kind of action cited by Science.  I am not OK with abolishing grazing pasturage.  Again, removing the economic incentive to retain the grassland is how it gets destroyed for other purposes.

[WealthyRadish]

This has transformed into self-parody.

It does, but there are some interesting things there too.

1) Food use also goes up steadily (but is indeed diverging sharply from feed use.)
2) That divergence is not made up for by any noteworthy additions from importation, or reductions in food use production. (So clearly this is not a zero-sum situation.)

This means that the additional production must be getting made up for somewhere.  Let's see if we can find out.

https://science.time.com/2013/02/20/as-crop-prices-rise-farmland-expands-and-the-environment-suffers/

Oh. I found it.

The extra production came from-- ERADICATING GRASS LANDS, EXTERMINATING GRASS, AND PLANTING CROPS.

JUST LIKE I FREAKING SAID.

SHOCKER.

Please, please tell me how this increase in crop demand is due to people eating less meat, and not exactly the opposite.

I am perfectly down with abolishing feedlots, as stated.  They artificially drive up corn prices, which then motivate this kind of action cited by Science.

Oh, or just retroactively pretend like this is what you were saying all along. Jesus fucking christ, what a waste of time.