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Comment by vzidex | Hacker News Reader

>Some vegetables are luxury food, and less efficient than cattle

[Citation needed]

I'll assume you're arguing in good faith, but this argument is a common straw man made by people who are against plant-based diets. In fact, the only case where you have a point is that the worst case for chocolate produces more emissions than the best case for beef [1]. Odds are that if you're eating beef in North America it comes from a factory farm [2], while people who advocate for plant-based diets are often for more sustainable farming practices too, and will try to buy chocolate/coffee/avocados/whatever in sustainable ways.

Finally, the most important point is that it's not an either/or proposition - you can be _both_ for eating less meat, and producing plant products in more sustainable ways.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46459714

[2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-end-factory-f_b_1...

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There are vast areas that are very, very poor for growing anything other than some grasses. These lands will not support growing plant based foods for people. However! They do produce plant based food for cattle. You end up with 0.5-2 acres of this land to feed a cow.

The vast majority of beef is not grazed on lands incapable of naturally supporting more intensive forms of agriculture.

>The vast majority of beef is not grazed on lands incapable of naturally supporting more intensive forms of agriculture.

The vast majority of beef is grazed on lands incapable of supporting at a sustainable price point more value dense forms of agriculture. If those ranchers could sell you boutique sustainable tomatoes they would do so in a heartbeat (or as fast as they can given the fact that it's basically a career switch).

You get crops like soybeans and corn where the land will support that and less value dense crops (like beef and timber) in places it won't. You can grow other products on cattle grazing land but you won't be price competitive with the farmers on better land. The fact that this land is used for beef instead of some other crop is a reflection of how efficiently we use the better land. As vegetable product fillers make their way into lower and lower end beef products (as price, technology and consumer preference allows) the land used to farm beef will likely shrink from the least viable areas (the areas least suited for beef) with demand and/or be pushed out of the most viable areas (the areas most easily suited to other crops) by more value dense plant crops. Obviously there's some serious switching friction otherwise you'd see this play out with every little change in commodities prices.

Sure, everybody reducing their meat consumption to their share of what is produced on marginal land would be the optimum, even better than everybody going 100% meatless. How much of the typical meat consumption of a current-day nonvegetarian would that be? 5% perhaps?

And it wouldn't be the same 5% that we see with "almost vegans" today who argue "less but better" to only eat premium cuts while proudly announcing that they avoid all grinder meat. If you want to eat the steak, don't scoff at the sausage.

Back to grazing marginal lands, yeah, I'd also hate to see the animal species that have accompanied us throughout human history go extinct. But we're very far from that.

> [Citation needed]

pvaldes, 2020

Some facts are so well stablished in human knowledge that there is not need to cite it. For example: "Some crops are more productive than other. Point".

We, humans know it since 10.000 years ago. Anybody can see it with their eyes. Not need to repeat what Aristotle would say about it.

Primary and secondary production, is a big fat chapter in any Ecology handbook. Any Plant physiology handbook will explain the differences between CAM and C4 plants

If nobody is trying to produce a natural sized cow sculpture made of vanille beans, there must be a reason.

> Some facts are so well stablished in human knowledge that there is not need to cite it.

So, your statement is true because you say that it's common knowledge that it's true?

> Primary and secondary production, is a big fat chapter in any Ecology handbook

OK, then kindly provide one of these ecology handbooks that proves your point

> If nobody is trying to produce a natural sized cow sculpture made of vanille beans, there must be a reason

What do you even mean by this?

> So your statement is true because you say that it's common knowledge that it's true?

Not, my statement is true BECAUSE is has been proven extensively and is common knowledge that it's true. There is a difference. There are extensive databases, plots and tables about how many food you can expect to produce from each organism by unit of time and area. Is the basis of a main branch of ecology: Trophic chains and energy.

To say than growing Soy is more efficient than to breed Polar bears is a repeated lie, trying to make simple things that aren't simple. Not. It depends on the ecosystem, context, temperature range, soil, and climate. And is the same with breeding cattle.

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