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Comment by npsimons | Hacker News Reader

Beef and dairy use more water, use more land, generate more GHG[0].

Deal with animal agriculture first, then we can talk about the fruits and nuts.

[0] - https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths

I'm highly skeptical of this source. What percentage of that water usage for animal agriculture is actually in the form of grass (or rainfall more properly)? What percentage of the land used could be productively farmed by humans for human edible foods? What percentage of the GHGs from animal husbandry are net new? IE, a cow eats some grass, makes some co2 or w/e, which then goes back into new grass.

Animals drink a lot of water but grass does take even more. Cows produce net CO2e emissions because they produce methane.

Cows do not produce methane. Decaying grass produces methane, whether in a cow or out.

When I worked for a rural water provider in a relatively wet climate (so the cattle were grass fed), we allowed around 50 litres per day per beef animal and around 120 litres each for dairy cattle.

Cows do drink a fair amount, especially if they're not shaded in the heat. In the case of dairy, there's also a lot of washing water for milking.

> Deal with animal agriculture first, then we can talk about the fruits and nuts

I'm trying! I can only eat them so fast!

Username checks out

The water and land that they use isn't necessarily useful for other crops. Marginal pasture land can't be magically turned into cropland but almond orchards can.

Sure but the 77.3 million acres to grow the plants we eat pales in comparison to the 781 million acres we use for animal agriculture.[0] Why turn almond orchards into cropland when we can just use less of the land we use for animal production and turn that into cropland? I highly doubt all 781 million acres can only be used for animal grazing.

[0]: https://extension.oregonstate.edu/bloomberg-illustrates-how-...

Makes perfect sense until you consider the massive amounts of inputs, measured in land or energy, it takes to grow those crops on the smaller amount of land footprint you ARE measuring.

We still us 1.5x the land for for growing feed for animals (excluding feed exports). If you're suggesting that feed requires less inputs, provide the sources that back up that suggestion.

> If you're suggesting that feed requires less inputs

This is the thing that really gets me. It's so bloody obvious from the second law of thermodynamics that animals are going to require more resources than plants. There's even a name for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level

This, much like weight loss and treating mental illness, seems to be one of those communal Dunning-Kruger areas of HN. Probably because people don't want to admit that their diet is contributing to global warming, or they have some "hurr durr, vegans suck!" attitude.

Then again, I've noticed an influx of people denying the fact of the January 6th insurrection, so I shouldn't really be surprised.

Because those grazing lands don’t support crops. They support a little bit of grass and in their natural state had herds of animals not too different from cattle grazing on them.

People don’t seem to grok this.

On land with little rain you can raise animals where you give a huge expanse per animal. They eat grass and fertilize and participate in the ecosystem.

If you wanted to do anything else with the land you would have to irrigate nearly every drop of water and many places you can’t actually do that at all.

There aren’t just easy equivalents like you’re trying to pose.

I again repeat what I said in my original comment:

I highly doubt all 781 million acres can only be used for animal grazing.

If we could be using that land for high-value crops, we probably would — look at the land values for cropland vs rangeland and you'll see all the incentive needed to allocate more cropland. I'm not saying we can't or shouldn't reduce some of the more wasteful ways we raise food animals — big concentrated feedlots where they get corn and soybeans. We should. But it's misleading to just point out how much land gets used for what without considering the capability of the land in question. Ending the corn and soy subsidy regime would help a lot right off the top.

>If we could be using that land for high-value crops, we probably would — look at the land values for cropland vs rangeland and you'll see all the incentive needed to allocate more cropland.

I doubt this. The "think of the farmers" argument against increasing plant food production often goes a little something like "farmers don't want to change from what they've already specialized in". The market is never as efficient as people want it to be.

You also suggest that what is currently used as rangeland is rangeland because it can only be used as such. The truth is that neither of us really knows the true capabilities of the 654 million acres of rangeland. The difference here is that I don't suggest all of that land should have a single use. Rather, I argued that it's unlikely that all 654 million acres can only be used for grazing.

>But it's misleading to just point out how much land gets used for what without considering the capability of the land in question.

There is nothing misleading about what I've said. I said we use a lot of land for animal agriculture and that I doubt all of it can only be used for rangeland.

>Ending the corn and soy subsidy regime would help a lot right off the top.

Sure sounds good. You know we subsidize meat and dairy too? How does that factor into the incentive to allocate more cropland?

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