However, cows have the unique ability to turn grass into protein, so if all an area can grow is grass, cows are a great way to get calories out of it. Properly allowed to graze freely, cows can be a net improvement on a particular ecology as a carbon sink (manure is an improvement to the soil), but shipping the harvested grass to feedlots is indeed an ecological disaster.
If you prefer meat then chicken is worse than eating corn but still much better than cows. We eat beef because it’s delicious and that’s it’s only advantage at scale.
There is something to be said about growing animal feed on arable land to feed to animals directly although that could be used to make food that humans can digest directly instead. But you still need bio-available protein, and plants do really badly on that. If you actual compare meat to plant matter on what is actually digested and absorbed by humans to get the equivalent nutrition, you'll find that plants actually do not perform that well beyond carbs and some micro-nutrients on an efficiency basis. You still need fat, protein and the other micro-nutrients.
Animals also convert indigestible agricultural waste products from plant growing into something humans can use, meat.
The actual percentage breakdown is for land completely dependent on irrigation and land preparation. It’s not cost effective to use huge tracts of land for crops because we have such excess farmland, but maximum production would involve zero animals whatsoever.
Further, actual productivity on marginal or untended land is by definition very low. Cattle grazing on scrub that gets minimal rainfall is very expensive both in terms of effort and the energy expended by cattle to extract what little food is available while generally leading to desertification.
In terms of converting waste products, such organic material has a wide range of uses including feeding livestock. You could for example burn it for energy so calling it a waste product is very misleading.
No, it does not.
In this context, 'grow' means 'in a usable fashion'.
Rocky, hilly soil isn't tillable, is impossible to harvest en mass, and results in poor outcomes. It's almost like you've never farmed, and are making statements based upon theory, instead of real world usage cases.
Whatever agenda you have, please stop trying to claim that all soil is good for corn.
Even beyond that, there are places corn cannot grow. Period. Ever. For example, in many parts of Canada, the season is too short for corn to mature!
Hay and other such things grow there, and such land is good for cattle too.
Anyway, preparing an area for cultivation is a one time cost. People actually grow crops in areas you consider impossible because someone already put the effort possibly thousands of years ago even if it’s not currently economically viable.
Terraces also work in hilly areas, though building them is expensive. Removing stones from fields is the origin of field stone houses and quite a few stone fences at property lines. The degree of effort required can be huge but at the extreme end people plant orchards in areas that are covered in boulders.
For places where none of that effort is worth it, lumber is still a viable crop as long as it gets enough rain.
Yes, you can grow crops anywhere, on the moon, in shipping containers, in your basement, and yes on terraces and if you spare no expense to change the land.
But all of that is silly and absurd, and not part of the context of this discussion. Some of it just is not possible in any sane fashion.
Some of the land you think is just "move a few rocks and it's fine, like people used to do" is not even remotely accurate or true. We're talking about hilly, rocky land, with 1" of topsoil (Canadian Shield), with poor soil. This land is what you throw a goat or cattle at. It's not something you import billions of dollars of topsoil per 100 acres, to make usable.
I honestly don't get your argument here.
I am explicitly not saying significant investment is economically viable, we have a vast surplus of farmland.
That said, historically people would improve land because they had a labor surplus and few options for long term investments. We are living in a world where thousands of years of such decisions has made some real changes to various landscapes. Much of Asia is covered in terraces because they preferred really flat areas for rice fields and had a huge labor surplus. That’s a legacy I think worth remembering rather than the focus on who was in charge over the course of history.
As to adding topsoil that’s closer to 10 million per 100 acres. Dirt’s very cheap in bulk though transportation long distances isn’t. Nowhere near viable when farmland is cheap and the Canadian Shield is that cold. But orders of magnitude better than you where suggesting.
Unless you do crazy things, there is more land suitable for grazing only, than not.
And doing crazy things makes zero sense in the context of this conversation, which was about how cattle are all some land is good for.
Your argument seems to boil down to "well, we could literally move mountains of dirt, or perform massive terraforming projects on useless soil!," well of course, and so what.
It doesn't make you correct, because this sort of discussion is senseless in the context we were discussing.
Take the soil example, yes it would be billions per 100 acres, because on that scale (the Canadian shield) you'd either have to desoil massive amounts of usable farmless, or start grinding rock and creating new topsoil from that... so current market prices are meaningless!
And if you were going to do that, why not just proclaim that the sahara is perfect farmland too, but of course you'd have to dig irrigation ditches, setup trillion dollar desalination plants, but hey I'm sure you'd chime in too, when someone says desert sand isn't good cropland too?!?!?
No buddy, desert isn't good for growing corn.
(I can hear you... But! But, you only have to...)
Your 50% benchmark in terms of land is really not a function of each individual acre of land on it’s own.
The southwest as a whole needs vastly more irrigation than is available, but which specific bit of land becomes farmland and which but is used to graze cattle is very arbitrary. The parts that do grow crops generally have more to do with water rights and which bits are federal land than the actual land it’s self.
Conversely a lot of US farmland is more sustainable for grazing, but the giant aquifer is a temporary solution.
Take the soil example, yes it would be billions per 100 acres, because on that scale (the Canadian shield) you'd either have to desoil massive amounts of usable farmless, or start grinding rock and creating new topsoil from that... so current market prices are meaningless!
Individual large river delta’s contain hundreds of cubic miles of soil. It’s not a limitless supply, but there is plenty of soil though not topsoil to cover 3 million square miles of the Canadian Shield.
Theres about 30 grams protein in 1000 calories of corn. There's about 90 grams in 1000 calories beef. This is because cows are very good at extracting protein.
Also, I can just let cows graze on Texas praire. I can't necessarily do that with corn.
https://www.nutritionix.com/food/wheat/100g
Wheat 15g of protein per 100g or 329 calories. That’s 114g on a 2,500 calorie diet.
ruminants are able to digest cellulose, it's basically what they have extra stomachs for, so they can have different chemistries that are livable for the cellulose digesting bacteria
And of course it’s a moot discussion. Directly eating the seeds is vastly more efficient than cattle eating both especially when their primarily eating seeds in the US.
Doesn't that mean "choose different plants" would be the more efficient / better approach there?
People like to shit on animal farms and say that more calories could be grown with less resources with plants. That's true, but the calorie count isn't the only factor to consider. Humans need a diverse diet.
That said, with wealth comes the desire to increase meat consumption in just about every culture. We have plenty of food and land to waste a large percentage of them on cattle, the only issue is the externalities of doing so.
And as it turns out, isocaloric (compared to meat) plant based protein sources offer enough protein for basically everybody.
https://theconversation.com/historical-photo-of-mountain-of-...
There were a lot of bisons in the americas, estimated 60 millions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison
"With a population in excess of 60 million in the late 18th century, the species was down to just 541 animals by 1889."
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2022/01-31-2022.php
"There were 91.9 million head of cattle and calves on U.S. farms as of Jan. 1, 2022"
The carbon released by the cows "emissions" is part of a carbon cycle, first captured by the grass and then released by bacteria in the cow's gut. The more grass, the more cows, the more carbon is hanging out somewhere other than the atmosphere.
I know you mentioned cows, but do some research on factory farmed pigs. They're legal toxic waste sights. We need to rethink our (Western) approach to diet.
Speaking of which: Hop Over to Kangaroo Meat: The More Sustainable Choice https://biodiversityconservationblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/1...