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Comment by asciimov | Hacker News Reader

Even plant farming isn't without issues. Plant farming eventually strips the nutrients from the soil, and then they end up having to use lots of man made chemicals to "fix" the problem.

We have to find a way to be more sustainable in our agriculture.

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Absolutely. A great way to reduce the impact of plant farming is to do less of it. Something like 1/3 of farmland is used to grow crops that are fed to animals. https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture

How many more things will we have to plant to offset the meat eating?

If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

We could double forest area, stop biodiversity loss and store whole 1.5C carbon budget with subsequent reforestation effort. Studies confirming this exist. It's the easiest and surest way how to stop climate change.

> Plant farming eventually strips the nutrients from the soil

Crop rotation predates the wheel by about two millennia.

We're using the synthetic alternative because it's really amazing not because we don't have alternatives.

> because it's really amazing on the timeframes and liability frameworks that govern industrial decision-making

Small but critical detail.

I'd say more "government" timescale; food may technically be from private farms selling on free markets, but they're heavily subsidised because of the fundamental importance to society of making sure we never, ever, under any circumstances, have a famine.

Not after what happened last time.

(What happened last time varying between country, of course).

That's fine and all, but you're not accounting for the fact that we'd need much fewer crops if we fed those crops directly to humans.

All of the problems you perceive about crops apply even more to animal agriculture due to trophic level efficiency loss. You're inadvertently making the case against animal ag.

Chickens turn kitchen waste and other garbage into nutrient dense eggs.

I raise chickens and feed them my kitchen and yard waste. They also eat bugs.

Two chicken eggs can power me all day.

Reason about that "trophic energy loss [gain]".

I'm not sure what your "not muh eggs!" story has anything to do with a discussion about animal ag industry and scaling meat production to global levels.

For example, how much do your backyard chickens contribute to global egg consumption, and what would the egg market look like if all eggs came from chickens living like yours? That's the kind of topic going on here.

Animals converting plants to meat/protein is more efficient than humans directly eating an entirely plant based diet.

It sure isn't.

Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

The climate benefits of veganism and vegetarianism

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220429-the-climate-bene...

https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600x900/p0c41hws.webp

Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2120584119

Sustainable eating is cheaper and healthier - Oxford study

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-chea...

Why the food system is the next frontier in climate action

Virtually all paths to a net-zero-emissions food system rely on consumers in high-income countries shifting to a more plant-forward diet, according to a recent study.

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/04/why-the-food-syst...

Uhm... where do animals get these extra calories from if not their food? Can you explain this to me please?

How can the calories out be more than the calories in?

Or are you suggesting people don't get all the calories they eat from plans? I don't think this is true.

Cows eat 22 kg of plants to make 1 kg of meat, out of every 100 kcal you feed them you'll get 2 kcal of meat. Why not skip the inefficient intermediary?

And we could/should use nitrogen fixing plants and biodiversity instead of man made chemicals.

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