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Comment by hombre_fatal | Hacker News Reader

Most agri land is also used to grow crops for animals for a tiny return on the calories fed to them (tropic levels).

We could get serious about that if we decide to get serious about agri land use, deforestation, soil depletion, etc.

Totally possible to raise animals without this though. There is a massive percentage of the land that cannot grow much other than grasses and shrubs. Animals can convert that to calories we can consume, leaving more biologically diverse land available for other species.

The issue is that animals raised on pasture need more land and more time, which equals more money. It's cheaper to raise animals on what amounts to junk food (soy, corn, legumes).

We raise and sell pork, chicken, eggs, and dairy products that never eat anything that our own land doesn't produce (grass/nuts/native fruit). But my hogs grow over a year not six months, my chickens don't lay in the winter, and my cows don't produce 10+ gallons per day. My business is only sustainable because of people who care for quality of cheaper quantity.

Without meaning to suggest that there's no much better ways to raise animals for meat, it's still a fundamental truth that the land area needed to support animals is much higher than crops. If we were to only eat meat from animals that were raised in a biodiversity sustainable fashion, we'd all have to eat far less meat (which I totally support as a flexitarian).

I wholeheartedly agree. There is no possible way to raise animals the way we do at a scale that can sustain the current demand for meat. But at my small scale, I can make a profit while matching the sales price of mass-produced animal products, and I do that with no government subsidies.

My point was merely, there is a middle way, that makes better products, cheaply, and more ethically.

> There is a massive percentage of the land that cannot grow much other than grasses and shrubs.

Things may seem that way since those areas have been cultivated since prehistory, but this is not correct in general. Also, commercial fields (aka green concrete) and naturally grazed steppe/savannah are very different.

Yes, I am in favor of doing our best to return America's savannahs back to their previous state, though that state was not quite "wild" as you rightly point out, as Native Americans tended to the land and practiced regular burning of both the forests, savannahs, and plains. Likewise, bison did a huge part and sadly they cannot do that huge part anymore. But we can still get the land back to something healthier for everyone.

My cattle (Jerseys, I do not raise commercial beef cattle) prefer my savannah land. I have approx. 100 acres of oak savannah which I have worked hard to restore to its former glory. My savannah (I don't call it pasture, it's not) is far more productive and biodiverse. I do have to remove my herds from it because trees cannot handle the constraint weight and trampling of large animals, and so I do also have a small 20 acre pasture that I keep for the off-time. I also have a 5 acre lot I keep for the winter months (Jan-April) so my cattle don't destroy dormant plants and so the grasses have time to mature in the spring.

> massive percentage of the land that cannot grow much other than grasses and shrubs. Animals can convert that to calories we can consume

80% of all agricultural land for 18% of calories. It's an area the size of both Americas.

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land...

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

Given that we're in the sixth mass extinction, and animal species have seen 70% decline in last 50 years, we have to reverse the trend.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-7...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

That "marginal land" should be reforested instead and nature restored.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4

The carbon opportunity cost of animal-sourced food production on land

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4

Humans are driving one million species to extinction - with agriculture

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/

Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption

> My business is only sustainable because of people who care for quality of cheaper quantity

Your business might be. Animal agriculture isn't.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471

Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable

A global shift towards healthy and more plant-based diets, halving food loss and waste, and improving farming practices and technologies are required to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050, a new study finds.

> 80% of all agricultural land for 18% of calories. It's an area the size of both Americas.

> https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land...

how did you get 80% and 18% numbers from that link?..

also, calories is not the only metric of nutrition load..

> how did you get 80% and 18% numbers from that link?

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-g...

from

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

> also, calories is not the only metric of nutrition load

True. Nutrition is more than just calories. Plant-based diets offer diverse nutrients, antioxidants, and fiber that promote better health.

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

Ok, but still that pic lacks sources

Actual UN FAO says it is 33% of croplands used for crops production for animals, and other land is not necessary can be used for other type of aggrecalture: https://www.fao.org/3/ar591e/ar591e.pdf

UC Davis estimates that cattle farming consumes only 40% of arable land: https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/cattle-and-land-use-dif...

> Nutrition is more than just calories. Plant-based diets offer diverse nutrients, antioxidants, and fiber that promote better health.

I am more wondering about protein intake

> Ok, but still that pic lacks sources

This seems like this could have the sources (cannot open it right now).

https://github.com/owid/notebooks/tree/main/HannahRitchie/da...

It looks like you've been using HN primarily, if not exclusively, to post about basically one topic. Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed because pre-existing agendas are the opposite of curiosity, which is what we're trying to optimize for. I appreciate that you know a lot about this topic and have good reason to feel strongly about it, but I need to ask you to stop using HN this way because in the end it degrades what the site is supposed to be for. Pre-existing agendas are repetitive and predictable, and that's the essence of what we're trying to avoid here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

I appreciate your perspective. My focus on environmental topics is driven by my genuine interest and the belief that they're under-represented here. I've observed climate denial, and given the urgency of these issues, I felt the HN community might benefit from more exposure. If this appears as a single-topic agenda, I'll diversify my posts in the future.

it is believable that humans currently consume majority of calories from plants (likely wast majority from white rice and sugar), thought the questions is about animal agriculture land usage, and also how healthy/efficient are those plant calories.

> other land is not necessary can be used for other type of aggrecalture

Why does the land have to be used at all?

> I am more wondering about protein intake

Seitan, tofu, TVP are the obvious high-protein plant foods. People without a taste for those things or uninterested in leaving their comfort zone can seek mock meats.

Either way, it's trivial to hit protein goals.

> Why does the land have to be used at all?

and why not be used?

> protein

yes, but the topic of discussion what is the share of those nutrition in consumption for plant vs animal today and not hypothetical case when everyone switch to plant based diet.

Also, it is not clear if whole chain of seitan production is much better than animal protein in term of efficiency.

Are you suggesting that meat might be more efficient than wheat or soy foods? These are foods we feed to animals for a tiny return on those calories.

Seitan is just wheat gluten. You can take wheat flour off your shelf right now and wash out the starch so just the spongy gluten is left which is pure protein. And that's just one protein-concentrated food.

I think you need to look these numbers up for yourself because it doesn't seem like you have a grip on how inefficient meat is, and I think you need to see the numbers for yourself to believe it.

> look these numbers up

yeah, I looked, internet search says that seitan costs $15/lb in walmart, which is way more expensive than some chicken tighs, and I use this comparison as benchmark for efficiency and economical viability.

Your hand-wavings and personal attacks are ignored.

Store-bought prepared and flavored seitan is a speciality item because it's not a staple of US cultural cuisine. It doesn't mean wheat gluten is expensive to produce.

Why would you look at that and not just at the cost of wheat flour? Wheat gluten is dirt cheap to extract from wheat. Once again, you can make it in your home at the cost of wheat flour.

Another example is soy beans where the majority of soy is fed to animals instead of consumed directly as products like tofu, TVP, and soy chunks.

As for "hand waving", I suppose I can google meat inefficiencies for you. First google result: https://www.wri.org/insights/sustainable-diets-what-you-need... -- You'll notice that wheat is the most efficient source of protein especially when considering GHG emissions.

> cost of wheat flour

wheat flour has much smaller protein content than proper cuts of meat, so you just shift all this processing from industrial complex to your body with side effect of calories over consumption, blood sugar spikes etc.

> soy beans

uncooked soy beans also costs like 3-4$/lb in walmart, while having lower quality protein than meat.

> majority of soy is fed to animals

you can think that animal are doing your industrial processing: extracting proteins from raw soy/grains and converting it to well preservable and digestible form.

Wheat gluten (seitan) is protein isolated from wheat flour by rinsing it with water. Wheat gluten is more protein-dense than meat, even beef, while being much more efficient to grow per calorie. So, no, you actually would consume fewer calories of wheat gluten to get the same protein you would from beef.

Remember, it takes 25 calories of cow food (like wheat or soy) to grow one calorie of meat.

You can eat those calories (wheat or soy) directly at 25x more efficiency, and that's just calorie efficiency without looking at water or land use efficiency.

Finally, price doesn't tell you how much it costs to make something nor the financial viability at scale. Just like the price of beef doesn't show you subsidies, the price impact of basic demand, nor externalities.

In a hypothetical world where we switch 100% beef consumption to wheat gluten and tofu, why would it be more costly when we aren't losing 24 calories for every 25 calories we feed to cows anymore?

Even when you wash the starch from wheat flour to isolate wheat gluten, the starch is used as inputs into other foods. When we talk about the energy lost through tropic levels, it's lost as unrecoverable metabolic energy.

> Wheat gluten (seitan) is protein isolated from wheat flour by rinsing it with water.

which has cost which we discussed already.

Also gluten protein is far less digestible than animal protein, Table 1 in this publication says it is less digestible by factor 4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6723444/#:~:tex....

> even beef

beef is by no mean the best way to grow animal protein. Turkeys and chicken will be much more cost efficient.

> Remember, it takes 25 calories of cow food (like wheat or soy) to grow one calorie of meat.

I answered you already that calories intake is by no mean the important metric of nutrition value, and not interested to jump into this discussion again.

My point was simple that you can do that while still raising animals for food. They taste great, have a wealth of nutrients, and they can improve the ground they are on at the same time.

> They taste great

Sure, if you're ok with ignoring everything else.

> have a wealth of nutrients

But nothing that we couldn't get from plants.

> and they can improve the ground they are on at the same time

They can. But forest would do it too, and better. Climate-wise it's not a win.

https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/grazed-and-co...

Grass-fed beef isn't necessarily better for the environment than beef from CAFOs. While grass-fed systems offer benefits like soil health, they often require more land, potentially leading to deforestation. They can also be less efficient in terms of resource use and have variable effects on carbon sequestration. A comprehensive assessment considering land use efficiency, resource consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions is essential to fully understand the environmental impact of different beef production methods.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-03-grass-fed-beef-good-or-...

"This report concludes that grass-fed livestock are not a climate solution. Grazing livestock are net contributors to the climate problem, as are all livestock. Rising animal production and consumption, whatever the farming system and animal type, is causing damaging greenhouse gas release and contributing to changes in land use.

'Ultimately, if high consuming individuals and countries want to do something positive for the climate, maintaining their current consumption levels but simply switching to grass-fed beef is not a solution. Eating less meat, of all types, is.’"

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