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Comment by triceratops | Hacker News Reader

> i wonder what would happen if the whole world went vegan from tomorrow

Mass starvation probably. We aren't prepared for it. Give it 10 years and maybe it could be done.

> would it actually cut down emissions, methane? co2?

You'd have to do something about all the existing livestock. Again with 10 years' lead time you could just stop breeding new livestock and let them die out.

> but [what] would be the impact long term

Less deforestation, less fertilizer (and therefore fossil fuels) used, lower methane emissions. If people could adjust their diets the impact would only be good (other than losing meat and dairy, which would be sad).

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> Mass starvation probably. We aren't prepared for it. Give it 10 years and maybe it could be done.

How do you figure? The same logistics lines that carry animal feed and then the animal can just carry the ~animal~ human feed directly to the consumer. Sure, the animals starve to death, but it's just a silly hypothetical.

It takes 1000 calories of feed to make 100 calories of animal protein. While the type of animal feed is not what humans probably want to eat, the calories already exist today. Without livestock, there would be a huge surplus of available food.

Wikipedia[0] Says that US directs 4345 million bushels of just corn to livestock feed. Which would be ~13 bushels or 330kg per American.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_...

It isn't as simple as "divert the trucks carrying corn and soy from feedlots to grocery stores".

Humans can't just eat uncooked, unprocessed corn and soy. Most people don't know how to use them as ingredients. You'd have to retool or rebuild all the food processing plants that current deal with animal products. Ramp up oat/soy/almond milk production. And so on.

> unprocessed corn and soy

You mean edamame and sweet corn? You can grab an ear of the latter right off the field, husk it and eat it raw if you'd like. Or is there something about megafarms that prevent that?

> Most people don't know how to use them as ingredients.

If they get hungry they'll do what people have done since time immemorial and boil them. No-one will starve sitting on a cache of beans. For that matter, humans can eat pig feed directly (it's not as safe as human food, but you can boil it too).

Most corn isn't sweet corn.

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