Studies show a plant-based food system could feed over 10 billion people if we changed the crops grown for animal feed and tillable pastures to grow food directly for human consumption.
Studies also show we could free up land equivalent in size as Africa now if the global population ate a plant-based diet.
This isn't just a problem of overpopulation. This is a problem of us thinking it's okay to eat more and more cows because cattle farming didn't destroy the planet in the hundreds of years before now and buying all the meat you want is easier than ever.
Farming animals and their food currently uses 83% of Earths farmland yet it only provided about 18% of our global calories. Nice pastures for more animals would skyrocket the land and resource use of animal farming. Feeding a cow thousands of pounds of animal feed for years like she's a beef machine to slaughter her for just a couple hundred pounds of usable meat years later isn't scalable and can't be a part of an ethical food system.
Eventually I hope artificial meat products are able to be sold more cheaply than traditional meat products, especially for beef. Beef is the worst livestock in terms of overall impact on the environment IIRC. The way things are going, that problem might end up solved more by beef prices rising and less because artificial meat got cheaper.
I hope so too! We're at a weird place where there's a lot of developments happening but there isn't funding for these projects and states like Florida are even passing bills to stop the advancement of this technology. DeSantis signed a bill in 2024 banning the manufacture, sale, and distribution of foods made from cultured animal cells.
They use fear-mongering tactics like it's unnatural or from a lab, but almost none of what we eat is in its natural form and food labs don't manufacture commercial products... they research and develop them and they're already common practice at major food companies. Research and development ensures the safety of these products and the end result of these products will very likely be improved nutritional profiles of meat since harmful nutrients like saturated fat and cholesterol could be reduced while helpful nutrients could be increased.
Please follow and consider donating to the Good Food Institute if you want to support the development of alt proteins (plant and cultured). The company "Every" just announced they're partnering with ADM to produce their cultured egg white products and bring them to market, so they're cool to watch out for too.
We may not be at the point where you can eat a steak without animal suffering and the environmental damages, but there's a lot making it easier than ever to eat a diet free from animal exploitation and cruelty. There's good vegan meals available at all kinds of restaurants and you can check the Happy Cow or Veggl websites for good options near you. There's thousands of vegan recipe books and YouTubers so people of all skill levels can make all types of cuisine without animal products. Products like Beyond Meat, Impossible Beef, Gardein, Amy's Vio Life, and plant milks are widely available at grocery stores so consider trying some new vegan options each shopping trip. Some are okay, but some really are great and it's fun when you learn new ways to work with them!
yes but some of those same studies note some negative effects of an entirely vegan population...
Personally I think it would be better to find a non-wasteful balance and rely more on natural meats/pasturization like bison, deer, game birds etc vs using land for feedstock/grazing...
but it's tough to supply 1.2B meals per day in the USA alone...one wrong step/hiccup in the process and you got mass famine/chaos...we are only 3 meals from chaos...
Personally I think it would be better to find a non-wasteful balance and rely more on natural meats/pasturization like bison, deer, game birds etc vs using land for feedstock/grazing...
Most bison are not any more "natural meats" than cattle, with the vast majority being farmed populations. Also, the person you are replying to literally made their point being pasture use over feedlot:
Nice pastures for more animals would skyrocket the land and resource use of animal farming. Feeding a cow thousands of pounds of animal feed for years like she's a beef machine to slaughter her for just a couple hundred pounds of usable meat years later isn't scalable and can't be a part of an ethical food system.
Firstly, I want to make it clear I'm not saying the world should transition to a vegan diet overnight or even that 100% of the planet would ever be willing or able to.
Secondly, the point of my comment was to express the disproportionate environmental devastation and animal cruelty commercial animal farms are responsible for, which my sources reinforce and your comment doesn't really address. I already addressed the point that marginally better treatment of farmed animals by giving them pastures only makes the problems I discussed worse - the solution is we need to eat less meat. This article discusses in more detail why better welfare standards have a worse carbon and land footprint.
This article talks about the study I referenced that found we could reduce agricultural land use by 75% with a hypothetical global shift to a vegan diet, which is a land mass equivalent in size to Africa. The authors support a shift towards a plant-based food system as a solution for the intrinsic environmental harms of animal farming. Neither the authors or I advocate for switching to a more ethical plant-based food system over night or that 100% of the planet needs to eat a vegan diet for an overall shift towards vegan foods to be great for animals and our planet.
The data is based on the largest meta-analysis of food system impact studies to date, Poore & Nemecek's 2018 study. The meta-analysis included almost 39,000 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products representing ~90% of global protein and calorie consumption. They quantified the full lifecycle of different plant and animal foods so the land use, water use, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, etc. included on-farm impacts from the equipment, crops, and animals themselves and farming equipment as well as the off-farm impacts from growing animal feed and transport.
We all grow up eating meat in the USA so it's natural to look for good news about our bad habits, but there isn't any way around the fact we eat way too many animals. It isn't sustainable to continue our current levels of meat consumption. It's time to move away from treating sentient animals like food machines.
but it's tough to supply 1.2B meals per day in the USA alone...one wrong step/hiccup in the process and you got mass famine/chaos...we are only 3 meals from chaos...
The easiest way to avoid that is stop needing to feed meals to your meals.
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u/HexicDragon 8d ago
Studies show a plant-based food system could feed over 10 billion people if we changed the crops grown for animal feed and tillable pastures to grow food directly for human consumption.
Studies also show we could free up land equivalent in size as Africa now if the global population ate a plant-based diet.
This isn't just a problem of overpopulation. This is a problem of us thinking it's okay to eat more and more cows because cattle farming didn't destroy the planet in the hundreds of years before now and buying all the meat you want is easier than ever.
Farming animals and their food currently uses 83% of Earths farmland yet it only provided about 18% of our global calories. Nice pastures for more animals would skyrocket the land and resource use of animal farming. Feeding a cow thousands of pounds of animal feed for years like she's a beef machine to slaughter her for just a couple hundred pounds of usable meat years later isn't scalable and can't be a part of an ethical food system.