We instead grow large amounts of crops that go to animal feed. It takes a lot less cropland for plant-based diets because we don’t have to grow feed to another creature (who then will use up a large amount of that energy)
The research suggests that it’s possible to feed everyone in the world a nutritious diet on existing croplands, but only if we saw a widespread shift towards plant-based diets.
If we would shift towards a more plant-based diet we don’t only need less agricultural land overall, we also need less cropland.
In the hypothetical scenario in which the entire world adopted a vegan diet the researchers estimate that our total agricultural land use would shrink from 4.1 billion hectares to 1 billion hectares. A reduction of 75%. That’s equal to an area the size of North America and Brazil combined.
No we do not, I cannot stand this stupid regurgitated lie. You cannot eat the food they do. You cannot eat spoiled food, you cannot eat grass, you cannot eat roots and stalks, 85% of what they eat is from foraging…and you cannot grow crops on the mass majority of the land that they live on.
The water is even funnier, you cannot drink the water they do.
Per unit crop land you can produce a lot more with plant-based production
we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
We find that, given the current mix of crop uses, growing food exclusively for direct human consumption could, in principle, increase available food calories by as much as 70%, which could feed an additional 4 billion people (more than the projected 2–3 billion people arriving through population growth)
For water usage, it’s also draining from places like the drying up Colorado river. We really don’t want to use more water from that area at all
Correspondingly, our hydrologic modelling reveals that cattle-feed irrigation is the leading driver of flow depletion in one-third of all western US sub-watersheds; cattle-feed irrigation accounts for an average of 75% of all consumptive use in these 369 sub-watersheds. During drought years (that is, the driest 10% of years), more than one-quarter of all rivers in the western US are depleted by more than 75% during summer months (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 2) and cattle-feed irrigation is the largest water use in more than half of these heavily depleted rivers
Let me say this again…we are not growing in any substantial way human edible food for just meat production. This is so wrong. I’ll say it again…you cannot eat nor drink what livestock eat and drink. All of these “studies” love to leave that out. No one is going to stop eating meat, veganism is not something the majority of people can magically swap over to.
The first study’s I cited in the previous comment whole goal was to directly measure what amount of their feed was human-edible. It still found it takes more kg of human-edible feed than it produces in kg of meat. These studies aren’t leaving things out, they are just finding the opposite result
Repeating the claim without any evidence does not make it more true
Tired of repeating everything…read the thread. You’re studies are biased crap, it’s always some vegans that run the studies and it’s always got a biased lean to make the studies sound like we can magically feed 7+ billion people on plants with no issues.
That doesn’t magically make it less nutritional than what it requires to feed them. 1lb of meat is not going to be replaced with 1lb of any veggies. You have to eat way more vegetables to get the same amount of nutritional value. Meat is packed with a higher concentration of most of the nutrients we need.
Do note I’m in no way saying it can replace vegetables, I like my greens, but I’m also not someone who thinks that we can magically feed the entire world on a plant diet.
We instead grow large amounts of crops that go to animal feed. It takes a lot less cropland for plant-based diets because we don’t have to grow feed to another creature (who then will use up a large amount of that energy)
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
No we do not, I cannot stand this stupid regurgitated lie. You cannot eat the food they do. You cannot eat spoiled food, you cannot eat grass, you cannot eat roots and stalks, 85% of what they eat is from foraging…and you cannot grow crops on the mass majority of the land that they live on.
The water is even funnier, you cannot drink the water they do.
It still takes more human-edible crops in than it produces out
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013
Per unit crop land you can produce a lot more with plant-based production
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115
For another study
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015/pdf
For water usage, it’s also draining from places like the drying up Colorado river. We really don’t want to use more water from that area at all
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=wffdocs
Let me say this again…we are not growing in any substantial way human edible food for just meat production. This is so wrong. I’ll say it again…you cannot eat nor drink what livestock eat and drink. All of these “studies” love to leave that out. No one is going to stop eating meat, veganism is not something the majority of people can magically swap over to.
The first study’s I cited in the previous comment whole goal was to directly measure what amount of their feed was human-edible. It still found it takes more kg of human-edible feed than it produces in kg of meat. These studies aren’t leaving things out, they are just finding the opposite result
Repeating the claim without any evidence does not make it more true
https://lemmy.world/comment/9023734
Tired of repeating everything…read the thread. You’re studies are biased crap, it’s always some vegans that run the studies and it’s always got a biased lean to make the studies sound like we can magically feed 7+ billion people on plants with no issues.
The very study that you cite found it uses more human-edible feed than it produces. That is the more relevant figure
That doesn’t magically make it less nutritional than what it requires to feed them. 1lb of meat is not going to be replaced with 1lb of any veggies. You have to eat way more vegetables to get the same amount of nutritional value. Meat is packed with a higher concentration of most of the nutrients we need.
Do note I’m in no way saying it can replace vegetables, I like my greens, but I’m also not someone who thinks that we can magically feed the entire world on a plant diet.