• usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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    6 months ago

    It still takes more human-edible crops in than it produces out

    1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013

    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.

    https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115

    For another study

    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)

    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

    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

    https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=wffdocs

    • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      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.

      • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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        5 months ago

        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

        • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          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.

          • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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            5 months ago

            The very study that you cite found it uses more human-edible feed than it produces. That is the more relevant figure

            Contrary to commonly cited figures, 1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics

            • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              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.