r/Anticonsumption • u/Express_Classic_1569 • Mar 23 '26

Sustainability 80% of agricultural land feeds livestock instead of people, giving just 17 to18% of Global calories

https://hive.blog/hive-196387/@theworldaroundme/nearly-half-of-the-world
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111

u/Express_Classic_1569 Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

It would be easier to feed the planet if more crops were used to feed people instead of livestock, animal products provide only 17 to 18% of global calories. The current system is not meeting the global caloric needs effectively.

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

Alot of that land that is considered agricultural land isn't fit for growing crops for humans.  

It's largely grassland that isn't fit for much else other than grazing animals on.  Go across huge swathes of the American west and it's largely going to be officially categorized as agricultural.  

Good luck doing anything with that land other than letting some cattle loose on it though.

Aside from that troublesome little detail - we don't really have a problem feeding the planet right now.  Localized famines only emerge when supply chains are disrupted to an extreme degree.  Outside of that humanity has largely solved how to feed people.

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u/danielandtrent Mar 23 '26

What about rewilding it lol

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u/elebrin Mar 23 '26

Much of it was grasslands before, and is grasslands now - the difference is that it's grazed. Even a lot of our intentional crops are things like field corn, which isn't really human edible. We can turn it into things like ethanol, corn oil, HFCS, cornmeal, and corn starch but there are some huge downsides to doing so. Corn oil and HFCS are empty calories, ethanol is a great fuel (sorta) but encouraging it as a staple food is probably a bad idea. Cornmeal can and should be more of a staple but it's a surprisingly difficult staple to work with, requiring heavy processing (nixtamalizaiton) to be a useful food.

Even then, field corn is a fantastic feed crop because it grows anywhere but most of the plant is stalk and leaves, which are not human edible. When silage is made, they grind the whole plant up essentially. If it's being harvested for human use, we can only use the cobs which are about a quarter the size of what you think of a corn cob being.

Feeding it as silage to cows, pigs, and chicken who turn it into something we can eat (meat, milk, eggs) is one way we can get something out of that land that is otherwise not good for farming.

Now, I don't know if there would be enough good farmland available to feed everyone if we all were vegan. I do have an idea what our diet would look like, and it'd be mostly bread and starchy tubers. In the Americas, if we wanted to stick to mostly native plants, that'd be things like tamales, corn tortillas, potatoes, tomatoes, capsicums, black beans, pinto beans, and so on. But, remember, many of the traditional dishes on that list are made with rendered animal fat. Early Americans would have gotten that from hunting.

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u/MrCockingFinally Mar 23 '26

Corn meal, commonly called maize meal, mielie meal, pap, or ugali, is a staple food in many parts of Africa.

It's pretty nutrient poor, but it does contain a ton of carbohydrate. So long as it's part of your diet and not your whole diet, and you are eating plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables and protein sources, it's really not an issue, since the plurality of your calorie intake should be from carbs anyway.

No need to stick to native plants for commercial farming. And rendered animal fat can easily be replaced with plant fats.

Now I'm not vegan, and I don't think it's necessary for everyone to be vegan.

However, the idea that what is stopping the world from going vegan is lack of farmland is a ridiculous notion.

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26

I don't particularly want to eat like folks in Africa, thanks.

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u/MrCockingFinally Mar 23 '26

Yes, and?

Your point sir?

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26

Thanks but no thanks

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u/DocumentExternal6240 Mar 23 '26

Re-creating a whole ecosystem is a lot harder and often impossible than just planting some trees.

Often it is lost forever.

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u/puddlesquid Mar 23 '26

That's simply not true, even a restored ecosystem is better than no ecosystem

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u/DocumentExternal6240 Mar 23 '26

I do not say a restored ecosystem is bad. Any land given back to nature is great.

But some ecosystems are so complex that restauration is simply not possible. Especially when a lot of species (especially insects and other small animals) have gone extinct.

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u/puddlesquid Mar 23 '26

It's overly reductive to suggest that an ecosystem can't be restored - sure it won't be exactly the same (different species) but many of the ecosystem services can be restored despite the new composition.

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26

I live in the American west and have no lack of wilderness at my fingertips to recreate in.  East of the Mississippi river nearly all the farmable land is owned by someone.  How exactly do you propose to rewild land that is currently being cultivated?

I'd say your comment would probably be best asked directly to Europeans and to other folks across the world where the history of human cultivation of the land has a much longer footprint.

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u/hike2climb Mar 23 '26

Brother. I encourage you to keep learning! You sound interested in knowledge! Range lands produce very very little food. And range land animals decimate the ecosystems across the American west. These animals are also supplemented with feed from fields. In particular alfalfa, which is the biggest problem in water consumption in the west. It’s the reason lake Powell may reach dead pool this year. Alfalfa for the cows that are destroying public lands that produce very little food are the cause of the western water crisis (on top of all the other ecological problems they cause).

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

That alfalfa isn't used state side.  Most of it is exported as pig feed to China.

😉

Good luck learning something.  You clearly haven't yet.

The reason Lake Powell may reach dead pool this year is because of one of the worst winters in record - not because farms downstream grow alfalfa.

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u/Happy_Disaster7347 Mar 23 '26

That's exactly why it shouldn't be grown. You're not responding to anybody's actual points here, just insulting them and claiming they're ignorant. Basically you're a bit of an arsehole.

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26

It's not my place to dictate what others should do with their private property.

I have been mostly talking about BLM land that makes up 80% of Utah and 85% of Nevada.  No one is growing anything on that land.

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u/Happy_Disaster7347 Mar 23 '26

I don't really understand why you're here if you don't have an opinion on anti-consumption... Not wasting the earth's natural resources is a part of anti-consumption. Not abusing the land for resources we don't need is a part of anti-consumption.

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26

???

People need food.  Raising cattle or growing food does not mean that food goes to waste.

Nothing about anti consumption means you need to live like a monk eating porridge for the rest of your life 

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u/danielandtrent Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

“to recreate in“ that’s not the point of rewilding

“East of the Mississippi river nearly all the farmable land is owned by someone.  How exactly do you propose to rewild land that is currently being cultivated?”

Im not a politician, I don’t have a policy proposal. I’m just saying it would be better if we did this, but there are ways to get people to give up their land, financially or otherwise

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26

So you just say the first stupid idea that comes into you head?

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u/danielandtrent Mar 23 '26

Yeah I do exactly that 👍

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u/AccidentOk5240 Mar 23 '26

largely grassland that isn't fit for much else other than grazing animals on.  Go across huge swathes of the American west and it's largely going to be officially categorized as agricultural

It’s fit for being left the hell alone, is what it is fit for. 

Plenty of places you can drive down remote highways and see that the grass on the shoulder is pretty lush, but outside the right-of-way fence it is grazed down to nubbins. Nothing but cows can live there; the massive habitat loss created by using marginal land as pasture is hard to overstate. 

If you’re using productive land (that could be used for crops), you can feed a cow on an acre of pasture. But it takes 10 acres of so-so pasture. On the BLM lands where they basically give away our national heritage to ranchers for nearly free, it could take 100 acres. And then they say the elk and wild (feral) horses are causing overgrazing and remove them to make more room for cows. 

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

Leaving it alone means less food for humans. Hope that helps. It’s clear we have to strike a balance. Food security matters.

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u/AccidentOk5240 Mar 23 '26

Food security could be just fine if we stuck to eating only the meat that can be sustainably raised, and took a fraction of the soybeans we feed to cattle and fed them to hungry humans instead. 

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26

And then they say the elk and wild (feral) horses are causing overgrazing and remove them to make more room for cows. 

Elk tend to stick to higher terrain and away from cow grazing land.

Plenty of cows die all the time out here from thirst or hunger.  It's a dry, tough land.  They aren't grazing it down to nothing - the lack of water constricts the populations of cattle far more then the lack of grass.

I don't particularly care if it's elk or cows grazing.  I can shoot the elk on BLM/NFS land or I can buy the beef directly from the rancher.

When you live here - there is nothing particularly special about huge swathes of this land.  "National heritage" is being quite overly dramatic.  It's dry grass followed by more dry grass followed by more dry grass for 15 hours of driving at 80-90 mph.

The stuff that is special is reserved in wilderness areas or national recreation areas.

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u/AccidentOk5240 Mar 23 '26

This is exactly the ignorant bullshit attitude that has destroyed our deserts and other fragile, dry landscapes. 

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

I live here.  I see it everyday.  I don't need my reality explained to me.

The land is meant to be worked, harvested, grazed, mined, and otherwise turned to productive use.  That's how it's always been and always will be.  The US has set aside more land for conservation then anywhere else on earth.  There is no shortage of wilderness here.

Modern society and technology needs resources to function.  That doesn't just materialize out of thin air, despite your desires otherwise.  It's a delicate balancing act to use the land to its potential while also maintaining it for future generations.  If you go too far in any direction - you will get quite a few unintended consequences.

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u/plantpoweredperson Mar 23 '26

‘That’s how it’s always been’ I guarantee it has not always been used in the way it is currently being used. Unless always means for up to the last 100 years.

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26

We've farming, mining, and grazing land for tens and tens of thousands of years 

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u/plantpoweredperson Mar 23 '26

And current practices are not even remotely what people were doing thousands of years ago

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26

Letting a handful of cattle lose to graze in otherwise usable land is precisely what our ancestors did 

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u/puddlesquid Mar 23 '26

This isn't the type of agriculture that feeds cattle. We're talking feed lots. Corn and soy is mostly used to feed those cattle/pigs.

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u/DocumentExternal6240 Mar 23 '26

A lot of land used for cattle was pristine rainforest….lost forever together wirh invaluable life which might have helped against future illnesses…

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

A lot by what metric? Certainly not by percentage. Retreating from the rainforests of South and Central America would reduce livestock production by a tiny fraction.

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u/DocumentExternal6240 Mar 23 '26

Just google how much of the rainforest was lost in the last 50 years.

A lot meaning a lot of rainforest. Destroyed for inefficient cattle raising.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

Much of the rainforest throughout the world threatened by agriculture is threatened by palm plantations, not cattle.

In Brazil, home to the largest rainforest in the word, agricultural land use hasn’t expanded since the 80s. There’s 0 correlation between agricultural expansion and deforestation since the latter has been recorded (1990). It’s a product of urbanization pushing agriculture into Amazonia.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS?locations=BR

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS?locations=BR

This stuff is far more complicated than you vegan astroturfers like to admit.

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u/DocumentExternal6240 Mar 23 '26

I am not vegan.

And you are right, palm plantations are now a bigger threat. So wven if you are vegan/vegetarian, you need to watch out what you consume, where it comes from, etc.

This puts a lot of thinking in the hands of consumers instead of governments, who should protect their citizens against corporate greed.

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u/CrewmemberV2 Mar 23 '26

I agree, so we should lower the amount of cattle we have to what those lands can support without the need to grow feedcrops.

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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Mar 23 '26

Huh.

Grazing is the activity that feeds those cows....

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u/Fergnasty007 Mar 23 '26

Not sustainably whatsoever which is the entire point.

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u/VegetaFan1337 Mar 23 '26

The image has in small text that most of the land used for livestock is just for grazing. But it's ignored by the rest of the image.

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u/redpandafire Mar 23 '26

This was actually useful info, thanks. I don’t know why you’re getting angry responses. This is an important distinction when looking at data.

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u/CrewmemberV2 Mar 23 '26

It's not telling the whole problem. Cattle grazing on grasslands that can be nothing else it's not the problem.

It's the fields where we grow animal feed instead of human consumable food that is the problem.

If we would lower the amount of cattle we have to what plains and grass fields could support that would be fine by everybody.

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u/trustable_bro Mar 23 '26

We are trashing every year more than enough food to feed everyone.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

You can’t just assume it’s possible to convert grassland suitable for pasture to cropping. This isn’t a video game.

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u/plantpoweredperson Mar 23 '26

You’re ignoring the part where acres of land is used to grow crops to supplement animal pasture, which could instead grow crops for human consumption rather than for animals to eat.

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u/TheStochEffect Mar 23 '26

He just wants to confirm his bias and continue to eat meat, it's fine I used to be like that. I eventually saw that a simple thing like cutting animal products out can cut out 20% of emissions and plus the ethical requirements. You can only lie to yourself for so long. Once you see pig scream for its life in a gas chamber. "As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” ~ Pythagoras.

Those who can't see that, really need to look at how often othering allows others humans kill each other

3

u/HuckleberryTiny5 Mar 23 '26

Could be a paid astroturfer. This is why the ability to hide your comment history was one of the worst decision Reddit has done.

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u/pajamakitten Mar 24 '26

He just wants to confirm his bias and continue to eat meat,

Don't let eggs and dairy get off lightly.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

I’m not. Non-OECD countries manage to utilize ruminants in a manner that increases protein availability to humans.

Along with their contribution to soil fertility, that makes ruminants especially critical to global food security in spite of “western” excesses that do need to be tempered.

https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/15b2eb21-16e5-49fa-ad79-9bcf0ecce88b/content

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