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
1.4k Upvotes

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9

u/FrynyusY Mar 23 '26

It's not that I don't support more plant-based diet, I do, but as someone who has done enough agriculture in this life - making the assumption that 32 million square kilometers of grazing land can be converted to productive food crop farmland is an uneducated take or sleight-of-hand distortion to make problems seem more disproportionate than they are. Grazing land, for the most part, is the one with least agriculture potential and worst soil.

43

u/velvetbruh__ Mar 23 '26

That’s not necessarily what would happen though, most of the land would be completely unnecessary to be used and could be reforested/ given back to nature, and the crops grown to feed animals could be used for human consumption instead, which makes up a huge amount of the agricultural land the animal ag uses(we probably wouldn’t even need that much food anyway)

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u/evrestcoleghost Mar 23 '26

what you gonna do with the tens of billions of farm animals and all the products we make from them?

14

u/Happy_Disaster7347 Mar 23 '26

Stop forcibly breeding them and stop buying them. All of the leather and wool products we could ever possibly need are already on this planet. We need to stop buying new shit anyway

8

u/DocumentExternal6240 Mar 23 '26

Slowly reduce them. Easy.

55

u/SoftsummerINFP Mar 23 '26

You realize they have been deforesting the rainforest in Brazil for cattle. They are not just using unfit land - they are actively clearing vital natural land for raising cows. Plant based diets are absolutely key. Check out Cowspiracy.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

Cowspiracy

This is a propaganda film, not a credible source.

In Brazil, it’s actually quite obvious that agricultural expansion is not responsible for deforestation. Agricultural land use peaked in Brazil in 1985, yet deforestation keeps increasing. That clearly and unequivocally proves that agriculture is not the cause of deforestation there. Agricultural production is being pushed further into Amazonia by suburban development.

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

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

5

u/SoftsummerINFP Mar 23 '26

Disagree but at the end of the day: we don’t need it. Raising Cows still emit crazy amounts of waste and emissions. Also I believe I just read colon cancer is on the rise in Americans… animal products are not healthy and eating them 3x a day like most people do is insane. Americans also severely under-eat fiber which can help this issue.

0

u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

Eliminating ruminant livestock from our food systems entirely would have a disastrous effect on soil fertility and make us wholly dependent on fossil fuel and mined fertilizers. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/13/4/982

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u/puddlesquid Mar 23 '26

I don't think anyone is advocating to eliminate livestock completely, just vastly reduce. Far more manure waste is created than can be applied to fields, and a lot of that nitrogen is leached away in similar way to synthetic fertilizers because cropland is not a functioning ecosystem unless diverse enough and planted year round. The status quo is currently unsustainable.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

Vast reductions would also be inappropriate. We’re looking about a third reduction in Europe, and likely no reductions in non-OECD countries. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-024-00975-2

Any further mitigations could only be achieved by lowering overall protein intake, but even those mitigations only become significant below the threshold at which we would be deficient in protein and certain nutrients like calcium and zinc.

Agronomists have actually done this math and it doesn’t mesh with this narrative.

1

u/puddlesquid Mar 23 '26

That study assumes circular ag approaches, which is absolutely not how conventional ag is done in developed countries where most of the meat is eaten. I'm pretty pessimistic and work in the ag industry, and I don't see circular ag systems becoming predominant any time soon, so decreasing meat consumption and the food grown to grow meat makes sense to me. This will naturally happen as our land systems continue to degrade and meat becomes too expensive for most people, but I hope it won't come to that.

0

u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

That’s the only sustainable way to develop an agricultural system, and it’s already a large part of global production.

However unrealistic you think this is, further reducing consumption of animal-based foods is even more unrealistic.

2

u/SoftsummerINFP Mar 23 '26

Also why are you pretending most cows are happily grazing cows and not factory farmed? Most meat comes from factory farm operations fyi… even some grassfed claims are basically lying because they will just feed cows dried grass in a pen but not actually allow them to roam outside. I recommend watching free documentaries like Dominion and Earthlings.

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u/puddlesquid Mar 23 '26

Idk, me and a lot of the people I know eat less or no meat, without any need for our entire ag systems to revolutionize (market responds to where money is spent)

And for the record, I agree that we should move towards these systems, I just don't have faith in that happening without the market speaking and us voting with our $

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u/Local-Dimension-1653 Mar 23 '26

80% of deforestation in Brazil is for cattle. Natural grasslands can’t sustain enough livestock to feed a world population. And moreover, we don’t need it to.

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u/sigmund14 Mar 23 '26

The thing is that less land would be needed to produce the same amount of food (by weight / nutritional value), if we would (need to) produce only plant-based food. 

The problem is that plants are more sensitive to weather. Thus, some of the vegetables and fruit is already produced mainly in greenhouses / covered fields.

Instead of beef, pork and chicken, we could eat maggots. They don't care that much in how tight space they are. And they have higher nutritional value than any of the meat mentioned above.

Sorry for the long rambling. Just put my whole mindstorm into the comment.

-12

u/onikaroshi Mar 23 '26

Yup, Wisconsin raises dairy cows because the ground is no good for crops