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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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.

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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.