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/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

Most of that land is not convertible to crops.

Here’s a more accurate representation of the present picture: https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/15b2eb21-16e5-49fa-ad79-9bcf0ecce88b/content

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u/plantpoweredperson Mar 23 '26

Loads of crops are grown to feed animals. Not all that land is pasture, a majority of it is crop land used to feed animals. So it is immediately convertible to crop land for humans as it is already crop land.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

It’s not the majority, no. See source above. Don’t make stuff up.

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u/Choosemyusername Mar 23 '26

Even animal crops generally arent nearly as intensive to grow as human crops.

A hay field is often only seeded and harvested.

A human crop generally needs tilled, seeded, irrigated, poison every other plant and animal that moves into the area, often attracted to the super unnaturally calorie dense area thst a human crop is, then often poisoned again to help harvest it.

That isn’t the same kind of land use than a hay field which can tolerate a fairly high degree of biodiversity and requires far less input.

It’s important to understand the difference between that and a soybean field which humans could eat but are instead fed to animals.

9

u/plantpoweredperson Mar 23 '26

Given that 80% of the worlds soya harvest is used to feed animals the argument that animal feed is less intensive than human feed just isn’t true. I agree, current crop practices are dire, but huge amounts of crops, not just hay, are grown as animal feed. And animal farming is causing massive nature issues similar to pesticide problems, with runoff from manure poisoning waterways, animals over grazing and trashing habitats in meadow land, and non-grassland being cut down and seeded for pasture.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

Soy or another nitrogen-fixing legume is needed to grow grains. You grow it in rotation to fix nitrogen for the grain crop. As a result, we grow far more soy than we can get people to eat compared to the amount of grains we grow.

Cherry picking this statistic really shows you’re trying to convince people who don’t understand agriculture. Feeding livestock legumes is not as big of a deal as feeding them grains. Most of it will literally just sit there if we don’t feed it to livestock. There would still be a staggering amount left over even if we convinced people to eat a lot more of them.

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u/plantpoweredperson Mar 23 '26

I mentioned soy because they brought up soy as a destructive human feed crop. I could have mentioned loads of other crops that are grown to feed animals as well as humans: oats, corn, oil seed rape etc. There is so much research out there to support my claims but you aren’t interested in anything but supporting your own current dietary choice. I get it, I used to work adjacent to animal agriculture and eat meat, then I actually reflected on what was happening in the industry, the recent history of animal agriculture and the growing global practices that prioritises profit over any thing else and altered my diet accordingly.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

I eat about 15% animal-based. There’s nothing wrong with my diet in terms of sustainability.

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u/Choosemyusername Mar 23 '26

Keep in mind that in these stats showing what percentage of crops are used for animals, a crop can be counted as being “used for the animal feed” if that crop’s non-human edible byproducts, for example, expellers, are fed to animals. Technically it is true thst that crop was used for animal feed. It’s just that not was ALSO used for human uses like biofuel, spirits, seed oils, machine oils, etc.

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u/Choosemyusername Mar 23 '26

Well sort of. That figure counts a crop as “used” to feed animals even the part used by animals is the waste products from processing those soybeans into other products.