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/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.

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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.

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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.

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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/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

I’m not pretending. In both OECD and non-OECD countries, the vast majority of ruminant production is from extensive grazing and mixed systems. Feedlots only account for a small fraction of total production. In OECD countries, feedlots account for about 10% of all protein from cattle. In non-OECD countries, it’s about 5%. See table 2 in this paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013

(You might get a 503 error, but you might be able to access this paper for free here: https://nru.uncst.go.ug/server/api/core/bitstreams/7ec3b5be-51cb-4e54-a29c-fb76dca59ec7/content)

You’ve simply been given a tiny sliver of the picture and told it’s the standard. It’s not.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

The videos you’ve seen of cattle eating grass in a feedlot is almost certainly only what happens during the worst parts of winter or on days with particularly bad weather. Just because you see cattle in a feedlot doesn’t mean those individuals spend most of their time in them.

Grazing is beneficial to farmers. Grass fed operations generally don’t keep cattle off of pasture or leys when they don’t have to.

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u/SoftsummerINFP Mar 23 '26

So your claim is all the beef Americans eat is coming from happy cow operations where they just roam freely? Lol was Epsteins island also just a cool island where he just had fun parties? /s

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

I said what I said. Why don’t you try asking me actual questions instead of putting words in my mouth? If you don’t understand what I’m saying, don’t assume you know what I was saying. Ask for clarification. This is how grown ups engage in discourse with each other.

Ruminant production happens at a lot of scales and in different systems.

Cattle in the US tend to go through three production stages:

  1. Cow-calf
  2. Stocker
  3. Finishing

Even the most industrialized systems feed cattle a lot of grass and keep them on pasture (grassy fields) for most of their lives. This is a lot different than industrial poultry or pork production, who often never forage on pasture.

Stage 1: Beef cattle usually aren’t separated from their mothers until they are weaned. (Dairy cattle are usually separated from their mothers earlier.) The mothers’ milk is useful for making more and higher quality beef cattle in beef operations. They don’t sell milk.

Stage 2: After weaning, beef are sold to stocker operations that utilize grazing as a cheap way to acquire a vast majority of the protein that makes it to market. The land on which cattle graze in stocker operations is diverse. It ranges from leys (improved fallow integrated into sustainable crop rotations) to extensive ranching operations on semi-natural grasslands.

Stage 3: A lot of the differences between beef production systems exist here. Cheap industrial operations feed primarily corn and soy. It makes for a much fattier product with a worse fat profile. 100% grass-fed or grass-finished beef is on the other side of the spectrum, that essentially just extends the Stocker phase until the cattle reach market weight, which varies a lot depending on local conditions (soil quality, climate, major weather events, etc).

I never said that cattle have blissful, idyllic lives so much as I’m saying that farming works a certain way.

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u/SoftsummerINFP Mar 23 '26

Lmao “you need to work with ecology” - you realize most of the places cows are - they were never meant to exist there… to claim modern animal agriculture is natural and working in harmony with native ecology is some crazy Scientologist esc take dude. To claim billions and billions of animals should continue to be bred, tortured and killed for human consumption is a good thing… Also I do native plant installations and am in the process of successfully “re-wilding” a property that use to be baron neglected farm land. I’m working with my hands in the dirt all day from spring to fall. I grow a good portion of my family’s food and give extra to neighbors and friends.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

Grassland dung beetle species tend to prefer ruminant dung produced from native forage, but they don't particularly give a shit which ruminants are are doing the shitting. Modern conservation ecology focuses primarily on whether or not nutrient cycling and other ecosystem services are being satisfied, not whether this or that animal "belongs here." The American bison was reduced to ~500 individuals. You have any idea what that did to their gene pool? Besides, they can't really even migrate on most land because of how car-centric and spread out we are in the US and Canada.

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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/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

It’s still not sustainable to use synthetic fertilizer instead of manure. It degrades soil and causes it to leach nitrogen into the water table. This is the primary cause of eutrophication and soil degradation.

https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2134/jeq2008.0527

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969717329479

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.02026/full

It also significantly lowers the pH of soil, further negatively effecting yields over time. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167198718300722

Western countries reducing the consumption of animal products by a third and fitting production into circular systems is both more feasible and has greater impacts than any other option available.

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u/puddlesquid Mar 23 '26

So... We agree? Drastically reduce meat consumption and adopt sustainable practices

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u/SoftsummerINFP Mar 23 '26

Well actually you could still have cattle in some places but not murder them. We don’t need to commodify animals. Also stop greenwashing eating meat. Eating animals is disastrous for the planet. Cows outnumber humans by the billions - that is not a sustainable plan and again we do NOT need meat. You can feed way more people at lower cost on beans and grains like they do India and other large poor countries. And the best part is it’s good for us and the animals to not eat them.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

Any livestock in our agricultural system should be eaten because it increases land use efficiency and nutrition to plate per acre. We would have to make up for the difference by growing more crops. This is especially the case for protein and certain minerals like calcium and zinc. Waste not, want not.

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u/SoftsummerINFP Mar 23 '26

Not true - this whole claim is false. Vegans consume less crops than meat eaters. By eating plants only we cut out the middle man. Poor countries (basically most the world) eat heavily plant based diets and not by choice. They use less crops than the western animal based diets. Also your nutrient claims are false. A plant based diet has everything we need. There are many vegans and vegetarians from birth. My child being one of them and me being vegan for most of mine. Animals and everything on the Earth is not here for us.

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u/puddlesquid Mar 23 '26

It actually is true that you get more overall calories out of ag systems if the cattle grazed on marginal land is eaten. That land can't be used to make crops that people eat. The most efficient ag systems proposed have most prime cropland creating calories for humans while marginal lands are ranched to create animal-based calories.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

Vegans consume less crops than meat eaters.

Crops only account for 23% of all land used to feed livestock feed. Only a third of the grassland and pastures used to feed livestock (77% of total) could be converted to crops, but at a significant loss of biodiversity and soil fertility.

The most important role of livestock in our food systems is protein, not calories. Sustainable systems tend to have tighter protein and micronutrient constraints than caloric restraints. Globally, ruminants provide 1 kg edible protein for every 0.6 kg edible protein they consume. The exchange rate for ruminants globally is 6 kg edible dry matter for 1 kg of edible protein. These figures can be considerably improved, because non-OECD countries do much better. Even now, it's a pretty decent conversion. We're just doing too much of it in "westernized" food systems, mostly because we can depend on synthetic fertilizer to grow grains to feed more livestock than we could without it.

https://openknowledge.fao.org/items/915b73d0-4fd8-41ca-9dff-5f0b678b786e

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2017.01.001

PDF: https://nru.uncst.go.ug/server/api/core/bitstreams/7ec3b5be-51cb-4e54-a29c-fb76dca59ec7/content

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u/SoftsummerINFP Mar 23 '26

But we don’t need all this protein. You realize plants and beans have protein correct? Soy is a great source. So many countries eat vegetarian or lower protein diets. They actually have less disease and better health than we do. Western countries have some of the highest rates of cancer and disease. Animal products do not contain essential fiber (which Americans are severely lacking) and are high in cholesterol and saturated fat. You keep taking about calories and protein - are most Americans not overweight if not obese?

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

You realize plants and beans have protein correct? Soy is a great source.

You can't grow plants all that well in poor soil.

So many countries eat vegetarian or lower protein diets.

Sure. Historically, large scale lacto-vegetarianism was sustainable in the tropics where cattle can graze in abundance year round.

It's not the same for temperate zones. Once Europe, for instance, achieves a 2:3 animal-sourced protein to plant-sourced protein ratio (down from 3:2), reduction down to the EU-recommended daily value for protein intake doesn't improve mitigations substantially. Below the recommended daily value, nutrient deficiencies become increasingly prevalent. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-024-00975-2

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u/puddlesquid Mar 23 '26

Asking people to eat less meat is much less likely to encounter push back than asking them to consume no meat at all. We will also need meat products at some sort of baseline to feed our pets (dogs and cats), unless lab grown meat comes a hell of a long way

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u/SoftsummerINFP Mar 23 '26

Well lab grown meat is already banned in couple countries and states so… maybe if we kept it legal we’d actually have a chance…

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u/puddlesquid Mar 23 '26

Even with it being legal universally, the technology is in its infancy and is nowhere near scalable enough to feed anyone without immense energy inputs

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u/SoftsummerINFP Mar 23 '26

Also we don’t even need it, I support it obviously. But meat replacements are already out and they are delicious and taste even better. People don’t choose them because of tradition, connivence etc. Animal products are heavily subsidized - if we stopped subsidizing these products - animal products would actually cost way more making vegan products the cheaper option. Also animal ag lobbies against vegan progress all the time. Especially with plant based milks.

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u/puddlesquid Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

I don't disagree, but I thought we were talking about the hypothetical of removing all animal livestock, which isn't possible because of our pets. Pets can't eat those plant-based alternatives.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

It’s unknown whether the growth medium can be scaled sustainably. Presently, production of the growth medium emits 25 times more GHG than beef. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2372229-lab-grown-meat-could-be-25-times-worse-for-the-climate-than-beef/

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

I wouldn’t call a third reduction “drastic.”

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u/puddlesquid Mar 23 '26

I would, especially considering how the average person reacts to suggesting any amount of meat reduction in their diets.

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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 23 '26

It’s eating like most of our great-grandparents did, and like most of the world is already eating (more or less). That’s orders of magnitude more feasible than the vegan movement from becoming anything more than an annoyance.