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[-] Shard@lemmy.world 61 points 10 months ago

You want to convert something to useful land? Get rid of golf courses.

[-] Kingofthezyx@lemm.ee 12 points 10 months ago

Por que no los dos?

[-] ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago
[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 20 points 10 months ago

Livestock is more useful than tobacco and golf courses

[-] Shalakushka@kbin.social 18 points 10 months ago

We have way more than enough livestock. Humans should be eating less meat.

[-] ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

Sorry for not being clear; that was the point I was trying to make.

[-] BaardFigur@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Livestock produces high quality nutrients.

[-] ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Not for the same resource input it doesn't.

[-] BaardFigur@lemmy.world -3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Conveniently forget the fact that many vital amino-acids are really hard to get by, without meat in your diet.

[-] ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Vital eh?

I'd forgotten that I ought to be dead.

[-] BaardFigur@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

I'd forgotten that I ought to be dead.

Well, I'd advise you to get yourself checked for deficits at least.

[-] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago

Humans can synthesize all amino acids themselves. Any external source is optional, and outside of extreme scenarios like quickly gaining muscle mass nothing you need to think about.
If you do find yourself in the extreme scenario, you will have no problems picking from the huge range of non-meat protein sources.

[-] BaardFigur@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Humans can synthesize all amino acids

No they can't synthesize them all, thats sort of the problem. Those that can't be synthesized are the essential amino acids. Most, but not all of these essential acids are easily available in a vegan diet. Those that aren't as available, well, better find a good strategy to get enough of those.

[-] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago

Hm, it seems you are right. Not sure how I didn't know that.
So is my understanding correct in that there are 3 groups of substances: vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids; that you would have a bad time without? Bringing the total to calories, vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids, and water?

In that case I suppose a minimum number of Livestock products are helpful in fulfilling that, though as the increase of supplemented products probably reduces the need, the amino acids can still be chemically synthesized, right?. The main criticism is also the amount, we are consuming (way) more livestock products than needed to fulfill nutritional requirements. Especially meat would still be optional, right?

I don't actually have experience with vegan diets, I've always figured eating little meat would get me most of the way with least of the effort.

[-] SupraMario@lemmy.world -4 points 10 months ago

Livestock is one of the reasons we can feed everyone...

[-] ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Quite the reverse in fact! Livestock produces fewer calories and nutrients per square meter than crops.

[-] SupraMario@lemmy.world -4 points 10 months ago

No it does not. You cannot eat nor consume what livestock does, period. Their entire diet is shit you cannot eat, it's literally roots, and stalks and basically garbage your body cannot use. They also drink non portable water.

[-] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 10 months ago

On earth we have a land shortage. If you grow animal feed, that could have also been a foodcrop. In terms of land efficiency, meat is an order of magnitude less efficient.

[-] SupraMario@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago

We do not grow crops for just animal feed, the majority of what they consume is waste byproducts from what you are able to consume. It's around 85% of their diet. So unless you have a way to all of a sudden eat stalks or roots or leaves and grass, it's wasted if not feed to livestock.

[-] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I'll try to take a more nuanced and in depth look.

As a start, I'm relatively sure the main use of a large chunk of agricultural land is solely food production. A cursory search gives data like this image
global land use
from this page.
It's reasonable to assume some of the plant waste of food crops feeds some of the livestock, but if that much land is exclusively used for animals it would seem reasonable we could at least double the human plant food production with a reduced animal portion in that land use.
From a pure energy efficiency perspective animals are around 10%, so if you take half of produced plant calories and use them for animals, that will result in 10x fewer calories of animal products than the other half of the plants. This lines up with the energy spread by end human food product, which seems to be something like this:
this is a shitty image link, that will probably break in the future. sry

By the raw numbers and that coarse approach we expect 75% ⸱ 10% : 25% ≈ 1:3.3, the actual data seems to be slightly worse at 1:4.

So it seems to me we are using something like 25% of the land area to produce 80% of the food, just by not passing it through animals. And if you are right then some of the animal calories are even supplemented with the plant waste of those 25%.

The raw energy approach is actually quite a good approach by now, because we can use technology to transition most things into each other. You can pass plant waste into animals and loose 90% of the energy, or convert cellulose into (digestible) sugar and get the full energy. Or use it for other things that take energy like drug production. Using the plant waste on animals still brings that opportunity cost that means more land is used in other places to get the cellulose for those alternative uses, or to produce sugar the old fashioned way from more dedicated crops.

Traditionally you had land that you could not use for agriculture but could use to graze goats, you had plant material you could not use for anything but feeding animals. Animals were our bioreactors to transform that material or land into usable products. Now we have better chains of use.

The energy approach will finally be complete when we can turn plant material straight into animal products, with methods like lab grown meat or artificial milk, but we are not there yet. When we are, the energy balance of those should be close to that of plants and this entire problem simplifies greatly.

[-] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago

much of the land that is attributed to animal agriculture is grazing land, and is not suitable for growing crops.

[-] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago

much of the waste that is fed to animals does not have a better use, as you are suggesting. for instance, soycake. no one wants to eat that, but it's high protein. giving it to animals conserves resources.

[-] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago

The raw energy approach is actually quite a good approach by now, because we can use technology to transition most things into each other.

this assumes some sort of centralized economy, instead of letting farmers give wasted apples to their neighbors horses or whatever.

[-] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago
[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago

And enough pavement that anyone can store their cars close to pretty much any destination they have in mind.

this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
455 points (98.9% liked)

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