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Agriculture uses 98% of humanity's land usage

16d 33m ago by discuss.tchncs.de/u/gandalf_der_12te in til from ourworldindata.org

Of the total area that is used by humans (Agriculture, Urban and Built-up Land),

  • urban and built-up land is 1m km²,
  • agriculture is 48m km²,

so agriculture is 48 of 49 millions km² used, that's 98%. The remaining 2% are all streets and housing and other infrastructure together.

This chart also shows how terribly inefficient animal farming is.

Most pasture land isn't suitable as farmland - there's examples of overlap of course, but you really can't draw that conclusion from the chart, it leaves out far too much information.

Okay, but can we stop using suitable farmland to grow corn cattle feed?

I'm wholly in support of this plan.

Yep for sure. The food grown to feed livestock (6M2 km) seems like it’s just feeding humans with extra steps. If you cut that out and feed humans directly. You’d still have livestock on grazing pad (32M2 km), just not the whole feedlot situation.

Yeah, and those extra steps require more land and more water and more transportation and more harvesting and more processing etc etc. Every extra step makes the whole system less efficient. We're essentially sacrificing farmland.

We're not sacrificing it, exactly the opposite; without the demand for plant products generated by animal ag, we wouldn't be able to exploit all that farmland. You know, for money.

Or go a step further and stop doing animal farming.

At that point we don't need to farm animals.

Best thing to do at that point would be to outlaw breeding of new farm animals, send the remaining ones to sanctuaries, and let them live the rest of their lives out on their own terms. Might need to sterilize as well.

All of this would aim to restore natural populations of cows, pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, etc. in the world to native levels. And if those animals aren't native, then imo there is no reason to help sustain them. Release to the wild at some point and let nature take it's course. Of course, this also means restoring natural predators to ecosystems like wolves, which would help keep populations in check.

Those species that are native, however, but are declining and on the brink of extinction: those we should focus on for conservation and regeneration.

It's a tough balance, but it can be done ethically

The US could feed its own population multiple times over if we used something like 30% of our current agricultural farmland subject to growing animal feed instead for growing things like corn, soybean, and wheat, as well as vegetables and fruit.

We'd still need to import some stuff, but we could cover the vast majority of Americans' nutrition doing this WHILE at the same time re-wilding the country and helping restore biodiversity.

Hope to see this shift in my lifetime

Most of the corn cattle are eating is the stalk and husks. The stuff we're going to grow regardless and would otherwise throw away.

Near slaughter when they get fattened up on feed lots (called finishing) it's mostly cracked corn grain, it's more towards the beggining of life that they're fed roughage with only a small amount of supporting grain.

During peacetime, all the corn fields kept operational with subsidy that just create corn which is fed to livestock seem like a waste.

But if China (or anybody else) pulls a fucky-wucky and makes it difficult to get food imported from outside the US, we slaughter the livestock and then have enough corn to feed the whole nation (and a lot of our allies). Without missing a beat.

Allies? Lol.

Y'all are threatening to kill your "allies" while trying to overthrow their democracies. You have no allies, and you sure as shit wouldn't try to help them in a food shortage.

You really still see yourself as belonging to the nation that protects the world, don't you? Despite everything.

Yeah. Trump told you not to rely on Russian gas and did you listen? No, you didnt and now you buy Russian gas (through India), thus funding Russia, while telling us to shoulder the majority of the burden of funding Ukraine. Just for one example.

It's not only pastures. Growing animal feed is vastly less efficient than growing food for humans directly. We could stop farming animals, use some of that land for growing human food, rewild the excess, and rewild the pastures.

This is true. But at the same time, the tradeoff I think more about isn't pasture versus crop land, but pasture and crop land versus wild land. Personally, I really enjoy eating meat, and have no problem with its production in general. But I also think that we should reserve far more land for nature.

Imo, a good way to strike the balance is via pigouvian taxes. First, of course, a carbon tax. Animal agriculture creates a lot of carbon, so higher prices would drive consumers to lower-carbon alternatives. Then a land value tax - the trick would be deciding how much the intrinsic beauty of nature and access to it by the public is worth - but once we figure out a decent number, the scheme should work quite well. If you want to farm/ranch, you aren't allowed to use up everyone else's nature for free. Either generate enough money to pay the public back for using their nature, or bounce. And of course, better rules and oversight for animal welfare - I wanna eat meat, not meat produced with unnecessary suffering.

This combination of approaches would reduce meat consumption and land use in a fair and ethical way, while still not being overbearing or playing favorites by doing things like banning x or y. Unfortunately, this is very much a pipe dream - at least in the US right now, as we have, umm... more pressing issues.

Eating animals causes unnecessary suffering though.

It's unnecessary because you can get all of your nutrition through plant-based sources. And if that's not enough, there are plant-based meat alternatives as well as lab grown meat on the horizon.

You don't have a need to eat meat because you have options to eat other things that cause less to no suffering.

If we stopped hurting animals we could rewild a lot more land. All that pasture, boom, back to the wild. Then, all the farmland used to grow feed for animals, split it up into what is necessary for human flourishing and then the rest can also go back to the wild.

That's the efficient use of land to feed the maximum number of people while maintaining the maximum wild acreage.

If we stopped hurting animals

So you're saying "if everyone went vegan/vegetarian..." And I have a lot of doubt about the practical viability of this plan. People have been eating animals longer than we've had money or governments... or fire. So I'm betting it would be a bit of a tough habit to break. Development of affordable lab-grown meat could go a long way - but my bet is that there will be subtle (or not so subtle) differences between lab grown and real meat for quite a while, and there would be an indefinite market (maybe luxury, maybe just middle class) for real meat for the forseeable future.

Hence, rather than relying on people to voluntarily reduce meat consumption (they won't) or applying heavy-handed and clumsy tactics (banning meat, deciding who or what is worthy of meat and when), we simply apply a price signal and reasonable regulations. The animals live relatively happy lives in reasonable and sanitary conditions. Then one day they wander down a hallway and are popped in the forehead with a bolt, and that's it. Then the levers of prices can be pulled to gradually push peoples choices in long-term pro-social directions - gradually reducing meat consumption over time in whatever way makes sense to them, while wild land increases and carbon emissions decrease.

It's interesting that you think prices are voluntary.

If meat is too expensive for poor people to eat, then it's the same as banning poor people from eating meat.

I don't think I said that? But using price incentives allows people to make the choice between spending their money on the same amount of a now more expensive good, or to change their behavior somehow. Hence, a poor person who previously ate beef every day has a number of options such as eating beef only on certain days of the week, eating a smaller portion of beef each day, or eating a less expensive kind of meat.

If we recognize that meat production has negative externalities, then to reduce these externalities we need to reduce meat production, which will necessarily reduce meat consumption. Above you seemed to be implying that the ideal solution would be cessation of meat production entirely - which I have to point out, would also result in poor people being unable to eat meat. So, are you defending the right of the poor to eat meat, or do you want to take the meat off their plates?

Really I assume that what you are getting at is economic fairness, which is not something I bothered mentioning because it didn't seem relevant to the point I was making. But anyway - pigouvian tax schemes are often paired with social benefits. The government uses the taxes raised to either facilitate the social change it wants to create (eg, using a carbon tax to fund transit improvements) or returns the funds to citizens directly as a dividend which offsets the cost of the increased price of goods (in this case, there would be a break even point somewhere around lower middle class where the dividend recieved would be greater than the increased price of meat).

Again, price "incentives" are just a ban for poor people. A poor person who can't afford beef is banned from eating it. It's basically illegal with extra steps, because they can't afford to buy it and the only alternatives are illegal.

If we're going to ban meat we should apply the ban equally and fairly, instead of just banning poor people.

"Just because they're poor doesn't mean they shouldn't get the option to contribute to the suffering caused by the meat industry" is the weirdest take I have ever seen on this subject. I'm not sure I disagree, just, I think your priorities may need some examination.

The exact opposite - just because they're rich doesn't mean they should get the privilege of eating meat.

If we're going to ban meat for poor people then we have to ban it for rich people too.

No I know what you meant - but this just seems like a "have cake / eat cake" issue. For example: you may have noticed that there are far more poor people than there are rich people. If the goal is to minimize animal suffering and reduce the impact on the climate, banning poor people from eating meat would be a great way to do it.

I just don't think there's a feasible way to rapidly reduce meat consumption without creating an incidental luxury market, and being concerned about that is (to my mind) almost a parody of equality. Yes, the rich suck. But being forced to tailor a good solution to the incredibly pressing problem just to make sure the rich don't get to exercise the incredibly vast, nearly all-encompassing privilege they already luxuriate in is an unreasonably large burden to attach to an already almost insurmountable task.

There are far more poor people than there are rich people, which is why food prices are common precursors to riots and coups. The idea isn't feasible because the poor will notice when they are forced to eat beans and rice, while their masters get to have steak. Unfairness breeds resentment. If you want to destabilize society a good way to do it is to make food access even more unequal.

This is ignoring what they actually said, which is a great deal more nuanced than the perhaps overly reductive way you're presenting it here. They very explicitly address setting these rates to reduce meat consumption in low income brackets, not prevent it entirely, presumably with the intention of adjusting those rates to see a steady reduction of meat's share of the average diet without causing undue hardship as people transition to a plant based diet.

Again I do understand what you're saying, I just think it's a bit of an absurd thing to earnestly argue. Every solution does not need to address every issue in society - inequality can be addressed independently and the more pressing concern is reducing the harm done to both animals and the climate. Theirs is a good solution - it is not perhaps ideal, but it is more feasible than any other proposal I've yet seen.

(aside from all that, the argument that their plan might be the inciting incident that sparks a broad proletarian upheaval of society is a really poor argument if you're trying to convince me we shouldn't do this...)

When meat becomes unaffordable, it's banned for the poor. A partial ban is still a ban, if they're forced to only have meat once or twice a week that will still create resentment - but it wouldn't be a proletarian revolution. It'd be a reactionary counterrevolution, with Nazis (backed by ranchers and meat industry money) screaming "LOOK AT WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU!!!1" as they march vegans like me into gas chambers.

as they march vegans like me into gas chambers.

Okay, I think this has gone beyond the point of where it needs to be treated with any degree of seriousness. I've never encountered a vegan that was more concerned with the social inequality of the poor not being allowed to eat meat than they were with people eating meat at all before, so congrats this has been a unique experience.

I'm slightly exaggerating, but it would absolutely empower reactionary conspiracy theories and give them ammunition to draw disaffected poor whites into their echo chambers. There's already a persistent conspiracy theory that the (((global elites))) are conspiring to stop white people from eating meat (to make them weaker and less masculine) and this would just empower them.

Food prices are the #1 way governments collapse. You can't just price poor people out of eating meat and expect it to work. They'll hate you for it. They'll want revenge. It would be a coup lead by the military, or a counterrevolution lead by businesses/ranchers.

I’m slightly exaggerating, but it would absolutely empower reactionary conspiracy theories and give them ammunition to draw disaffected poor whites into their echo chambers. There’s already a persistent conspiracy theory that the (((global elites))) are conspiring to stop white people from eating meat (to make them weaker and less masculine) and this would just empower them.

I fail to see how your counterproposal to outright ban meat would not lead to this same scenario (probably faster).

Also, you're ignoring the option to provide a divedend (monthly, if you like) to citizens from the tax revenue to offset increased meat prices. With the dividend, the poor would be largely unaffected, and mostly the result would be the middle class reducing their meat consumption from excessive to moderate.

Also also, you keep talking about how this scheme bans poor people from eating meat. But I have to say, this reminds me of the criticism that gas taxes hurt poor people since now they have to pay more for gas - ignoring the fact that many poor people simply don't drive cars, because they are too poor to afford them. And so a gas tax spent on improving transit ends up helping the poorest, because what people need is transportation, not cheap gas.

Also also also, if this sort of scheme were ever implemented, I highly doubt it would result in widespread food riots like you see in a developing nation when they are literally starving in the streets. Worst case, it would result in the people who implemented it being voted out of office and having the policy rolled back. And with a dividend program and a gradual pricing rollout, this would be even less likely.

Meatless Mondays happened. It's definitely possible to ration meat.

Now, see my other reply to you for why I think rebates are workable, but complicated.

Meatless Mondays happened. It’s definitely possible to ration meat.

Confused. I remember this being a volutary phenomenon with individual participation. Maybe a few university cafeterias participated. Not a government mandate for no meat sales on Mondays.

It was more voluntary during WW1.

In WW2 there was an explicit food rationing program, and though there were voluntary elements the Red Stamp program allotted a certain number of points for meats/fat/butter. Each person was allowed a certain amount of points weekly in the form of war ration stamps, and the points expired if they weren't used. This was done not only to help feed the war effort, but also to prevent the riots that would have happened if meat became too expensive for poor people to eat.

WWII rationing wasn't meatless mondays, I don't... buddy.

Whelp, I made a mistake, now nothing I say matters and you automatically win the conversation.

Come on. my point still stands even if I misremembered the exact name of the program. Rationing works, when it's fair.

Why not just own the mistake, instead of presenting a totally separate concept as though you were correct in the first place? That would be fine, we all screw up. Getting hostile when someone gets exasperated because you're trying to cover for a mistake in a clunky way is the opposite of productive.

(edit: You've edited your comment since I wrote this to include the second line. No, the two are extremely different programs that are not at all comparable and your meaning changes completely when moving between the two.)

Why not just point out that I made a mistake, instead of making-

I don’t… buddy.

-snide comments like that? It was clearly meant to humiliate me for making a mistake.

You mocked me, so I got hostile.

No that was meant to criticize your behavior. If you want to be treated with respect, reciprocate in kind. Seriously, that was an insulting thing for you to have done in the first place. People were engaging with you more or less from an assumption that you were serious, even though what you're saying is pretty absurd - but you're not going to give them credit for being sincere with you, and now you're trying to present like I did a bad thing?

Buddy.

So we can't do vegan social policies because the... white supremacists might use that as evidence of a secret jewish conspiracy to stop them eating meat in order to make them less manly.

And that's your real concern.

We can't make it illegal for poor people specifically to eat meat because they'll be recruited by fascists to overthrow the government. A ban has to be all or nothing, or it will create resentment.

okay, nobody has proposed that as a solution. Also that's... insane.

Making meat too expensive for the poor does, in fact, ban poor people specifically from eating meat.

... Is this a prank? Am I taking the bait? What is happening.

  1. If meat is too expensive for someone to buy, then they can't buy it.

  2. If someone tries to eat meat they didn't pay for, they get arrested.

  3. Therefore, making meat too expensive for the poor is a ban with extra steps.

What part of this do you disagree with?

Once again that's overly reductive to the point that it's completely departed from anything resembling the topic as presented by everyone else. And I'm still confused about how the hypothetical jewish conspiracy fits into this.

The topic, as presented, was to make meat more expensive so people ate less. I say that's effectively a ban on poor people eating meat. I don't really know what part you disagree with, why you disagree with it, or how you think poor people would be able to eat meat they can't afford. You're going to need to clarify even a tiny little bit or else I don't know how I can even talk to you.

And I’m still confused about how the hypothetical jewish conspiracy fits into this.

There's an active conspiracy that global elites want to take away real meat and make everyone eat lab grown meat. Ranchers and business owners in the meat industry are especially fond of spreading these conspiracies to lobby for bans on ban lab grown meat.

there would be a break even point somewhere around lower middle class where the dividend recieved would be greater than the increased price of meat

A dividend that presumably pays out during tax returns at the end of the year (anything else would end up overly complicated) is a pipe dream for people living paycheck-to-paycheck, it's still effectively a ban for people too poor to afford the price hikes. They can't afford to pay a higher price now and then get a rebate later, they're just going to be priced out of eating meat entirely.

It doesnt seem that complicated. The government gave people free money during covid just fine. Could be a monthly dividend

Do remember "paycheck-to-paycheck" is a reality for millions and millions of workers. It would need to be a weekly dividend, either directly added to everyone's paychecks or direct deposit or just mailed directly. That didn't happen during COVID, it'd be novel.

Then it has other problems: that pool of money is vulnerable to things like government shutdowns, every landlord would raise their rent by the exact amount that the meat rebate pays out, and every grocery store would raise the prices of meat alternatives since the demand would increase. You'd need price controls, rent controls, and fund the meat rebate in a way that couldn't just be taken away.

I don't hate it, but it's more complicated than you're giving credit. If the payout was weekly (and the other concerns were dealt with) it'd effectively be a way to pay people to not eat meat, rather than a way to ban poor people from eating meat. If you didn't deal with those other problems, especially rent and prices, then it would still effectively be a ban on poor people eating meat because the only way they could afford their higher rents and higher prices is if they saved their meat rebate checks. Like I said, complicated.

It would need to be a weekly dividend,

I've only ever been paid monthly or bimonthly, ut whatever. This is a nuts and bolts issue, and doesnt impact the actual concept.

government shutdowns,

Don't do that. No other country does that.

landlord

Fun fact - land value taxes are even better for prompting markets to build additional housing! I also have a whole spiel on urban land use reform, but that's for another time.

every grocery store would raise the prices of meat alternatives

Under reasonable market conditions, yes, there might be a brief price increase when the policy went into effect - especially if rollout were not handled appropriately. But the nice thing about markets is that high prices prompt more competition - if veggie burgers cost $0.15 to make and sell for $15 because there is a shortage, it won't be long before competitors enter the market and flood it with cheaper alternatives.

Under reasonable market conditions. I'm aware that there is some reasonable suspicion of price collusion happeing between national grocery suppliers, and that should be dealt with. But it should be dealt with regardless of the policy I'm proposing.

price controls, rent controls,

Absolutely not. This would be taking a sound economic policy and then blowing up the economy with objectively bad economic policy. Markets only work when prices can change in response to market conditions. If you have a shortage of something like housing or veggie burgers which is distorting the market, you want to incentivize the creation of more of it (while identifying and elimiating - within reason - barriers to production). Price controls do the opposite, worsening shortages. You want high prices to bring more sellers to the market

it’s more complicated

I mean, this is true of everything, is it not?

Price controls and rent controls can also be accompanied by state intervention in the supply side, to prevent shortages. High prices are effectively a ban on the poor having access, and besides, markets are so 20th century. We have the computing power now to entirely replace them with central planning. Let's use those data centers for something important, instead of generating slop.

What's the argument for having equality of outcome? I don't think I've ever encountered anyone in support of this before.

I covered this in my other replies, but there's two elements at play.

The first is that unequal access to food will create resentment, as poor people are forced to cut back or seek alternatives while rich people are unaffected. Resentment leads to resistance, and before you know it you have food riots. People will fight back, and maybe violently, which leads to the second element: high food prices are one of the major causes for government collapse.

Messing with access to food is the best way to get people to revolt, but in the absence of a revolutionary movement they're just going to listen to whichever charismatic leader blames the (((NWO globalist agenda))) for taking away meat and uses the nostalgia of "LOOK AT WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU" to whip people into a violent frenzy. If you take away their meat, they'll eat you.

It has to be fair or it won't be sustainable.

Would you think, "I really enjoy sex with kids," is a convincing position to take?

I have a genuine question for you. Is your morality “might is right” or something more sophisticated? I don’t mean any offense. Just curious.

Tacking "no offense" and "genuine question" onto what is essentially "Hey is your moral view the most basic possible description of authoritarianism or are you smarter than that?" really doesn't help it not be offensive or make you sound genuine. If you're sincere in those statements, I really suggest you rephrase this because right now it reads as extremely patronizing.

Fuck dude, wake up. That's two different people you are talking to sealioning as though they are one.

edit: reevaluated the thread.

Passive aggressive ad hominem.

Either engage directly with the portion of the argument you take issue with, or ask for clarification regarding the comment.

Okay, do you have a more polite way to ask “are you aware that you’re a nihilist?” I was genuinely curious!

Anyway, he said he’s a rule utilitarian. So, the answer is “no.”

Isolate the nihilistic portions of text, quote them, explain why they are nihilistic to all the thread readers and the OP.

Then inquire if the person you're confronting stands by that or has a different take in it.

Or, be rude and make it more reddit-like.

If your interest is legitimate, then I can explain.

Racism, speciesism, etc. represent contradictions, and formal systems are vulnerable to the principle of explosion (ex falso quadlibet). Basically, if a contradiction is true then anything is true. That’s what makes bigotry “wrong” in the formal sense (ethics is epistemically very similar to mathematics, but that’s another story). All bigots are obligate nihilists. OP is a speciesist. Ergo, he is an obligate nihilist.

Anyway, ethics is highly abstract, like math, and using guesswork to reach moral conclusions is generally ineffective. It’s why we had slavery for 10,000 years and Donald Trump is currently in office. There are lots of reasons why people suck at ethics, but it’s mainly lack of education. We get 12 years to study math in school (and even then most people suck at math) compared to 0 years for ethics.

Thank you. Not really demanding to point out that it's not a private DM and we aren't mind readers.

All bigots are obligate nihilists. OP is a speciesist. Ergo, he is an obligate nihilist.

you are making that up

I mean, it sounds like you've studied the philosophy more than I have. I did a bit of reading into it in my teen and college years, and got frustrated by the fact that every time I found an argument that seemed like the answer, another argument would come along and undermine it. There is a saying in philosophy, something like "it's not about getting answers, it's about asking the questions." And once I figured that out, I mostly lost interest, because I wanted answers, dammit.

The answers I came up with were that:

  1. As an average individual, just don't be a dick. You have an intrinsic internal moral compass that will point you more or less in the right direction. You aren't the type to go on a murdering spree, and you don't have the power to have any real impact on other peoples lives. So chill out, be nice to people, and go actually live your life rather than studying moral philosophy.

  2. People or institutions with significant amounts of power should actually think about the impact their actions and policies will have. You are not one of these, so your opinion doesnt really matter - but it is fun to pontificate anyway!

represent contradictions,

In my experience, trying to live without contradictions ends up being quite onerous. To actually get anything done in life, at a certain point you need to accept the fact that you are human and have contradictions, shrug, say "fuck it", and just start doing something.

obligate nihilists

I had to look up what this is, and it seems like you're saying I'm a moral relativist. Which... yes. I am. And it seems really obvious that this is true. At the end of the day, I have my own intuitive sense of ethics, others have theirs, and we mostly agree, and so we live in relative harmony. If there were greater disagreements, there might be less harmony - but I have yet to run into many people with whom my ethics didn't harmonize on a day to day basis (and those who did, I simply stopped spending time with), and so it isnt something I really need to delve deeply into.

It’s why we had slavery for 10,000 years and Donald Trump is currently in office. There are lots of reasons why people suck at ethics, but it’s mainly lack of education

There is some psychological bias that is at play here that I can't remember the name of. But it is basically the fact that intelligent and educated people are no better than dumb and uneducated people at arriving at true conclusions to emotionally charged questions. The dumb person will say "well I like it, so fuck you". But the intelligent person will use their superior intellectual ability to construct complex, abstract justifications for their preexisting beliefs and say "and therefore I'm right, so fuck you."

Anyway, I feel like this effect is at play right now, because you clearly care a lot about philosophy. But the idea that more ethics education would lead more people to making more ethical descisions is laughable. My bet is that the main result would be more internally consistent logic in the loonies' manifestos. Sure, maybe Kant derived the ethics of each of his daily actions from first principles - but also, Kant never got laid, so you've got a uphill battle trying to sell that way of life to the average person. People - including educated people - make most of their daily descisions based on practical considerations - often subconsciously. The way to get people to behave more ethically is to change their environment and social group - not to put their noses in books.

No. I guess if I really had to peg my ethical system down, I would choose rule utilitarianism or something similar. But practically, I just try to be nice to people and to do what I feel is the right thing, which I know via what is revealed to me directly via a lifetime of emotional experiences after interacting with others and making various choices.

But I'm confused - why do you ask?

Well, some of your opinions made me think you were concerned with the suffering of animals (human and non), while others made me think you were not so concerned. This sort of juxtaposition is common, and it made me wonder about the way you see the world.

No, it doesn't.

The entire mid- and western US is largely unable to grow crops - "this land was made for the buffalo, and hates the plow".

See Bowl, Dust.

To make it grow crops, we've been pumping out a massive aquifer since the early 20th century. Subsidence caused by this is a major concern, in addition to the aquifer not refilling as fast as we use it.

In the western portions of CO, basically all of Wyoming, NM, Arizona (arid places), crops simply can't grow at any significant level - but that land can grow crops for grazing animals, especially cows. Sheep and goats destroy such grazing land, which explains the conflict between cattlemen and sheepherders in the 19th century.

Really the entire breadbasket is naturally suited to cows, not crops, as it supported millions of bison.

You should probably read more before pontificating.

Yes, but you omitted all the croplands we use for feeding non-human animals.

Poore and Nemecek estimate that 50% of croplands are used for human food, 38% is for livestock feed and 12% is for non-food uses.

https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture

Also, if our goal is to find the truth in all of this, why be mean?

They didn't really omit that as an oversight, it's just not relevant to their thesis - agricultural land used for animal feed is not super relevant to the disparity in land utilization, as 80% of all agricultural land usage is pasture/grazing. Only 7% of agricultural land is used for growing animal feed.

Agreed about being a little mean though, although I do sympathize with being frustrated about this as AG land use is a very often misunderstood statistic.

poore and nemecek did some sloppy work in that 2018 paper, and it's conclusions should not be believed

You raise some valid points, but I don’t see why it’s necessary to be so rude about it.

How is that rude

Stop farming animals, rewild the pastures, grow human food where animal feed was once grown.

This is true, but personally, I vote that instead of cows we reintroduce the buffalo. Let the herds roam free across the land. Allow people to hunt the buffalo for food if they want - but you must use a bow or blackpowder rifle, and can only mount a horse or a bicycle.

A death from arrow wounds is absolutely agonizing, especially for a creature as large as a buffalo - it's awful that we still allow it. But black powder is much more humane (relatively), and many states have black powder seasons - including several for buffalo. Though if we're allowing black powder, we really should just let people use proper hunting rounds to minimize the suffering of the animal.

Black powder isn't as humane a round if something goes wrong. Way better to hunt with a semi-auto, just in case you need a quick follow up shot.

A person concerned about being humane doesn't murder vulnerable individuals in the first place.

Uhh what? I'm assuming you're some militant vegan... people eat meat, that's not going to stop ever.

assuming you're some militant vegan

it's worse than that: they're an evangelical vegan

He's right

I lack a magic wand, I can't suddenly stop people from killing altogether. Meat consumption is down, though, and hopefully will continue to fall until it's a practice we stop as a culture. In the short term though, we should at least try to make sure those pointless deaths come with as little suffering as possible - people are souring to the cruelty of bowhunting, and that is at least a start.

I don't really understand how my capacity for language is relevant to that concept, but okay.

(Edit: the below user is a notorious troll (check their moderation history) and I refused to engage with their obvious sealioning after I provided a source that, yeah, absolutely does prove my claim - they got reaaaal butthurt about that, as evidenced by the whiny edit they tried to sneak into the next comment. Please do read, its quite funny.)

Meat consumption is down

what makes you think that?

edit: this user does not, in the course of this discussion, actually prove this claim. they do resort to trolling, and eventually they ignore a request to disengage. read it if you like, but nothing happens except they get more and more abusive.

Numbers, mostly. Meat consumption rose slightly in the US, plateaued across asia and has fallen heavily in europe, which are the only regions I have reliable data for (South America looks unchanged though I don't have a great source for that - I have no source for African or Oceania meat consumption rates)

can you cite this?

I can, is there some reason you're being quite so rude?

thanks for the reply

I didn't mean to be rude, but I thought short replies were the norm here.

I'm just skeptical.

I'm very much looking forward to your citations.

thank you!

This thread is averaging paragraph length responses, what could have given you the idea that short-form demands for citations on claims you could verify with a trivial web search was the norm here? That seems like total BS to cover for being called out over your habit of rather arrogant sealioning.

There's a great deal more data available which also supports my conclusions, I encourage you to engage with the subject matter directly in light of that.

your numbers are in per capita rates, but Asia is exploding in population, and still increasing in consumption per capita.

I don't think there is any reason to believe meat consumption is decreasing. it's probably increasing

For someone that spends this much time policing other people's claims, you're remarkably bad at interpreting data or the initial claims said person actually made.

you're remarkably bad at interpreting data

saying it doesn't make it true.

if I've said something wrong, you can explain it

There's a great deal more data available which also supports my conclusions, I encourage you to engage with the subject matter directly in light of that.

our exchanges, until now, have been solely on the subject matter. this aside belies an interest, on your part, in making the matter personal instead.

please, engage with the subject matter.

Would you mind consolidating your replies? This is going to get confusing. Also, no, I had already criticized your behavior prior to that comment.

I had already criticized your behavior prior to that comment.

where?

instead of criticizing my style, try to stick with the subject matter

It's like engaging with a bad-faith hydra - one of these is literally just a single word reply. If you can't even make your nonsense feasible to engage with why should I extend you the courtesy of treating you as anything other than the poor troll you're behaving like?

You've misunderstood my initial claims and/or the data, which are both abundantly clear - and on top of that you've spent this whole time acting like a jerk. I'm not going to reward this behavior.

this is just posturing and accusations. your evidence doesn't sufficiently support the claim you e made, and now you're making excuses not to present sufficient evidence. I strongly suspect you don't have it.

Lmfao I already provided evidence that 1:1 matches exactly what I said (because I based my initial claims off it), quit yer bullshit.

saying it doesn't make it true

It doesn't make it false, either. That's the nice thing about truth, it doesn't care what you think about it, it's just self-evident. Good grief you're really not very good at this.

anyone can read what you claimed, evaluate the supposed evidence you provided, and see it does not support your claim.

Well no, they can read the evidence and then draw their own conclusions. I'm not so arrogant as to try and speak for them, a moral burden you appear delightfully unencumbered by.

anyone who believes what you've presented supports your claim does not understand the claim or the evidence or both.

So now you're not only trying to speak for them, you're implying they're stupid? Bold move there buddy.

disengage

Wut? So you admit you can't... what, win on the merits of your argument? Was that your goal here? Well good, hopefully you choose not to be such a dick when engaging with people next time.

your habit of rather arrogant sealioning.

asking for sources for dubious claims isn't sealioning, but your accusation of bad faith is, itself, bad faith

That's not how bad faith engagement works, and my claims are not dubious, they're directly supported by the data.

not the data you've provided. do you have some more?

That's not how bad faith engagement works

for someone who purports to know, you are either lying, or out of your depth

Beefalo

What do you think the buffalo live on genius ?

Animal food use should be pulled back a lot. But let's also concentrate on how much of agriculture area is used for non-food.

I'd hazard a guess that is the point of the graphics considering the special markings highlighting the fact.

This chart is designed to push that agenda but the raw numbers disagree.

They are using some favorable math that excludes all the waste goes into human food products and including all of the waste in animal feed.

Humans throw away a vast majority of our calories, not just at the individual level but across the entire supply chain. It makes the numbers really easy to play with.

Anyone who focuses on beef is manipulating the data. Pork, poultry and dairy are far more efficient so it's left out. The price of each these things directly reflects this because it turns out global capitalism is actually really good at determine comparative values.

Pork and poultry might not use as much land as beef directly but they use a lot of land to grow animal feed. I don't think the chart focuses on beef, but beef might skew the land area chart for meat indeed.

You might not like "the agenda", but the truth is still that eating meat is an inefficient way to produce calories on a global level. On a small scale, it makes sense - animal farming often feeds off of human waste, contributes fertiliser, provides some extra calories in the winter. But at a global scale, what happens is whole countries are dedicated to producing animal feed and pastures. And if you remember the trofic levels from science class, you lose an order of magnitude of energy when you go up a level in the food chain.

Humans throw away food across the board. I don't understand how this is relevant to the point you're making.

Oh, and don't forget how much meat is subsidised in most countries. Capitalism loves to hide the real costs of the product.

If some of the land used for pastures and for growing animal feed were used to grow food directly for humans, and the rest were rewilded, human land use would be massively lower.

Ban animal farming. It’s as vile as genocide and quite similar to it, and it wastes lots of our resources and damages the environment.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk

💚

Land use would be lower if we reduced livestock, but likely not massively. Lots of grazing land isn't suitable for farming, letting it go wild would also require a massive effort to reintroduce natural grazing animals, which would likely need active management. There's also the fact most of our crops would need to change to optimize for human consumption, and humans aren't as efficient at consuming those calories as livestock. Even after transitioning crops there's going to be a significant amount that isn't processable by humans that would sustain some amount of livestock.

Land use would be lower if we reduced livestock, but likely not massively. Lots of grazing land isn’t suitable for farming, letting it go wild would also require a massive effort to reintroduce natural grazing animals, which would likely need active management.

16% of the current farmland gives us around 75% of our diets. That means we only need around 21% for a 100% plant based diet. This also means we can free up 75% of animal land. I sure we can easily find that 5% in that whole 80%, don't you think?

There’s also the fact most of our crops would need to change to optimize for human consumption, and humans aren’t as efficient at consuming those calories as livestock.

This is incorrect.

There's a few diseases and allergies though where this becomes a thing. But even in such cases meat can be avoided.

Even after transitioning crops there’s going to be a significant amount that isn’t processable by humans that would sustain some amount of livestock.

This could be an argument if it was forced overnight but that would never happen. Transitioning towards a plant based society is not something that can happen overnight and will definitely take time. Phasing it out happens naturally.

Rewild the grazing land and grow human food crops on the animal feed crop fields

Lots of grazing land isn’t suitable for farming,

Yeah no. Meat animals can only be raised on land which can grow crops.

The grazing land in Africa and the middle east is principally used for textiles like wool and cashmere.

grazing land is barely even a consideration in this calculation. Most of the land use of animal agriculture is for growing their feed, such as soy, corn, alfalfa

that's not true. grazing land is the majority of the land use in animal agriculture

Thanks for ignoring all the nuances of marginal land management, tell me more about how you have no experience in the sector? Jesus people from the states think they know fucking everything

German here, please go ahead and explain how animal farming isn't the worst shit.

It can make use of marginal land, otherwise unusable for producing food, to produce food. Yknow, the stuff we eat? To stay alive? I personally think the worst shit is cage farming, which is what I’m guessing comes to mind for you?

While technically true, the majority of animal farming is "factory farming" such as chickens and all cattle that is finished on grain.

I live in New Zealand, where ‘farming’ means a very different thing to me than it does you. Sorry we won’t see eye to eye on this.

that's nice for the miniscule fraction of meat that comes from such farming, cool misdirect though

Maybe if you mean factory farming when you say farming, you should clarify that when you say ‘we should stop all farming’ because responsible farming is completely possible, you just don’t want to admit it

Oh I think we should stop all animal farming too, because it is reprehensible. And so-called "responsible farming" is not nearly possible at a scale to meet humanity's demand for meat. It could only be a luxury for the wealthy, which I would also object to.

TIL rural Vietnam is wealthy

No no, you tell us more. Go ahead. We'd love to be enlightened.

I am not from the US

Weird to include textile farming with meats. Sure wool is a textile, but so is cotton, flax, wood fibre, jute, hemp etc.

It would have made more sense to divide agriculture into food agriculture and non-food agriculture. And then go into calorie supply.

i think the reason for that might be that some native communities actually use the same animal for multiple products, i.e. using sheep for their wool but also for their meat.

Not just native cultures. Very little of any animal goes to waste, from food to clothes to compost. If capitalism is good for anything, it's finding value in every part.

Well done for mentioning hemp. Hemp's actually a great example confounding the over-simplified division, being great for both food production and non-food production, like sheep too (for wool and meat). Efficient use would not be wasting anything from any production, further confounding the over-simplified division. Capitalist big industry has a bad habit of not doing that kind of efficiency though.

There is a "non-food crops" slice in the agricultural land part which seems to do exactly this though.

You can see this very clearly flying almost anywhere. It's most obvious in places like the Midwest US, but even between cities in more densely populated regions, there's so much farmland. Islands of concrete in oceans of ordered crop fields.

I mean growing food is pretty damn important. Obviously we could be way more efficient about it though.

Yes, when 80% of agriculture goes to feeding the food (animals) we choose to eat, which is a terrible idea but also delicious, and most humans are only slightly smarter than farm animals anyway so can you blame us? (Yes, you can.)

We so much more plant food than we could ever possibly eat. This isn't about food, this is about money. Farmers take cheap, pleniful, safe plant food, and use the bodies of intelligent creatures to refine it into a scarce, harmful luxury product.

People will say this is vegan propaganda

this is vegan propaganda

people, come on man

It was the obvious joke reply. True or not, works either way. [Edit: and works either way as to whether replying to the original post or that reply.]

it certainly is, it's just that vegan propaganda is nearly always true

all the best propaganda is true.

Right you are. Or, rather, left you are.

Considering there is missing data, it is.

What fucking data do you think exists that changes this message. Seriously, even if it is off by a ridiculous factor, it still doesn't change anything. You're looking for any excuse.

Well, there could be way more sheep and goats than we think there is (since they include textiles in the livestock category).

Why are lakes, rivers, and coastal water bodies under habitable land?

Because they are habitable? You can build on them, or use boats and such to live on them.

But if we count boats, then a large part of the oceans should count as habitable as well.

Maybe whoever made this didn't consider them as land?

Edit: Although they only specify "Oceans" for the area of water, which excludes the mentioned other bodies of water. Idk...

The big takeaway for me is that maybe we should cut down on animal protein and have more plant protein in our diets.

We feed livestock almost as much plant food as we do ourselves (6m2 km vs 8m2 km). Not to mention the space taken up for grazing uses most of our agricultural land.

This does not even seem close to the truth. Just a gut feeling though, not proof of anything.

It does seem to be missing mining/quary land, logging operations, oil fields, non-urban infrastructure (like highways), and parkland that kinda straddles human and wild land.

Not sure any of those other than the parks would add up to over 1%, though.

Around where I am, I could believe it, though. Outside of the cities, there's many areas where you just see farm fields split up by roads and power lines from horizon to horizon.

It's close, I worked on a paper pretty much doing exactly this a while back and we had included all of this, metal and oil extraction, all roads, railways, even golf courses on top of your housing. We were at 1.2% of world's land usage. So I'm sure whatever they got is sensible.

Logging might be missing, but in our data logging was part of forests. So it ties in that regard.

Most unsustainable “logging land” is basically turned into grazing land. Brazil and the cut rainforests are a great example. But logging can be quite sustainable too: with some caveats, that can basically count as forest.

Oil fields are tiny, and share lands with other projects. See: west Texas, with cattle and windmills on the same land as the wells.

Parkland is often more “wild” than actual wild. Especially nature reserves.

IDK about highway statistics, but they really don’t take up a lot of physical land. Though their effect of dividing wilds is certainly understated in the graph.

IDK about mining either, but also it doesn’t seem like this would take up a ton of land. It’s really concentrated by necessity, and the worst environmental effects are usually related to pollutants or other knock-on effects.

The one fishy thing to me is grazing land. In places like Africa, there are lots of tribes and other low tech herders, and if you walk around, it really feels like their unfenced areas straddle the line between wilds and grazing lands. It’s nothing like (say) west Texas with vast fields of clearly dedicated grazing land.

And of that, 70% is used to host or feed animals. The waste is insane.

I really hate the political meme of “they’re taking away our meat!” It’s been drummed up pre-emptively, before these sorts of illustrations can possibly take hold.

I saw this great documentary about a US Deep South native, a fried chicken lover, a CEO as white and conservative as you can get on a mission to develop the best plant-based chicken on Earth. This nut has frycooks in kitchens constantly testing it. And his pitch is awesome: it already tastes better, and if he could scale up, it’s cheaper, too. But anticompetitiveness in the global livestock industry, and PR smear campaigns, are apparently near insurmountable obstacles.

…I hate all that.

Truth doesn’t matter. Neither does practicality. It’s like we’re living in a cyberpunk novel already.

I'd argue that many of the forests account as "area that is used by humans" too. At least when they are reguarly cut down for wood.

Imagine how much more forest we could preserve if we were fully free (or even, like days of old, fully encouraged, even insisted, and even demanded) to grow hemp. In many ways multiple times more efficient than trees.

Just a reminder that the peaty lands or vast tundras that are only suitable for grazing sheep and goats, or horses are likely also included into these statistics.

If you want to have a more visual perspective, you can check this brazilian project that tracks land cover in Brazil:
https://plataforma.brasil.mapbiomas.org/coverage/coverage_lclu

All in yellow is pasture, and in pink, cropland. The site also allows to see change over the years

14% barren land seems low to me.

essentially all deserts

basically all areas that are bright yellow on this map :)

That's what I mean. 14% seems low just from eyeballing it. I guess if people live there, no matter how few, it gets counted as 'habitable'. It always blows my mind when you zoom in on some of the most inhospitable places on Earth, you'll still see little pockets of humanity eking out an existence there.

I guess if people live there, no matter how few, it gets counted as ‘habitable’.

My guess is

  • barren land = little water. there's probably a maximum amount of precipitation it must have a year.
  • glaciers = no energy. there's probably an upper limit on average yearly temperature or sth
  • habitable land = has both water and sunlight (literally anything plants need to thrive)

High elevation land in the Himalayas and South America is unusable. Also land in the arctic zone in Europe and North America.

Deserts are not actually barren.

I believe It's close, I worked on a paper about a decade ago, and our numbers were not too dissimilar, actually it's ridiculous how similar they are. We went with the most extensive data hunt on land usage. We had non-arable land at 14.7%, which rounded up to 15% in our summary. We got multiple sources for global precipitation levels. We got registries from US, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Canada, Australia, etc totalling 65 countries, we extrapolated the rest, our extrapolation was actually 70% of the paper. We back tallied registry numbers with global weather data.

Forests are not used by humans?