Livestock Feed Efficiency

That depends entirely on what the cattle are being fed. If they are grazing pasture that cannot be planted in row crops (e.g. too hilly, too gravelly), or if they are eating the waste products of other food production (e.g. corn stalk silage), then they are eating calories that would never have been available for human consumption.

Turning 10 calories of corn into 1 calorie of beef is not the way to save the planet. A large fraction of corn and soybeans are fed to animals. If you want to talk about non-food usage, that's a different issue.

Crop land is more intensive than grassland. To grow crops today profitably, you have to use synthetic fertilizer and pesticides. So cows for example largely eat grass. They also get some hay and some silage (which is made from the stalks of corn, inedible for humans). Even soy beans, which are used to feed pigs and chickens, only about 20% of the bean is useful for human consumption so they already extract that (soybean oil) and use it in many products. The rest is used for meal, and fed to live

The problem as I understand it is that while cattle are often raised in such places - grazing on open grass plains which could not support other crops - they are usually transferred to feedlots later in their life, where a significant portion of the nutrients used to support them come from corn, soy, etc, which do come from croplands.So in our current system it does appear that cattle, even if they occupy some grassland space which could not be more efficiently used, do inevitably use resourc

It is quite simply objectively false.However, there are some factors that need to be taken into account. Farmland and crops that can be used for grazing are not necessarily capable of producing anything fit for human consumption. Livestock can eat cellulose-heavy plants (grasses and shrubs and so on) and convert them to meat and milk, which we can then eat.The biggest problem then turns out to be cattle. We are eating way too much of it, it's an ineffective process and needlessly reso

I think there is a big difference between intensive animal farming (growing animal feed like corn and soy to then grow animals with) and letting animals graze on natural grassland. For example grazing works in non-arable land (eg hills / mountains / rocky areas) and is therefore (I'm guessing) a more efficient form of food production for these areas than whatever else could be done there. On the other hand, growing plants on farms specifically to feed livestock, probably not very

Once again, you are trying to compare units which are not fungible.There is more land on which you can make meat than land on which you can make plants. Animals can graze on non-arable scrubland, grassland, etc.Growing staple crops is harder on the land than raising animals. Staple crops deplete soil nitrogen and other nutrients.Raising crops typically requires massive importation of fertilizer from petrochemical plants, whereas cattle grazing (for example) does not require significant

The vast majority of agricultural land today are for feeding animals (between 70% and 80% depending of the studies). The end product meat is maybe more efficient, but compared to what was needed for its production it is not. It’s not humans that eat that much monocultured corn and soy.

What you are missing is that a lot of land is used to grow feed for animals too.Grazing systems supply about 9 percent of the world's production of beef, the rest are crop fed in addition!

Many of the crops are grown to feed to animals which will then be used for meat. A lot fewer crops would be needed if people didn't eat meat.