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> unless they are burning down Given that meat production accounts for >15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, this is literally what is happening. > There i

> unless they are burning down Given that meat production accounts for >15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, this is literally what is happening. > There isn't enough soybean grown and distributed around the world for that to happen. Excuse me, where do you think all the calories we feed livestock comes from? Despite what greenwashing pictures on meat-packets try to tell people, we don't grow 80 Billion pieces of livestock anually by letting them graze peacefully on fresh green pastures in wide open plains. Instead we waste truly vast areas of land growing maize, soybean and grain, aka. foodstuffs that are completely fit for human consumption, which then get sold as feedstock, to go into one of the most nonsensical wastes of resources in history. Just as an example of how absurd this is: The energy efficiency for beef production is 25:1, meaning you need 25 calories of feedstock, to make 1 calorie worth of beef. And again, these are 25 calories of things humans could eat. For comparisons sake: The energy differential between LED and incandescant bulbs is merely 1:10. No one argues whether we should use LED or incadescant bulbs any more, but somehow for meat and it's much worse ratio this is still somehow up for discussion? So yes, we do absolutely produce enough calories from growing plants alone, to feed every single person on this planet. In fact we could feed many more people, and have way less problems, if we didn't waste mountains of maize, soybeans, grain and other valueable foodstuffs, by force-feeding them to animals.

asdff 3y ago
I don't think you'd be happy eating out of a bag of feed corn. they eat a little soybean for balancing the diet but they don't each much soybean as it affects their gut if they have too much. Still, that soybean has a long way to go before its a brick of tofu wrapped in plastic sitting on your grocery store shelf. There is a certain amount of manufacturing capacity that would need to be built out. You might not even want to put it where you have the existing feedlots and meatpacking industries because these are sited with the idea of moving livestock by rail from grazing lands to feed lots near marketplaces in mind.
- usrbinbash 3y ago
  > I don't think you'd be happy eating out of a bag of feed corn I am however, more than happy to eat any number of products that contain corn in various other forms. Because, you know, "feed corn" is just, well, corn, and instead of feeding it to animals, we can give it to humans instead. > Still, that soybean has a long way to go before its a brick of tofu wrapped in plastic sitting on your grocery store shelf. That cow has a long way to go before its a bag of meat on a grocery shelf as well. And that way wasted ALOT more energy and resources than the way my Tofu block does.
  - asdff 3y ago
    You are not wrong about the energy equation. But the facts are still we have an industrialized food supply that depends in no small part of meat consumption. Replacing that with non meat alternatives is not always possible for certain things but also expensive to retool and reoutfit. Supply chains take a long time to establish.
    - usrbinbash 3y ago
      > that depends in no small part of meat consumption. No, it really doesn't. It's a conscious decision of society that we produce, and consume, a lot of meat. As I have repeatedly demonstrated in this thread, a huge amount of the calories we put into the production of meat, come from human consumable foodstuffs. We have the production facilities to turn these grains and beans into flour, bread, tofu, canned beans, whatever. We do it every day, on an industrial scale. We could do so any time to these feedstocks as well. The technology exists, the facilities exist, the infrastructure exists, the supply chain exists.

asdff 3y ago

I don't think you'd be happy eating out of a bag of feed corn. they eat a little soybean for balancing the diet but they don't each much soybean as it affects their gut if they have too much. Still, that soybean has a long way to go before its a brick of tofu wrapped in plastic sitting on your grocery store shelf. There is a certain amount of manufacturing capacity that would need to be built out. You might not even want to put it where you have the existing feedlots and meatpacking industries because these are sited with the idea of moving livestock by rail from grazing lands to feed lots near marketplaces in mind.

usrbinbash 3y ago
> I don't think you'd be happy eating out of a bag of feed corn I am however, more than happy to eat any number of products that contain corn in various other forms. Because, you know, "feed corn" is just, well, corn, and instead of feeding it to animals, we can give it to humans instead. > Still, that soybean has a long way to go before its a brick of tofu wrapped in plastic sitting on your grocery store shelf. That cow has a long way to go before its a bag of meat on a grocery shelf as well. And that way wasted ALOT more energy and resources than the way my Tofu block does.
- asdff 3y ago
  You are not wrong about the energy equation. But the facts are still we have an industrialized food supply that depends in no small part of meat consumption. Replacing that with non meat alternatives is not always possible for certain things but also expensive to retool and reoutfit. Supply chains take a long time to establish.
  - usrbinbash 3y ago
    > that depends in no small part of meat consumption. No, it really doesn't. It's a conscious decision of society that we produce, and consume, a lot of meat. As I have repeatedly demonstrated in this thread, a huge amount of the calories we put into the production of meat, come from human consumable foodstuffs. We have the production facilities to turn these grains and beans into flour, bread, tofu, canned beans, whatever. We do it every day, on an industrial scale. We could do so any time to these feedstocks as well. The technology exists, the facilities exist, the infrastructure exists, the supply chain exists.