Cattle are inefficient consumers of grain, but highly efficient consumers of grass. Most land used for pasture can't effectively be used for anything else.

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hombre_fatal 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This argument might sound good, but those cattle are fed crops, not just sunshine and the grass they walk on.

Most crops grown in the US are used as animal feed. They are dependent on arable land that could be used to grow food for humans directly and much more efficiently. We just like the taste, so we accept the inefficiency.

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hunter-gatherer 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Eh. The "inefficent calorie conversion" take is sort of lazy and misses the nuances. I just looked it uo, and it seems that only about 55% of yields are for feed, and there is definitely some more nuance there, since a lot of feed meal comes from stalks and parts if the plants humans would not consume. This notion of calorie inefficiency also misses the mark on what would be planted and harvested instead to contain the same bioavailable nutrient profile thay comes from meat. In otber words, using land for feed to convert grains to another type of food is probably more necessary than just "taste".

I don't care to research it further, but I own a small 5 acre farm and can attest that some crops grow in some areas and some don't. So even if you did map it all out on a piece of paper where you'd get all your beans and lentils and whatnots I doubt it would work in real life. Cattle can handle a couple hard freezes. My tomatoes can't.

	▲	bruce511 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There is, as you say a lot of nuance here. Making cattle go away doesn't suddenly make say 55% more wheat suddenly appear on market shelves. Indeed the argument to remove beef production has always struck me as an interesting starting point to a longer conversation. So ok, cattle are gone, and there's now say 30% more grain on the market. Presumably this lowers prices to humans? Do people suddenly eat 30% more bread? Health, and weight, issues aside (not sure an increase in carbs at the expense of protein is a win), do people just shift to other protein (like chicken). Does this mean a huge oversupply of grain, and a consequent drop in prices? Let me put it another way. Does removing a market currently consuming 30-50% of the crop make things better or worse for farmers? IMO Having livestock feed as a market keeps prices up, and as this article points out they're still too low. Killing off the cattle market kills off grain farmers too. I'm not sure that's the win people think it is.

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ericd 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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mapt 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We feed the average cow >10lbs of grain and also some alfalfa for every pound of meat we get out right now.

Part of the cull would likely be shifting towards more grass fed production. Another part would simply be prioritizing chicken or pork for a while.