Depending on how we measure it, either 58% or 75% of that heavily subsidized soy goes to feed animals.

https://insideanimalag.org/share-of-soybean-crop-for-feed/

Have you been to the Midwest to observe the scale of corn and soybean operations? I would wager the number of calories per dollar subsidy produced by the corn and soybean industries outweighs handily the calories per dollar subsidy produced by cattle operations, especially given the 10% reduction in efficiency per trophic level.

Also, how much does beef benefit from cheap feed prices (corn and soy) due to subsidies as well?

You jabroni, what do you think they use that soybean and corn for? Exactly, to feed liveestock.

1. "protein" is a blanket term for a number of amino acids we need, and vegetable sources tend to miss a bunch of them.

2. atrocious calorie to protein ratio due to carbs. I imagine eating a pound (dry weight!) of any legume every day would get real old real fast.

3. phytoestrogens. not just soy, all legumes are full of them, even peanuts.

It’s not unique at all! When my dad was a kid in the 1950s, Singapore, China, South Korea, and Taiwan were poor—all under $1,000 GDP per capita. They were a little ahead of Bangladesh but less than a factor of 2. The U.S. at the time was around $10,000.

Today, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea are rich, and China is getting there. Multiple dirt poor Asian countries getting rich within a few generations thanks to One Simple Trick!

> Market reforms helped. But those reforms could not have happened unless the state did sensible things

The state did almost nothing sensible! Bangladesh’s government, and the culture of the people more generally, is one of the most dysfunctional in the whole world. We just overthrew our government again! The free market is just a hardy plant growing in inhospitable ground as long as you don’t completely strangle it.

We have A/B comparisons in India and Bangladesh keeping the underlying culture constant. Pakistan’s problem seems to be a Pakistan thing.

> You mean the Socialism that produces higher quality of life in Scandinavia as compared to to say the US where the oh so moral market decides if you weren't born into the upper end of society you deserve to die of disease and conditions that can be treated?

Scandinavian countries have highly market oriented economies. Denmark and Norway are in the top 10 in Heritage Foundation’s economic freedom index and Sweden is #11. Capitalism is what generates the surplus to feed the socialists in Scandinavia.

So you're good with artificially fucking the water supply?

In terms of the Amazon... that was done BY humans... the cattle didn't tear down any trees. In terms of aquifers in the US... if the cattle are naturally raised in grassland areas or areas where regeneration is a goal, then it's largely using water for the health of the land, not strictly the cattle.

MOST water used by cattle is rain water that would have fallen on the land with or without the cattle there.