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.
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.
Okay, but can we stop using suitable farmland to grow corn cattle feed?
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
I’m wholly in support of this plan.
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.
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.
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.
Allies? Lol.
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.
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
Or go a step further and stop doing animal farming.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
Fuck dude, wake up. That’s two different people you are
talking tosealioning as though they are one.edit: reevaluated the thread.
deleted by creator
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.
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:
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
you are making that up
Thank you. Not really demanding to point out that it’s not a private DM and we aren’t mind readers.
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.
Stop farming animals, rewild the pastures, grow human food where animal feed was once grown.
Yes, but you omitted all the croplands we use for feeding non-human animals.
https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
Also, if our goal is to find the truth in all of this, why be mean?
poore and nemecek did some sloppy work in that 2018 paper, and it’s conclusions should not be believed
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.
You raise some valid points, but I don’t see why it’s necessary to be so rude about it.
How is that rude
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.
deleted by creator
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.
what makes you think that?
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?
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.
He’s right
Uhh what? I’m assuming you’re some militant vegan… people eat meat, that’s not going to stop ever.
it’s worse than that: they’re an evangelical vegan
Beefalo
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.