Firstly, my general approach to this problem is to worry about it later, because obviously it’s not a problem at all in a world of 8 billion humans all wanting to eat meat every day.
But, since you seem to know what you’re talking about, what do you think would be the minimal amount of animals and land required to feed those 8 billion organically? Assumptions:
animal manure is absolutely required in the absence of synthetic fertilizer (if true, I did not know this, I assumed that a forest could renew itself without the help of fauna)
all 8 billion are willing in theory to go vegan
A rough picture of what that would look like? Lots of cereals and legumes and so on, plus a couple of chickens per hectare?
what do you think would be the minimal amount of animals and land required to feed those 8 billion organically
It’s a question complicated by the current “realities” of capitalism where, for example, people are willing to have their food grown in terrible conditions in another country and then imported over thousands of miles and many weeks to save a few percent on costs.
If we can ignore all that and I can just spell out what I think is the ideal scenario, it looks basically like this:
much less meat consumption overall, closer to 50 kg/person/year vs the current 124kg (wtf?) for Americans
instead of consolidation into huge monoculture operations, many much smaller but highly diversified farms - ideally you should never be more than a few miles from a farm. I include in this urban areas where we set aside land and rooftops for this purpose.
Land for farming should be free and granted to farmers for their long-term use.
All farms should be highly integrated so that any animal production there is happens in conjunction with vegetable production. You need more land for this so you can do things like rotate a field from sheep for a year to vegetables the next
All farms should be using agroecological practices with no artificial fertilizers, minimal tillage, etc.
Processed foods that rely on huge volumes of commodities like corn would not exist. Corn for ethanol? Probably not either.
Farms should leverage collective labor where possible and we should bring agricultural education into the mainstream AND work to remove the biases against farming that are so evident here.
Community composting efforts, including humanure, would help reduce the dependency on animals for fertility.
One of the things that makes this all viable is the higher nutritional density possible from shorter supply chains.
These are a lot of preconditions, I acknowledge.
If this can happen I believe we will require less land than we currently use for our combined animal & human food production. Currently that’s around 50% of the land area of the US, or 1.2 billion acres but this includes about 650 million acres for grazing and about the same for forest-use, which I believe means lumber production but could also mean grazing. Only about 400 million acres are used for growing crops and the majority of this is for commodities like soybeans and corn.
The best proxy for productivity is not actually yield of commodities but dollar value. This is because we want to equate as closely as possible productivity with nutrional value without the value-adds of say, processed foods. A typical acre for commodities might net you $150-300 per acre in profit while a typical acre on an integrated farm growing diverse produce (aka speciality crops) can yield over $25,000 per acre up to as much as double that. If you remove some of the headwinds from farmers like mortgages, competition with cheap imported produce, high marketing costs and high transportation costs you could probably see much more than that.
In this scenario food costs would very likely stay about the same or even go down because farmers can get very good margins and better economies of scale from higher demand.
So, back to the question of how much land - if you use the dollar amount and take $2 trillion as the figure we spend on food, and assuming margins around 30% that means revenue of $100k per acre. This would mean you’d need about 20,000,000 acres. Even assuming my napkin math is way off and it’s double or triple that… it’s a lot less.
Interesting. That certainly looks like a better world than the current one.
This model seems to be optimizing for a specific conception of human nutrition and wellbeing. Fair enough, that will definitely be an easier sell than veganism (if still extremely hard due to entrenched interests).
Personally (like many others here) I would prefer to go further still and optimize the model for biodiversity and animal wellbeing. 40% of current US meat consumption is still pretty high, seems it would be possible to cut that much more without conceding any ground on human nutrition. All of our nearest ape cousins are heavily (if not absolutely) vegan. That to me offers a pretty big clue about what’s possible and even advisable.
In this alternative model, I suspect the bottom line for the animal biomass necessary for manure would be above the bottom line for optimal human nutrition, and lower than the figure necessary to produce a kilo of meat per person per week. Especially if it involves lots of egg-laying manure-producing chickens instead of large grazing ruminants. Such a model would require less land still. And if there’s one thing even better for the environment than a best-practices agroecological farm with well-paid cooperative workers, it’s no farm at all and a forest in its place.
…optimize the model for biodiversity and animal wellbeing
It kind of deliberately doesn’t come across but, primarily from the standpoint of lessening our impact on the earth, I’d like to see no animals produced for food. It really isn’t strictly necessary for our nutrition but we’ve evolved and optimized for it’s consumption to the point where whole species exist only for that purpose, e.g. cows and chickens and so much culture has developed around it. That’s a lot of back tracking.
From the standpoint of their well-being… well, I can’t put humans on some pedestal and say we somehow aren’t part of the ecosystem here. We are animals too** and I think it’s ok to act like it. It’s just not ok to be the completely dominant species to the exclusion and extinction of others not least because it’s literally to our own determent.
So promoting biodiversity to me means living lighter on the land and working in conjunction with other species, plant and animal. For now it’s a compromise that maybe can put us in the direction of the ideal I tried to outline and beyond. There are lots of things that I have done that I think should be more common practice in farming, and many stem from quasi-permaculture principles. This isn’t just “don’t do monocultures” but more like “work with the land”. A good example is that allowing native plants to grow around and in the field - I leave large strips as pathways for beneficials. This one thing has been hugely successful and completely eliminated the need for any pesticides, ‘natural’ or otherwise. Along with mulching, greatly reduce water consumption.
The principal obstacle is all this is our food systems have been optimized for profit - not by farmers but by corporations and others who seek to “add value” through processing. In that less money goes to farmers and less nutrition to consumers. And this isn’t just because of the processing but also moving production away from nutritionally dense and tastier things to whatever ships and processes well both in terms of species and varieties. This means practices that make complete sense for regeneration, biodiversity and nutrition tend to be excluded in favor of more inequitable ‘profit’. Given that we view food as a human right that’s really messed up.
Edit: **I’m not saying that should justifying eating other animals. But I just don’t buy that we are somehow special mainly because it’s that thinking that got us into this mess in the first place. Like we don’t have to adhere to the rules or something.
It really isn’t strictly necessary for our nutrition but we’ve evolved and optimized for it’s consumption to the point where whole species exist only for that purpose, e.g. cows and chickens and so much culture has developed around it. That’s a lot of back tracking.
Sure but if Beyond Meat can make a delicious bit of fake cow or chicken with 1/10 of the land and water, then we have a drop-in replacement that requires no cultural change. As for the actual cows and chickens, personally I would have no problem letting them go extinct. Along with domestic dogs and cats (both of which I love) and indeed humans too, if necessary - but possibly this is getting offtopic! The point is that the objective should be a rich ecosystem without mass cruelty.
I leave large strips as pathways for beneficials.
Ah, now things become clearer - you’re an actual farmer! Well done for thinking so deeply about these questions.
Sure but if Beyond Meat can make a delicious bit of fake cow or chicken with 1/10 of the land and water, then we have a drop-in replacement that requires no cultural change
I mean, good point but… I really do think it requires a cultural change. I’m a big fan of Beyond Meat products yet so many people don’t view it the same way.
Alas, I have trouble believing their claims about land use and water even while I acknowledge it’s an improvement. And although they are not organic, I can guarantee that animal products are used in the production of their ingredients and that it would be difficult for them to source said ingredients otherwise. Now imagine they blow up and do 1000x the volume…
Firstly, my general approach to this problem is to worry about it later, because obviously it’s not a problem at all in a world of 8 billion humans all wanting to eat meat every day.
But, since you seem to know what you’re talking about, what do you think would be the minimal amount of animals and land required to feed those 8 billion organically? Assumptions:
A rough picture of what that would look like? Lots of cereals and legumes and so on, plus a couple of chickens per hectare?
It’s a question complicated by the current “realities” of capitalism where, for example, people are willing to have their food grown in terrible conditions in another country and then imported over thousands of miles and many weeks to save a few percent on costs.
If we can ignore all that and I can just spell out what I think is the ideal scenario, it looks basically like this:
These are a lot of preconditions, I acknowledge.
If this can happen I believe we will require less land than we currently use for our combined animal & human food production. Currently that’s around 50% of the land area of the US, or 1.2 billion acres but this includes about 650 million acres for grazing and about the same for forest-use, which I believe means lumber production but could also mean grazing. Only about 400 million acres are used for growing crops and the majority of this is for commodities like soybeans and corn.
The best proxy for productivity is not actually yield of commodities but dollar value. This is because we want to equate as closely as possible productivity with nutrional value without the value-adds of say, processed foods. A typical acre for commodities might net you $150-300 per acre in profit while a typical acre on an integrated farm growing diverse produce (aka speciality crops) can yield over $25,000 per acre up to as much as double that. If you remove some of the headwinds from farmers like mortgages, competition with cheap imported produce, high marketing costs and high transportation costs you could probably see much more than that.
In this scenario food costs would very likely stay about the same or even go down because farmers can get very good margins and better economies of scale from higher demand.
So, back to the question of how much land - if you use the dollar amount and take $2 trillion as the figure we spend on food, and assuming margins around 30% that means revenue of $100k per acre. This would mean you’d need about 20,000,000 acres. Even assuming my napkin math is way off and it’s double or triple that… it’s a lot less.
Interesting. That certainly looks like a better world than the current one.
This model seems to be optimizing for a specific conception of human nutrition and wellbeing. Fair enough, that will definitely be an easier sell than veganism (if still extremely hard due to entrenched interests).
Personally (like many others here) I would prefer to go further still and optimize the model for biodiversity and animal wellbeing. 40% of current US meat consumption is still pretty high, seems it would be possible to cut that much more without conceding any ground on human nutrition. All of our nearest ape cousins are heavily (if not absolutely) vegan. That to me offers a pretty big clue about what’s possible and even advisable.
In this alternative model, I suspect the bottom line for the animal biomass necessary for manure would be above the bottom line for optimal human nutrition, and lower than the figure necessary to produce a kilo of meat per person per week. Especially if it involves lots of egg-laying manure-producing chickens instead of large grazing ruminants. Such a model would require less land still. And if there’s one thing even better for the environment than a best-practices agroecological farm with well-paid cooperative workers, it’s no farm at all and a forest in its place.
It kind of deliberately doesn’t come across but, primarily from the standpoint of lessening our impact on the earth, I’d like to see no animals produced for food. It really isn’t strictly necessary for our nutrition but we’ve evolved and optimized for it’s consumption to the point where whole species exist only for that purpose, e.g. cows and chickens and so much culture has developed around it. That’s a lot of back tracking.
From the standpoint of their well-being… well, I can’t put humans on some pedestal and say we somehow aren’t part of the ecosystem here. We are animals too** and I think it’s ok to act like it. It’s just not ok to be the completely dominant species to the exclusion and extinction of others not least because it’s literally to our own determent.
So promoting biodiversity to me means living lighter on the land and working in conjunction with other species, plant and animal. For now it’s a compromise that maybe can put us in the direction of the ideal I tried to outline and beyond. There are lots of things that I have done that I think should be more common practice in farming, and many stem from quasi-permaculture principles. This isn’t just “don’t do monocultures” but more like “work with the land”. A good example is that allowing native plants to grow around and in the field - I leave large strips as pathways for beneficials. This one thing has been hugely successful and completely eliminated the need for any pesticides, ‘natural’ or otherwise. Along with mulching, greatly reduce water consumption.
The principal obstacle is all this is our food systems have been optimized for profit - not by farmers but by corporations and others who seek to “add value” through processing. In that less money goes to farmers and less nutrition to consumers. And this isn’t just because of the processing but also moving production away from nutritionally dense and tastier things to whatever ships and processes well both in terms of species and varieties. This means practices that make complete sense for regeneration, biodiversity and nutrition tend to be excluded in favor of more inequitable ‘profit’. Given that we view food as a human right that’s really messed up.
Edit: **I’m not saying that should justifying eating other animals. But I just don’t buy that we are somehow special mainly because it’s that thinking that got us into this mess in the first place. Like we don’t have to adhere to the rules or something.
Sure but if Beyond Meat can make a delicious bit of fake cow or chicken with 1/10 of the land and water, then we have a drop-in replacement that requires no cultural change. As for the actual cows and chickens, personally I would have no problem letting them go extinct. Along with domestic dogs and cats (both of which I love) and indeed humans too, if necessary - but possibly this is getting offtopic! The point is that the objective should be a rich ecosystem without mass cruelty.
Ah, now things become clearer - you’re an actual farmer! Well done for thinking so deeply about these questions.
I mean, good point but… I really do think it requires a cultural change. I’m a big fan of Beyond Meat products yet so many people don’t view it the same way.
Alas, I have trouble believing their claims about land use and water even while I acknowledge it’s an improvement. And although they are not organic, I can guarantee that animal products are used in the production of their ingredients and that it would be difficult for them to source said ingredients otherwise. Now imagine they blow up and do 1000x the volume…
Yes yes, all good points.