Have people said vegans are destroying forests? Thats dumb as hell
I doubt it’s that high. US grows a ridiculous amount of corn on perverse incentives, only 1.5% of it is edible. Most soy is not eaten, it’s processed for oils.
Notice the meat industry apologetics misusing the words like they misuse the lands.
This is looking at global data. Most countries are a lot less wasteful than the US. It also completely disregards waste food, though it says it only makes up 5% of global caloric production.
According to the article, the US produces 14% of all agricultural calories on Earth. 28% of this is spent on non-food purposes, while 17% is spent on food but not animal feed, compared to 15% and 45% globally. This means that while the US produces twice as much calories per acre of farmland than the global average, it can actually feed fewer people per acre than average.
The article is all cropland, not just corn. So it includes things like wheat production in the western great plains, fruit and vegetables in the Imperial and Central Valleys in California, apple farms in Washington and Michigan, oranges in Florida and California. But you are correct that most corn, soy, and alfalfa are grown for non-human consumption
soy is primarily grown for human consumption. over 4/5 of the global crop is sent to an oil press.
the paper says 49% goes to humans, and 52% goes to oil and animal feed… so something doesn’t add up
What they fail to mention is that crops are usually graded with best to mid quality going to humans and low quality going to other purposes like animal feed.
Even without that culling, half the calories are not calories humans can process. We can’t digest stalks of corn or wheat, for example. Various livestock animals can digest biomass that would otherwise go to waste.
And it can also be used to make ethanol.
There’s actually very little waste in agriculture, and even in ranching. Hell, cows that die in the field of natural causes can still be 100% processed.
There’s little waste in food production in general, even animals are completely used in meat processing.
I can’t seem to find the full paper
thank you.
It’s easier to make fun of people then to engage with them, because engagement requires honest intellectual rigor
where is the full paper?
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2976-601X/ae4f6b/pdf PDF (link to web under the image)
