40% of lost calories globally are from beef, needing 33 cal of feed per 1 cal

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2976-601X/ae4f6b

by randycupertino • 3 months ago

174 309 3 months ago

iopscience.iop.org

khelavastr2• 3 months ago

Wait til they evaluate calories to produce ensembles of separable blends of protein and fats and more...beef is pretty efficient

capitainenemo10• 3 months ago

Soybeans do pretty well a lot more efficiently. Not perfect, naturally, but close, and other stuff can cover gaps.

Obviously not all land is good for crops, but a lot of land used for animals or animal feed could be used for crops.

synasties• 3 months ago

Then can human process grass?

charlesabarnes• 3 months ago

Cattle feed is more than grass

maerF0x0• 3 months ago

Correct, but many lands like parts of Alberta and Texas are not very good for growing foods humans can eat. So you may as well get marginal additional calories out of the non-productive land via cellulose digesters.

skeeter20202• 3 months ago

depends on the phase of development. Most beef is pasture fed for a significant period, maybe supplemented with extra feed in the winter, but still grass, etc. It's only near the relatively short end they are consolidated & finished at the feed lot.

jvanderbot• 3 months ago

Most cows don't eat grass like a wandering herd. Most cows eat stuff we grow on farms that could grow stuff we can eat instead.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2024/december/ers-data-...

and

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feed-gr...

Let me surface a more direct article: https://insideanimalag.org/land-use-for-animal-ag/#:~:text=1...

Of the total land area of the contiguous 48 states, ~45% is used for animal ag. This includes: Land for grazing livestock at ~35%. Land for crops going specifically to animal feed at ~9%. Animal ag farmsteads at <1%.[1-3]

WorkerBee284742• 3 months ago

The first link you posted says that 29% of the land is used for pasture and 15% is used for crops (which will include both human and animal).

So yes, most cows are eating grass like a wandering herd.

ErroneousBosh4• 3 months ago

Most cows don't eat grass like a wandering herd. Most cows eat stuff we grow on farms that could grow stuff we can eat instead.

Most cows do eat grass and other stuff we can't eat.

"Hard feed" is made from crops grown as part of a rotation cycle, or from things like soya where 80% of it is only suitable for cattle feed.

brightbeige• 3 months ago

Actual title: Only half of the calories produced on croplands are available as food for human consumption

whalesalad2• 3 months ago

This is a really big shocker to most people, especially in America. We see these big huge farmlands with rows and rows of corn. We hear the propaganda that farmers are the backbone of this nation and we can't live without them. Songs sing in our heads, "amber waves of grain, from sea to shining sea". People get a warm and fuzzy feeling. Country music psyop perpetuates this. Meanwhile a substantial portion (as noted here) is garbage. It's genetically modified crap from a fortune 100 company that requires fertilizer and herbicide from the same fortune 100 company and any seeds harvested contractually cannot be re-used so the grower needs to re-buy every year. And it's not for human consumption! A lot of it isn't even for animal consumption, it's for ethanol or other uses. Whole situation just kinda cracks me up.

raincole2• 3 months ago

it's for ethanol or other uses

... and? I read it so far down. Now could you please kindly explain why this is "garbage"?

roncesvalles• 3 months ago

I mean, it's both things. Humans are just really good at agriculture by now. Most countries, even those that we perceive as poor, produce crops well in surplus of their own nutritional needs and can often scale up to produce multiples more.

It's no exaggeration to say we can support feeding 100x the human population with current agricultural land and techniques (assuming you can modify their diets). Largely due to GMO, fertilizers, and industrial farming.

asdff3• 3 months ago

The farmer wants the gmo crop. They see the yields they get and go hell yeah. They can't use the seeds next year because these are often hybrids taking advantage of hybrid vigor. These crops get more out of existing fertilizer applications. This is the whole point of them: inputs cost less, yields go up, more profit.

Look at this figure of corn yields per acre (1). Yellow is the "old age" where yields were stagnant. Red is when fertilizer began to be used. Now the huge slope change, has been in exploiting genetic hybrids. GMO allows protection of desirable hybrid traits that might be lost in breeding, introduction of traits to to other strains. Traits of interest are primarily around lessening usage of fertilizer, lessening usage of insecticides, as these are all input costs the farmer would rather not pay especially if they can get the same yield without paying. Thank you GMOs for keeping this linear change in yield even over the last 15 years! Could you believe we improved our corn yields substantially over these 15 years? Remarkable the work biologists do in the quiet of their field.

But of course, lay people just think it is a big conspiracy. They don't understand any of this. They think GMOs are copyright but that belies a lack of education of the last century of agriculture development, since that doesn't make sense as farmers have been using hybrids and ordering new seed some 70 years now in certain crops. It is the nations who have to resort to reusing seed and these inferior strains that are suffering poor yields and food insecurity. Over here, we feed far more with far less land under the plow every year. Their yields are still stagnant at historical levels. And climate change is coming for them, while we are understanding the very genetic basis of our yield improvement. They will be using seeds we engineer for them to be high yield in their changing environment to survive widespread famine in the coming decades. GMO is the greatest human invention, more important than even computers.

1. https://extension.entm.purdue.edu/newsletters/pestandcrop/wp...

some_random6• 3 months ago

I'm sorry that is an insane thing to say, if this is genuinely representative of your worldview you need to step back and reevaluate some things.

kshahkshah3• 3 months ago

Not trying to be overly flippant... who cares?

The paper opens with "to feed a growing population" without asking is that what we need? want? where we are actually heading to?

Is feeding the world a real problem? I've yet to see compelling evidence that it really is except as a secondary effect of logistics, energy supply, and war.

edit: I understand the environmental impacts. I think we should solve our energy problems first.

cameldrv• 3 months ago

Exactly. The current world population is 8.3 billion and is expected to peak at 10.3 billion in 2080 and then begin declining. Now, there are a number of other reasons we might have food shortages, but population per se I don't think is a significant factor.

capitainenemo10• 3 months ago

Even if food shortages aren't an issue, reducing the amount of land dedicated to food production is a win for ecosystems.

Not saying people have to go vegetarian, but reducing meat consumption or using more efficiently produced meats (in terms of land use) would overall make the world a nicer and more interesting place.

And, really, with the whole neu5gc thing, it might be that humans would be better off focusing on chickens and seafood anyway (clams being a pretty good option for seafood that is relatively environmentally friendly).

all22• 3 months ago

Is feeding the world a real problem?

Yes, but it is not a production capacity problem. The constraints on food are mostly in the logistics chain, often having to do with corruption or distribution targets (food goes where the money is), or regulation (did you know that cherry growers in the Upper Midwest are required --_by Federal law_-- to destroy unsold crops?).

A huge amount of food goes to waste simply because of regulation or subsidies, at least within the United States.

ls612• 3 months ago

This is for good reason though. You want to overproduce significantly in ordinary times so that if there is a big negative shock you will still be able to produce enough to feed everyone merely by not destroying the excess anymore.

bloppe• 3 months ago

I think your fun cherry fact is pretty inaccurate. If you're referring to USDA Marketing Order #930, it's basically about setting sales limits in bumper crop years to avoid a situation where so many cherries hit the market that farmers lose money simply by harvesting them. They're free to donate the cherries etc. but again, they would be essentially wasting their own money by putting in the time and effort to harvest them beyond the amount they're allowed to sell.

Alupis7• 3 months ago

Tart cherries are supply-controlled because they are processed into other goods, like pie filling, and can be stored for long duration (multiple seasons). The supply-control regulation is designed to prevent a surplus crop from depressing the market to the point where it's no longer viable to grow tart cherries - reducing future supply, ie. the regulation is designed to provide a consistent, stable supply.

Surplus tart cherry crops are rarely destroyed. In the event of a surplus, they are often exported, diverted to secondary markets, donated, or carried-over into next-season's stock.

choilive• 3 months ago

Agreed. The market should decide if beef consumption is viable. Ultimately energy is the basis all food production. Cheap and plentiful energy solves the food production and distribution problem, then its just matter of preferences.

Hikikomori2• 3 months ago

Market also decided that the Irish could only eat potatoes.

_aavaa_3• 3 months ago

It’s hard for the market to decide on its own when the environmental damage of meat production is left as an unpriced externality and when government subsidies are handed out like candy.

BadBadJellyBean• 3 months ago

"The market" doesn't work as long as costs to the environment can be externalized. If the cost of climate change and lost living space would be added to the cost of beef it might be fair. But it isn't. Methane released by cows, cutting down rain forests for feed, and all the transporting costs us all dearly. But it doesn't cost the manufacturers anything directly so beef can be cheap.

mhurron3• 3 months ago

The market should decide if beef consumption is viable

The market has decided, ant it decided that the well off are more important than the rest so they get what they want at everyone elses expense.

Maybe we should stop thinking market forces are in any way right or moral. At least saying 'I got mine, fuck you' would be honest.

bjustin• 3 months ago

I agree that we must stop subsidies for cattle farming.

throw0101a• 3 months ago

Agreed. The market should decide if beef consumption is viable.

Until The Market™, especially in the US, starts dealing with externalities (like climate change), it should not. Something like carbon pricing (per Greenspan and Volcker):

* https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Car...

Even Mr. Free Market himself, Milton Friedman, thought a price on pollution was a good idea:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YGfwSvLkC0

eykanal• 3 months ago

This is being downvoted, but is raising a serious point.

- Nearly 90% of Americans eat red meat [1].

- Environmental activity against meat has led a lot of people (26% of Americans) to believe that there is a push to ban red meat. This issue does not poll well [1].

- Despite the above, Americans are eating less red meat than we used to [2].

- The vast majority of people who choose to reduce their meat intake do so for cost or health reasons, not environmental [3].

Putting all that together... studies like this do not help the environmental cause. Sure, they find something that's vaguely interesting, and can possibly be a bullet point on an environmentalist slide. However, a far better research study would be one focusing on human health impacts of red meat, or demonstrating economic benefits to red meat alternatives.

tl;ld - This study is not useful, and is probably damaging to it's own cause.

[1] https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/nearly-nine-ten-ameri...

[2] https://www.pcrm.org/news/news-releases/new-survey-reveals-r...

[3] https://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/two-thirds-of-a...

tracker112• 3 months ago

There are absolutely a number of people that would love to ban meat consumption.

I eat mostly meat and eggs, because there isn't much else I can eat that doesn't cause a number of digestive or inflammation issues for me.

rainsford• 3 months ago

I think it's probably a mistake on any topic to conduct or not conduct research based on what's most useful to a particular side of an argument. Especially in this case, where the party split in the poll results suggest reasonable debate on this issue is yet another casualty of partisan culture war nonsense.

It's not like people aren't aware of the environmental arguments around red meat production. Deliberately ignoring research on that front to avoid triggering people concerned about a red meat ban and to make a better argument for people who want to reduce red meat consumption seems just as likely to backfire, leading people into believing they're being manipulated into supporting what's really an environmental argument with the Trojan horse of health and economic reasons.

Laying out all the facts but focusing the actual argument on the most relevant ones seems like a much better strategy. I personally have been cutting back on red meat for health reasons and because, while I can afford it, paying that much for beef is annoying when pork or chicken fits my cooking needs just fine for much cheaper. But I still find it useful to know that choice also has a positive environmental impact, even though that wouldn't otherwise be a deciding factor for me and certainly wouldn't be justification enough for me to support banning red meat. In fact it seems like a strong argument for caring about environmental things is pointing out to folks how there can be plenty of other reasons to do things that also have environmental benefits.

I think we have a serious problem with people being and acting stupid. One way we can improve that state of affairs is stop treating them as if they are stupid and that's what we expect of them.

tzs• 3 months ago

Environmental activity against meat has led a lot of people (26% of Americans) to believe that there is a push to ban red meat

I'd guess that has more to do with something like half a dozen different Fox hosts saying a few years ago that Biden's Inflation Reduction Act would prohibit Americans from eating hamburger more than once a month.

jshen4• 3 months ago

It's the leading cause of deforestation which is a major factor in climate change. It also is a major contributor to climate change for other reasons. Since you mentioned energy, it's also much less energy efficient.

Isn't this something to care about?

tootie• 3 months ago

I know you warned us, but this overly flippant.

There's plenty of obvious reasons we shouldn't be wasting land, energy, water and labor on producing things that don't get utilized. Even in the most selfish capitalist sensibility, we are wasting money. Yes the energy issue is much bigger than this but wasted energy utilization is part of that problem. I know this is politically fraught, but that should not have any bearing on scholarship. This is just data to add to our understanding.

And also that this study is global, not purely applicable to America. Republicans can exploit outrage with lies to their base, but that isn't such a slam dunk everywhere in the world

0xbadcafebee4• 3 months ago

Is feeding the world a real problem?

Yes.

I've yet to see compelling evidence that it really is except as a secondary effect of logistics, energy supply, and war.

I don't know how to respond to this. It's like saying you don't think breathing underwater is difficult, except for the secondary effects of water. War is a problem. Energy supply is a problem. Logistics is a problem. All these problems lead to starvation. People starving is a real problem.

Another reason people starve is economics and market forces. The market decides it wants to use up more water and grain to feed cows. That grain and water is now not available for purchase as human food. That means it is more scarce on the human-feeding market. Scarcity drives up prices. So livestock feed makes grain more expensive, making it harder to purchase, for people to eat.

(I'm using "starve" as a euphemism for "malnutrition that not only severely impacts bodily health, reduces quality of life, and increases mortality, but also decreases economic productivity")

Now, if the point you're trying to make is "we could solve world hunger", then absolutely the answer is yes, humans produce more than enough grain to feed everyone in the world, and we have the money to transport it everywhere, even assist with cooking fuel. But because of all the categories you think don't apply, and markets, and economics, we are not fixing it. We are choosing to let people starve.

worik2• 3 months ago

Feeding the world is a problem of economics and politics, not the ecological problems of growing food.

There is huge capacity for food production in the world, and no reason anyone should go hungry

Keeping people hungry is deliberate economic policy.

In New Zealand where I live we make enough food for millions more than live here, yet many face food insecurity.

As I say, it is deliberate, calculated, government policy to keep people on the edge of hunger.

It keeps wages low - our idiot business people think every dollar paid in wages is a dollar of profit lost

Idiotic and cruel, and widespread

some_random6• 3 months ago

Another reason people starve is economics and market forces. The market decides it wants to use up more water and grain to feed cows. That grain and water is now not available for purchase as human food. That means it is more scarce on the human-feeding market. Scarcity drives up prices. So livestock feed makes grain more expensive, making it harder to purchase, for people to eat.

None of these are logistics, energy supply, or war. The paper is specifically talking about increasing efficiency in food production, the originally commenter is saying that efficiency of production is not the main driver for undernourishment and your comment doesn't address that.

usrusr• 3 months ago

Is feeding the world a real problem?

In light of recent, uhm, "challenges" to fertilizer supply chains?

heathrow83829• 3 months ago

meat uses up enormous quantities of water. potatoes for instance use about 75 gallons to produce 2000 calories compared to say 1500 to 2500 gallons for 2000 calories of beef.

tracker112• 3 months ago

For grass fed cattle, the vast majority of said water is from rain that would have fallen on the land with or without the cattle. It's not generally municipal supplies of water in use for naturally raised cattle.

colechristensen4• 3 months ago

A lot of the "meat uses too much water" arguments are stupid because they're based on food grown in places where it rains all of the water they ever use.

We drain the land in Iowa otherwise the north half of it would be a swamp. Complaining about water usage for all but the western edge of Iowa is much the same as complaining about how solar panels use up the sunlight.

some_random6• 3 months ago

Water is not equally scarce everywhere, this is a simple matter of producing things only in places where the production thereof makes sense

datsci_est_20153• 3 months ago

I understand the environmental impacts. I think we should solve our energy problems first.

You don’t think the two are related at all? When you say “solve” energy problems, do you mean from supply-side solutions or demand-side solutions?

XorNot2• 3 months ago

No amount of efficiency improvements matters if all the energy is still coming from burning fossil fuels at the end of the day.

kshahkshah3• 3 months ago

Just getting back here, didn't expect all these replies.

I meant supply-side.

krater232• 3 months ago

The question is, whats the bigger environmental impact, more people using smart phones, computers, cars, planes, buying the newest fashion to show their style,... or feeding them with beef?

You are completely right, who the fuck cares?

plufz• 3 months ago

Solve our energy problems first? How would decreasing cattle stop work on improving our energy system? I think a lot points to that we need to do both (and yesterday). It’s not like agriculture is a small part of our greenhouse gas emissions (25-35% globally).

karmakurtisaani• 3 months ago

We should solve X first is a common talking point when you recognize something is a problem, but don't want to address it for whatever reason.

Barrin922• 3 months ago

I understand the environmental impacts. I think we should solve our energy problems first.

is there a rational argument in here or is this just a cheap psychological reflex to keep eating beef? Because it's not clear to me how solving our energy problems and the consumption of beef even intersect so that we couldn't do both at the same time.

You might as well have said "man I really should stop drinking and smoking, but we gotta solve the energy problems first"

irishcoffee5• 3 months ago

Isn’t that entirely their point? Stop bitching about cows (not a real problem at all) and fix an actual problem. Seems like you nailed it.

People aren’t going to stop eating beef, full stop. Won’t happen, full stop. It’s akin to suggesting we need to stop eating eggs, also will never happen.

These threads pop up on here every so often and it amuses me in a morose way. Nothing will ever change in the beef industry, not even in places like California, who are actively causing a water shortage in order to grow crops. That is a much bigger problem than farting cows, the whole region is aware of the problem, and no movement has been made to create a fix.

Give it up on the cows, there are bigger fish to fry.

ahhhhnoooo• 3 months ago

We have 8 billion people. We have enough people to solve both the energy problem and the food efficiency problem.

That said, it's very, very funny that you responded to an article about energy inefficiency (calorie -> calorie) and said we should solve our energy problems. Beef is an energy problem! We're putting 30x the energy into the product against the energy we get out! Thats wasted energy!

colechristensen4• 3 months ago

Eh. Grow beef mostly grazed on marginal land that can't support other agriculture.

This is how a LOT of beef is produced and how most of it SHOULD BE.

They're not "lost calories" if they're produced on large swaths of semi-arid land that don't support any other kind of agriculture.

And on the opposite side... a LOT of those "lost calories" are corn. Corn is substantially more productive than other crops and people don't want to replace large portions of their diet with cereal grains or corn syrup so much of those "lost calories" would also be lost to much less efficient crops.

Thrymr• 3 months ago

Not trying to be overly flippant... who cares?

Congratulations on being overly flippant without trying. Evidently a lot of people care, and environmental impacts and energy problems are closely related.

piva00• 3 months ago

I recommend you visiting the Brazilian region of Pantanal, if possible travel through Mato Grosso do Sul -> Mato Grosso -> southern Pará where it transitions into the Amazon.

You will see vast areas of cattle ranching, soybeans plantation used for cattle feed, and other crops that can be used as cattle feed. All that area used to be the Pantanal and Amazon, now transformed to grow beef.

If we would reduce the calories wasted on beef, this area could still have a lot more native vegetation. Of course, it's purely wishful thinking because this ship has sailed, beef consumption will take a long time to stop growing, these farms will fight for their lives to keep producing, and we've lost a huge area of incredible nature to eat some steaks and burgers.

onraglanroad• 3 months ago

And none of that is for feeding starving people who have no food.

It's all to grow profitable luxury food.

belorn• 3 months ago

If you want to save the rain forest you got to make saving the rain forest more profitable than cutting it down. If its not beef, it will be the next most profitable thing which generally is corn for ethanol production, something that already has eaten a huge area of incredible nature. If not corn, it will be some form of oil. If not oil, it will be some form of rare wood to make fancy furniture for rich people.

The reason we have lost a huge area of incredible nature is not because people want to eat some steaks and burgers. It is explicitly because that land made some people money. Without that incentive the forest would still be there.

cute_boi2• 3 months ago

If we stop subsidizing i think it will reduce a lot.

idle_zealot• 3 months ago

edit: I understand the environmental impacts. I think we should solve our energy problems first.

There's no "first." There's not a queue of problems that the people of the world work on one by one. It's not a matter of limited labor/money either, we're talking about policies to change allocation. If anything is limited here it's political will, but that doesn't really work like money or physical limitations, it's more abstract and nonlinear. It's quite possible that a platform containing more changes earns more will than one with fewer, so budgeting is the wrong impulse.

mcv8• 3 months ago

Feeding the world is mostly a political-economic problem. Political-economic decisions make it hard to feed everybody, when we technically have more than enough to feed everybody. But one of the decisions that make it hard to feed everybody is the decision to eat lots of beef in rich countries. Land that's used to grow food for cattle could (in many but not all cases) also be used to grow food for poor people, but there's no money in that.

That's not the only one; there's lots of other ways in which food is wasted or used inefficiently. Although the situation has improved tremendously over the past half century, there are still a lot of people suffering from malnutrition.

nradov• 3 months ago

In most places where there is chronic, widespread malnutrition the root cause problem is not lack of arable land but rather local violence and corruption. It doesn't matter how much food you grow if a rebel group with AK-47s shows up and steals it all.

slowmovintarget• 3 months ago

When they complain about these lost calories is anyone asking them if they have a better way to turn grass into food we can eat? Eating beef lets us eat grass we couldn't otherwise, indirectly. It also has a whole bunch of minerals and nutrients that are particularly beneficial.

We don't need a steak every day, but two servings of beef a week can be a truly great infusion of protein and nutrients in someone's diet.

These are found calories, not lost.

lkbm• 3 months ago

If excess beef consumption were reduced to healthy quantities, as defined by the EAT-Lancet healthy reference diet, and substituted with chicken in forty-eight higher-income countries, the lost calories avoided would be enough to meet the caloric needs of 850 million people.

It's really impressive how efficient chickens are compared to beef. Obviously thinks like legumes are way more efficient, but we've really bred chickens to be meat machines in a way we haven't with cows.

LaurensBER• 3 months ago

It absolutely is and in some ways we've only just started! Although we definitely shouldn't move fast and break things with living animals and our food supply;)

vharuck• 3 months ago

They aren't just amazingly efficient in converting calories to protein, they're great at eating things without much other (agricultural) value to us. They eat the invasive spotted lantern fly!

Brendinooo• 3 months ago

True for chickens in general! But the Cornish Crosses in the factory farms probably never see a lanternfly, and wouldn't want to get away from the feeder long enough to go after one.

darth_avocado• 3 months ago

This is the kind of proposal that might fly well when it comes to the discourse over meat. People say “but we could be growing other crops instead of feed for cows”. Well yes, but you need protein in the diet. You can’t grow potatoes and veggies and expect people to survive only on that. Then there’s the question of land utilization. Historically cattle was raised for meat and dairy where agriculture was more difficult as compared to grazing cows, sheep, goats etc. The modern corn, soybean and alpha alpha farms may be able to grow other crops, but would they be able to support the crops that are needed in nutrition? Chicken and other more efficient substitutions may be the answer here.

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 3 months ago

You can’t grow potatoes and veggies and expect people to survive only on that.

I'm sure most medieval people survived (without food types being a detriment to their health/lifespan) on vastly less meat than most of us eat nowadays.

I don't want to live a "medieval peasant" lifestyle, obviously, but I don't think the food part of it would be unhealthy (assuming enough food).

jshen4• 3 months ago

You can absolutely survive and thrive on a vegetarian diet, and there is decent evidence suggesting you're health will be better.

cbolton• 3 months ago

On the other hand I read chicken is much worse than beef in terms of animal suffering. But that's much more dependent on the producer than the energy calculation and climate impact I guess.

capitainenemo10• 3 months ago

Yeah, the kurzgesagt episode on meat production did note that overall cows have a pretty good life right up until the final fattening feed lots which is pretty bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sVfTPaxRwk

They did note though, that it wouldn't cost that much, relatively, to give chickens pretty good lives. That really we're doing this just to drive the price down by pretty small amounts.

margalabargala• 3 months ago

It depends I suppose as well whether one counts suffering the same in a cow vs a chicken vs a fish vs an insect.

saalweachter2• 3 months ago

Actually, the last time I looked into it, if you grow 2 acres of corn and 1 acre of soy, and feed it to chickens, you get out a similar number of calories (and more protein?) as 3 acres of soy.

Soy is pretty good, but corn is insane.

jshen4• 3 months ago

what?!?!

tracker112• 3 months ago

Legumes and soy in particular is a pretty common allergy... it's nearly impossible to get sufficient protein without meat if you have a legume allergy.

The impact of non-natural feeds on the overall nutrition profile for chickens and pork are larger than with ruminant animals. Chickens have been bred and changed a lot through environmental manipulation to grow much faster than in nature.

There are a few breeds of cows that are producing more muscle mass than most, they've gotten quite a bit larger through breeding as well, though the difference in time to maturation doesn't come close to what we've done with chickens... I'm not sure it's for the better though.

throwaway-11-1• 3 months ago

Overall legume allergies affect 1-5% of the population, this is all legumes combined including peanuts etc. Soy allergies are 0.3 - 0.5%, not sure what you qualify as pretty common. For the record I have a fairly serious peanut allergy and abstain from meat and dairy with zero issues.

wolpoli• 3 months ago

EAT-Lancet healthy reference diet

I am unable to find this diet. It's likely referring to something called Planetary Health Diet [0]

[0] https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet/the-planetary-health-diet/

itbeho• 3 months ago

"please accept cookies to access this content"

satvikpendem• 3 months ago

Insects are even more efficient, much as people don't want to eat them, at least in western cultures.

WorkerBee284742• 3 months ago

To feed a growing population, it is essential that the global agri-food system be managed to efficiently convert crop production into calories for human consumption.

It's really not. Efficiency is the enemy of redundancy. Countries want food security, so they must therefore produce excess calories.

analyte123• 3 months ago

It’s really, really not. Crop land per capita has been going down for decades despite richer diets, and all the biofuels and livestock feed [1]. Let’s not forget that advanced drugs to stop people from overeating the abundant food are a $60 billion and rapidly growing market.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cropland-per-person-over-...

ux2664783• 3 months ago

I think it's important to a point, to be pedantic. But yes, global food production is well over the hurdle of production volume to "feed everyone", even for highly redundant crop yields. The remaining challenge is purely logistical and of course combating unchecked profit motive that's become malignant.

9rx4• 3 months ago

Global food production now produces more than enough calories to feed everyone, but still hasn't figured out how to produce enough nutrients to feed everyone.

andrewclunn• 3 months ago

Hmm, I wonder if beef is more expensive than chicken to reflect the inefficiency in its production? Oh it is. So it must then be that people just prefer the flavor and taste of it as compared to cheaper meats then.

throwpoaster• 3 months ago

We have more than enough calories globally, although Africa has more starvation now than it did a decade ago.

What we need is nutrient density. 0% of those feed calories have, eg, creatine. 100% of the beef calories do.

throwaway7644• 3 months ago

This is the metabolic version of inflation: subsidized, hollow calories used to mask a decline in actual nutritional value. Fiat Food

readthenotes1• 3 months ago

This is already covered in the Soylent Green protocol isn't it?

An alternate take: if calorie efficiency is so important we should focus on consumption more than production.

ttoinou• 3 months ago

Another alternative take : calories don't exist, food don't contain "calories", we can't isolate a system to count calories in and out. It's mostly believing something because society claims others supposedly serious people think think they exist.

Argonaut9985• 3 months ago

Yes and calories as labelled aren't "true calories" either. Not all calories are equal.

gradus_ad• 3 months ago

"lost calories" as if having people consume animal feed to reduce total caloric loss is a good idea.

zetanor• 3 months ago

What's the matter, honey? You've barely touched your corn in canola oil.

missedthecue• 3 months ago

Exactly. A major problem with the usefulness of these studies (many of which make it into major journals) is that they seldom account for the fact that a lot of animal feed and human food sources do not compete with each other. For example, cattle are fed processed corn stocks and leaves after the cobs are removed. Corn stalks and leaves would otherwise rot if not consumed by livestock. Cows do not compete with humans for this calorie source.

motohagiography• 3 months ago

it seems disingenuous to problematize beef. it turns grass into human energy and also requires civilizational practices that create and preserve human dignity and animal welfare. mainly, the so called problem serves to centralize the problematizer themselves. their arguments from a position of centrally planning and managing food economies are intellectual tarpits. however, that our food supply and rural ways of life have the attention of the perpetually concerned is worthy of note. when they start with their opinions, mind your wallets and assets. in short, avoid.

skeeter20202• 3 months ago

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hellojimbo• 3 months ago

we need the calories to feed a growing population
population doubles
we need the calories to feed a growing population

khelavastr2• 3 months ago

Also them: more adults globally eat too many calories

dmitrygr2• 3 months ago

"needing 33 cal of feed per 1 cal"

The calories cows eat are ... useless to humans. We cannot digest cullulose (grass) and most of the rest of the things we feed to cows. Anyone throwing this number around has an agenda, and is not objective

joaohaas• 3 months ago

The grass most cows eat also need to be planted. The point of this post is that we could be planting stuff we can eat so you don't have to 'pay' the conversion cost.

trollbridge2• 3 months ago

The grass cattle can eat (which doesn't need to be planted; most people around me don't regularly plant their pasture) is not stuff people can eat, and can often grow in conditions that can't grow people-food.

Specifically, they can eat stuff that doesn't require constant fertiliser inputs, where as people-food generally does need a lot of fertiliser inputs and needs more intensive herbicide/pesticide application.

A balanced approach is to go, "Hmm, it's probably a good idea to raise cattle, chickens, and other animals, and also to grow all kinds of produce and staple crops as well."

Aloisius• 3 months ago

That depends entirely on where you are.

In India, for instance, dairy cattle are fed almost exclusively on crop residues and by-products. Crop residues being what's left over in the field after you harvest and by-products being what would otherwise be waste left over after you process for human use.

Elsewhere, in addition to crop residues/by-products, you also have natural grasslands that aren't planted or irrigated, legume feed grown between major crop seasons when you can't grow anything else that also replenishes the soil and feed grown on otherwise marginal land or barely managed land.

Certainly some crops grown for cows would be edible by humans or the land repurposed for growing crops edible for people, but there's often a cost involved like heavier fertilizer requirements, pesticide use, water requirements, added infrastructure and/or labor.

victorbjorklund4• 3 months ago

No, not all land isn’t the same. It is far more profitable to grow a high value crop vs plain grass. But some land just isn’t great for other things than grass. You have large cattle farms in Australia where you can’t grow anything other than grass and other wild plants.

rjrjrjrj• 3 months ago

Cows are sometimes fed human-consumable calories (eg corn).

Other crops that humans can digest can be produced on land currently used for grass.

Other animal species that eat grass require fewer feed cal per calorie produced.

dmitrygr2• 3 months ago

Most pasture is land that cannot support human-edible crops. Cows eat low quality grass that needs no fertilizer or pesticides. Stuff that lives in very alkaline soils, etc. Cows and us, we do not compete for farmland.

0xbadcafebee4• 3 months ago

90% of the feed they get is not for human consumption. But the rest that feed is for human consumption. And that human-edible feed makes up 75% of all US cropland. Most of our crops are grown just to feed cows. Meaning the majority of the grain we produce is going to grow a steak, when it could be used to feed many more humans than a steak will.

shrubble• 3 months ago

There are people who for various ideological reasons hate beef.

If the market demands more chicken over beef, producers are perfectly capable of making a switch.

Cows are able to make delicious beef from grass and thistles; that they are often fed other things is not a proof that eating cows is bad.

trollbridge2• 3 months ago

Indeed my cattle mostly eat weeds, and eat things my chickens can't really eat. I don't feed either of them mass-produced crops, which actually also have ecological consequences in terms of huge amounts of petrochemicals needed both to fuel tractors and combines and to keep fertilising, topsoil losses, the amount of herbicides and pesticides sprayed, and so on.

foxyv2• 3 months ago

Don't forget that cattle agriculture can make rainforests into wastelands.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802...

9rx4• 3 months ago

If the market demands more chicken over beef, producers are perfectly capable of making a switch.

Depends on local laws. In Canada, you cannot simply switch to chicken. It is supply managed.

romuloalves• 3 months ago

But the beef delivers way more nutrition and calories than the crop they eat.

kaleinator• 3 months ago

Surprised how many people in the replies actually think their beef is grass fed.

tracker112• 3 months ago

A large amount of beef is mostly grass fed and finished on a grain feed lot the last month of life.

yesfitz2• 3 months ago

Got a source for "last month of life"?

Penn State University Extension says "...approximately 95% of the cattle in the United States continue to be finished, or fattened, on grain for the last 160 to 180 days of life (~25 to 30% of their life), on average."[1]

Oklahoma State University Extension also cites a study that compares "growth and carcass attributes of calves finished for 98 to 105 days in a grass system or a legume system"[2]

That puts us between 3 to 6 times longer than you stated, and gives us the context for how much of the average cattle's life that is. (USDA Prime, Choice, and Standard are all 30 to 42 months. Select is under 30 months.[3])

1: https://extension.psu.edu/grass-fed-beef-production 2: https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/finishing-beef-cat... 3: https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/slaughter-cattle-g...

raincole2• 3 months ago

And they are very likely right.

ErroneousBosh4• 3 months ago

Yup, that's grass they're eating.

robocat• 3 months ago

All our beef is grass fed, because we don't use grain finishing in New Zealand. Many US people apparently dislike the taste of our beef (grain finishing has a milder flavour). Cattle for beef is mostly farmed on land that is too crappy to grow crops.

cat_plus_plus• 3 months ago

I don't eat grass.

xvxvx• 3 months ago

Stop filtering your nutrition through animals. It’s inefficient.

foxyv2• 3 months ago

To add to that, it is environmentally destructive and cruel.

Argonaut9985• 3 months ago

Yes let me eat 5.7kg of broccoli per day instead of 500g of beef to meet my protein macros

Boxxed• 3 months ago

It works both ways: "Yeah, let me eat 100kg of beef per day instead of 500g of broccoli to get my Vitamin C."

But anyway, legumes are much more efficient source of protein than beef. I don't understand why you decided to compare against broccoli.

r_p4rk3• 3 months ago

Okay but what are you eating after your weekly allowance of 500g red meat to avoid needlessly increasing your bowel cancer risk?

hackable_sand2• 3 months ago

Why not switch to 500g of dog meat?

bryanlarsen3• 3 months ago

Cows eat grass. Humans use more calories digesting grass than they gain from eating grass, so cows are infinitely more efficient than humans at gaining calories from grass.

And there are places in the world where growing human food would destroy the land. Semi-deserts like Texas and Montana. Grazing cattle there is a good idea. Bison would be even better because the native prairie there is adapted to bison, but cattle are a close substitute.

But we eat a lot more cattle than Texas & Montana can support.

sixhobbits• 3 months ago

I think a vast majority of the beef we eat is grainfed unless you're buying the super hip, small-scale, expensive stuff

bryanlarsen3• 3 months ago

In my neck of the woods, the vast majority of the beef we eat is grass fed for most of their lives, but then grain finished. They only eat grain for the last month (out of 8 or so), but they put on most of their weight in that last month.

9rx4• 3 months ago

The vast majority is beef is finished on grain, but start on grass.

ErroneousBosh4• 3 months ago

Here in the UK, pretty much 100% of cattle are grass fed. In the winter, when there isn't enough grass, they're fed on silage (which is basically just grass cut and baled while still green, which turns it into kind of grass sauerkraut, which smells exactly like you'd expect) and "draff" or "spent grains" (depending on where you are) which is the stuff left over from brewing beer or the pot ale that goes to make whisky.

It's all a pretty delicate balance, but ultimately what happens is you end up growing a bunch of things humans can't eat so that cows can shit solid gold all over the fields and chop it into the soil with their hooves.

We eat because there's six inches of earth on the ground, it rains, clover grows, and cows (and pigs) shit solid gold.

fredgrott• 3 months ago

commercial beef cows eat grain not grass...

its in the paper....and some of us on this site grew up working for commercial beef ranchers.....for instance me!

alamortsubite2• 3 months ago

You're not from Argentina. Though I read even there they're switching to the grass/grain model.

luqtas2• 3 months ago

you type like using land from semi-deserts isn't destroyed for meat production...

you need to plant, fertilize and apply pesticides to maintain grass! or do you think grass with sometimes 60% of protein per gram grows out of nowhere? or that the global grain production, which more than 85% goes into feeding livestock that it's sometimes 20 times less efficient to produce the same quantity of protein, can't be distributed to the population?

bryanlarsen3• 3 months ago

Ranches in Montana and Texas definitely do none of those things. It's native grass, running about 1 cow per acre. Fertilizer and pesticide for an acre would be way more expensive than the profit on 1 cow per acre.

jshen4• 3 months ago

I honestly can't tell what conclusion you want us to draw? The vast majority of cows raise for agriculture are not raised in the ways you describe. Beef is the leading cause of deforestation in the rainforest!

mcv8• 3 months ago

Exactly. Beef could be sustainable if it was done on a much smaller scale. But everybody wants beef, so we feed it enormous amounts of corn.

Solstinox• 3 months ago

It’s not grain or corn you could eat though. Not fit for human consumption.

burnt-resistor2• 3 months ago

Totally wrong. A large fraction of commercially-grown cows are fed eponymous cow (field) corn, and require antibiotics so they are kept alive just long enough to grow and be slaughtered. Field corn is what takes up 5% of all land area in America.

tracker112• 3 months ago

I think we need more ruminant animals raised on grass as a means of regenerative farming... I think beef largely gets a bad rap for a lot of reasons that largely don't hold to grass fed cattle farming.

luqtas2• 3 months ago

then your next step is to cite research from the guy who used to hunt elephants in Africa and it's the heirs of a multi-million livestock industry, doing TED talks about the topic meanwhile no independent or state funded research except their organization could replicate the findings over the decades?

tracker112• 3 months ago

What happened to US grasslands when eliminating the majority of the ruminants from those lands? What has happened to the grassland reserves for Buffalo in MT since re-introducing and growing said populations?

asdff3• 3 months ago

I'm starting to see goat herds used a lot for wildfire brush abatement for large business properties on steep hillsides (not sure if I've seen an individual residential lot goat-abated but maybe it happens too). Normally hard and dangerous work for people with power tools, but the goats seem happy and in their element.

tracker112• 3 months ago

I've seen it on undeveloped (or, I should say not yet developed) land in a few places... Would be cool to see more of this.

stevenally• 3 months ago

Depends how the farming is done....

https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertif...

bluefirebrand• 3 months ago

Small anecdote

Since about 2019 I have been anemic. My iron levels were just a hair above being low enough to require an immediate infusion, and my doctor kept pushing me to eat more iron. She would often ask if I was a vegetarian or vegan, presumably she was assuming I was bad at it. I would always tell her the same thing. "I don't eat much beef but I do eat it"

Last summer I was diagnosed with celiac. Suddenly it all makes sense. I'm low on iron because my gut cannot absorb it.

So I start eating gluten free, and I start eating way more red meat than I used to, because building your iron levels takes a lot more iron intake than maintaining it. Now, about 8-9 months later I'm finally starting to feel better and my blood tests are showing my iron slowly creeping out of the danger zone

My nutritionist tells me that recovering this quickly would have probably been just about impossible for a vegetarian or vegan, without having an iron infusion done.

Anyways. Beef is kind of an important thing in our diets, that's all. Now that I'm back to a more normal level I'll go back to eating less of it, but I am now very conscious how important red meat is in a rounded diet

Edit: I guess my point is that calories are only part of the picture when it comes to food and there are a lot of other concerns as well, which are arguably more important to being healthy. You get calories from basically anything food you eat (assuming it's not some kind of engineered zero calorie diet food) but other minerals and vitamins are harder to source.

AlBugdy• 3 months ago

My nutritionist tells me that recovering this quickly would have probably been just about impossible for a vegetarian or vegan, without having an iron infusion done.

"probably been just about impossible" doesn't mean "impossible", it more likely means changing your eating habits to a point where you'd have to be really conscious and careful of what you eat iron-wise unlike someone without Celiacs (vegan or not) or someone who likes and can afford beef and can eat as much of it as they want.

There are lentils, beans, tofu, dark leafy greens and other sources of iron. There are iron-fortified foods. IIRC there are other considerations that might prevent careless or food-addicted people from getting enough iron like vitamin C to help with the iron absorption or not eating foods that decrease it.

There are plenty of vegans with Celiacs who manage their iron adequately. But even if you're one of those cases where iron needs to be supplemented, even IV - why not? If you disregard all the arguments against beef or animal products in general it's easy to make the argument that beef would be the best solution.

This reads like appeal to authority (the nutritionist) but a lot of nutritionists take the easy road ("just eat beef") or aren't good at all (haven't kept up with research). That's true of the majority of doctors and the majority of programmers (something people here will be able to relate to in case they haven't realized how useless most doctors are). I've been in and out of hospitals for several relatives for years and have heard doctors tell me outright falsehoods that show they have a only basic understanding of something. That makes sense since those doctors must know about so much more than the patient (thousands of diseases, lots of scientific knowledge about biology) but with a depth-first search into a topic you can spot how most of them have either stopped reading new studies or have lost their motivation to explore all option or have just stopped caring for providing the best kind of care. I hope people here don't have to go through what I have. That was a bit of a tangent, but I already wrote it so I'll keep it as a mini-rant.

Beef is kind of an important thing in our diets, that's all. Now that I'm back to a more normal level I'll go back to eating less of it, but I am now very conscious how important red meat is in a rounded diet.

That's not really true. I'm sure you could ask vegans or vegetarians or Hindus or anyone who doesn't eat beef but has Celiacs and you'd get a whole bunch of options for managing it. Sure, you'll find ignorant people who think eating fruits all the time is enough but that's the same kind of carelessness that leads to non-vegans eating the standard Western diet all the time or doing other basic mistakes.

The same is true for almost everything. Almost nothing is "an important thing in our diets". People live without nuts or fruits or vegetables or legumes or meat or eggs or dairy (not all at once, of course, although I wouldn't be surprised if someone managed to avoid all these) and are able to manage pretty much any disease other groups of people can manage.

calories are only part of the picture when it comes to food

True, people should care about the macros and micros. But with the internet it's trivial to do so both wrt learning what does what and how much is needed, and to track how much one eats from each.

ajsnigrutin• 3 months ago

Taylor swift is using her private jet to take out the trash to the curb, but hey, the "normal people" should eat less meat.

elzbardico• 3 months ago

Beef gets a lot of bad rep in environment terms because developed countries grain fed it in intensive settings. But not all cattle in the world is raised like that.

nprateem• 3 months ago

I recommend the book The Proof is in the Plants for a seemingly unbiased review of the literature.

Dude cites study after study pretty much all with the same conclusion: Eating animal products is bad for your health.

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 3 months ago

The really good thing about this is that if we somehow do manage to "ruin earth" and lose a significant portion of agricultural production, we will just have less tasty food rather than starving to death.

Food waste is another kind of "slack" in the food supply chain that would help. Imagine how the world would look if food supply was as optimized as e.g. microchips and then we got any kind of disruption... except now you starve rather than not being able to upgrade your car.

HWR_14• 3 months ago

Are the calories used by biofuels and cattle even directly consumable by humans?

balderdash• 3 months ago

isn't the obvious answer not to eat less beef but rather not produce beef super fast with grain feed. if the beef we ate came from grass lands + hay in the the winter it would cost more, but would dramatically reduce the crop consumption...

ErroneousBosh4• 3 months ago

hay in the the winter

Here in the UK, we use silage because the weather is a bit too variable to trust with letting hay dry out. It feels like it's probably more energy-dense and has more nutrition in it, you certainly don't need to feed as much.

Other things that work well are sugar beet (grows well as part of a cycle of crop rotation, clears weeds pretty well) and all that barley left over from brewing beer and making whisky.

Even soya-based cattle feed is made from the tough cellulosey bits that humans can't eat. If you want to try, I'm sure I can get you some - but maybe have something on hand for the inevitable constipation because it is all fibre.

djgleebs2• 3 months ago

don't care, not gonna eat bugs.

djgleebs2• 3 months ago

Don't care, I refuse to eat bugs and slop.

broken-kebab• 3 months ago

Exchanging e.g. grains for beef is not 'lost' anything, even if theoretically the former gives more calories. Nutritionally beef is just more valuable. Calories isn't the only thing we need apparently.

metalman• 3 months ago

false comparison, as most calories cattle consume are from things people dont eat, even if there are simmilar variets of plants that both people and animals eat, they are not interchangable. Animals also eat huge quantities of human food, that has been rejected through some technical consideration, just size, as many crops produce many fruits or vegetables that are iether too large or small to be processed, or are misshapen or damaged, cow dont care nom nom nom, gone by the ton, and the trucks are still comming. The true unforgivable waste is by people over eating, wasting, throwing away, and destroying good foog for countless beurocratic reasons.

fallingfrog• 3 months ago

Ok but don't cattle often browse on land that is too marginal for farming? And don't they eat grass? I don't know if this argument holds up.

victorbjorklund4• 3 months ago

Aha. All the grass humans could eat instead of the cows. Not all land is great for growing crops at. Other land is just good for growing grass for cattle to graze on.

ysleepy• 3 months ago

Ah yes, beef is produced predominantly using grad fed cows? The feed is an agricultural product produced on farmland that could be used to produce food.

I'm not a vegan or whatever, but get real with the impact of meat production.

asdff3• 3 months ago

Another factor that these studies seem to miss from the beef question is the fact there is more pasture land than viable agriculture land. Beef are often grazing on marginal land that would not be fit for much else. Clearcutting the amazon to meet beef demand is one thing but that isn't the case for I'd guess most places they have been farming beef for the past 100 years.

maxglute• 3 months ago

Conversion efficiency is slippery slope to vegetarianism.

jruz• 3 months ago

And is not even taking water consumption into account.

Or the annoying cowbells :)

rolph• 3 months ago

trophism is very much like manufacture.

you always have to pay to continue the process, and sometimes to put it on hold.

Transfer of Energy between Trophic Levels:

https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_Gene...

Ecological efficiency:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency

burnt-resistor2• 3 months ago

One of the weakest and least persuasive arguments, like animal cruelty, against animal ag. Data will also never convince anyone that they're doing something dangerous or selfish especially when their salary or lifestyle can be justified and rationalized through denial and cognitive dissonance.

The stronger arguments are:

- Local air, water, and soil pollution.

- Climate change 16±2% contribution.

- Antibiotic resistant bacteria evolution because the antibiotics over used in livestock are typically used in humans through the mostly different veterinary supply chain but they're the same fundamental molecules.

- Pandemic virus evolution due to both wildlife and (human, for now) workers getting very, very close to animals and animal waste crowded together creating a Petri dish. It's already happened several times throughout history.

jlaporte• 3 months ago

Treating protein as calories is a category error.

Fat and carbs are energy, properly treated as calories. Protein is not (in a non-starving person) used for energy, and it should be measured in grams not calories. The input calories weren't lost, they were converted to protein for use building body structure instead of energetic use.

If the authors wanted to make an honest argument here, they would show the relative conversion of feed calories to animal protein across different livestock.

enoint3• 3 months ago

I think the authors are sincere; the original title is "Only half of the calories produced on croplands are available as food for human consumption". The commenters here are talking about beef, with very little reflection on 16% of our farmed calories devoted to biofuels.

thedevilslawyer• 3 months ago

As a sidenote for this audience - this is multiple magnitudes higher global warming impact than AI. If anything this and daily commutes optimization are the key ways software engineers can directly impact carbon, way more than AI as a tool.

40% of lost calories globally are from beef, needing 33 cal of feed per 1 cal

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