Limits to sustainable animal consumption
Vegans rightly point out that meat-containing diets require more land (and thus more deforestation) since feeding animals is a net loss of protein and calories. But...
Pro-meat folks rightly point out that some land is only suited for grazing animals.
This raises a more important question:
- If farm animals only ever ate...
- grasses and other plants from pasture & range, and
- the parts of food crops that humans can't eat
(...)( for example corn cobs after the kernels have been removed (ruminants can digest certain kinds of fibrous matter that other species can't) ) ,
- and never...
- human-edible food crops
(...)( including corn and soy as those could be made into flour ) , nor - crops grown specifically for animal feed,
- human-edible food crops
- how much animal protein
(...)( from meat, milk and/or eggs etc ) could be produced?
Clearly it's less than the status quo, as there are fewer sources of feed. But how much less?
Analysis in progress - someone is working on this research.
Results will be posted here soon ♥