@ Radish:
How many publications do I need to cite, indicating that this is exactly what is being argued for, before you will accede?
Bland arguments about land use that fail to account for the devil living in the details, lead to exactly this conclusion, unless that devil is brought to dinner. The argument "Nobody argues that" is a lie. It is argued quite frequently, and is quite central to many vegan dogmatic statements.
Here is how it leads to that conclusion:
The assertion that cattle cultivation requires 30x as much total acreage as potato, carries implicit assumptions. 1) We could feed tremendously more people if we raised potatoes instead of cows (which I hope by now, Myself and Reelya have sufficiently driven home the absurdity of), and 2) It is desirable to not utilize that land for cattle production. (which again, I certainly hope I have been successful in pointing out quite clearly how this is not the case if you are at all interested in economically viable ecological preservation of native grassland biomes.)
If we feed in the prefaced rationale from your Vox article, this becomes quite clear.
Worldwide demand for crops is increasing rapidly due to global population growth, increasedbiofuel production, and changing dietary preferences. Meeting these growing demands will bea substantial challenge that will tax the capability of our food system and prompt calls todramatically boost global crop production.
EG, they are asserting that the primary motivator here, is a desire to get the most out of land utility, so that crop production can be maximized, because of the growing world population. Agreed so far? Let's continue then.
However, to increase food availability, we may alsoconsider how the world’s crops are allocated to different uses and whether it is possible to feedmore people with current levels of crop production. Of particular interest are the uses of cropsas animal feed and as biofuel feedstocks. Currently, 36% of the calories produced by theworld’s crops are being used for animal feed, and only 12% of those feed calories ultimatelycontribute to the human diet (as meat and other animal products).
Ahh--- DO note how they state "feed calories." They do not seem to make the necessary distinction between where silage comes from, and its production as a calorie source. Specifically, silage comes from crops havested WHILE GREEN. This is things like sweet corn, mostly. Corn produces very few human-usable calories per acre, but produces considerably more "animal-usable" calories per acre. This fact is precisely why it is leveraged as a fodder for cattle. The appropriate question the Vox researcher needs to be asking, is not "How can those calories be used by humans", but instead "Is it possible to get more human-usable calories from land that grows corn well, by planting some other, more human-profitable (calorie wise) crop?" That does not seem to be the question that they ask though. Instead, they focus on cows for some reason. As Reelya points out, quite correctly, their approach also does not pay any attention to economic concerns. Corn silage is very inexpensive to process; the biggest cost center is the fuel and fertilizer needed to grow the corn plants it is made from (which is a burden shared with direct-to-human corn production, and is probably being calculated TWICE, because of laziness. That cost happens only one time, for BOTH crop components), and the fuel needed to chop it up and store it in a big metal silage bin. Other than that, it's just ground up corn plants, fed to cows in the winter. Without the cows eating it, there would be a cost center involved in how to dispose of the useless biomass.
Additionally, human-ediblecalories used for biofuel production increased fourfold between the years 2000 and 2010, from1% to 4%, representing a net reduction of available food globally.
This is at least a valid concern; Biofuel is a nonstarter, economically. It is really only produced because of kickbacks and subsidies. It costs more energy to produce the fuel than you get back out of it. It's a loss leader right out of the gate. It should not be done. Ever. (At least as concerns corn ethanol based biofuel anyway. Switchgrass, and other cellulosic ethanol production on the other hand? That's another ball of wax, and gets back to the "marginal land use" clusterfuck of willful misconceptions.)
In this study, we re-examineagricultural productivity, going from using the standard definition of yield (in tonnes perhectare, or similar units) to using the number of people actually fed per hectare of cropland.We find that, given the current mix of crop uses, growing food exclusively for direct humanconsumption could, in principle, increase available food calories by as much as 70%, whichcould feed an additional 4 billion people (more than the projected 2–3 billion people arrivingthrough population growth).
MY! Such a claim! Let's go examine their methods section!
Increasing demand for meat and dairy is also of importance to the global environment because their productionrequires more land and other resources than plant-basedfoods [8–10].
Awwww-- here we are back at "total land use" again. Well, let's dig deeper, maybe they aren't being complete tools. Let's examine their citations.
Citation 8's abstract:
Abstract
Vast amounts of land are required for the production of food, but the area suitable for growing crops is limited. In this paper, attention is paid to the relationship between food consumption patterns and agricultural land requirements. Land requirements per food item that were determined in a previous study are combined with data on the per capita food consumption of various food packages, varying from subsistence to affluent, leading to information on land requirements for food. Large differences could be shown in per capita food consumption and related land requirements, while food consumption, expenditure, and the physical consumption of specific foods change rapidly over time. A difference of a factor of two was found between the requirements for existing European food patterns, while the land requirement for a hypothetical diet based on wheat was six times less than that for an existing affluent diet with meat.
Nope, that's totally total land use, that carries the implicit assumptions that are completely bogus. NEXT.
Citation 9 abstract:
Abstract
Growing global population figures and per-capita incomes imply an increase in food demand and pressure to expand agricultural land. Agricultural expansion into natural ecosystems affects biodiversity and leads to substantial carbon dioxide emissions.
Considerable attention has been paid to prospects for increasing food availability, and limiting agricultural expansion, through higher yields on cropland. In contrast, prospects for efficiency improvements in the entire food-chain and dietary changes toward less land-demanding food have not been explored as extensively. In this study, we present model-based scenarios of global agricultural land use in 2030, as a basis for investigating the potential for land-minimized growth of world food supply through: (i) faster growth in feed-to-food efficiency in animal food production; (ii) decreased food wastage; and (iii) dietary changes in favor of vegetable food and less land-demanding meat. The scenarios are based in part on projections of global food agriculture for 2030 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO. The scenario calculations were carried out by means of a physical model of the global food and agriculture system that calculates the land area and crops/pasture production necessary to provide for a given level of food consumption.
In the reference scenario – developed to represent the FAO projections – global agricultural area expands from the current 5.1 billion ha to 5.4 billion ha in 2030. In the faster-yet-feasible livestock productivity growth scenario, global agricultural land use decreases to 4.8 billion ha. In a third scenario, combining the higher productivity growth with a substitution of pork and/or poultry for 20% of ruminant meat, land use drops further, to 4.4 billion ha. In a fourth scenario, applied mainly to high-income regions, that assumes a minor transition towards vegetarian food (25% decrease in meat consumption) and a somewhat lower food wastage rate, land use in these regions decreases further, by about 15%.
Research highlights
► FAO projections imply that global agricultural area may expand by 280 Mha in 2030. ► Faster growth in livestock productivity may decrease global area by 230 Mha in 2030. ► 20% substitution of ruminant meat may decrease area by an additional 480 Mha.
This actually looks like they are trying. However, this is not an argument for veganism, but more toward reduction of meat consumption consistent with maintaining existing levels of meat production (which already leverage existing grass biomes maximally, and thus cannot be realistically expanded) in the face of rising demand-- BUT IGNORING ECONOMIC REALITY. (EG, as demand increases, the sale price of the product will increase, and the profit motive to produce the meat will increase. See Reelya's angle.) The only way to achieve their model is to impose artificial controls on the entire global market. That is a non-starter. NEXT.
Citation 10.
Whole article available. (funny how they did not give a link.)
Here's the abstract though:
ABSTRACTWorldwide, an estimated 2 billion people liveprimarily on a meat-based diet, while an estimated 4 billion liveprimarily on a plant-based diet. The US food production systemuses about 50% of the total US land area, 80% of the fresh water,and 17% of the fossil energy used in the country. The heavydependence on fossil energy suggests that the US food system,whether meat-based or plant-based, is not sustainable. The use ofland and energy resources devoted to an average meat-based dietcompared with a lactoovovegetarian (plant-based) diet is analyzedin this report. In both diets, the daily quantity of calories consumedare kept constant at about 3533 kcal per person. The meat-basedfood system requires more energy, land, and water resources thanthe lactoovovegetarian diet. In this limited sense, the lactoovoveg-etarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet.
FUNNY HOW EVERY ONE OF THESE IS ABOUT TOTAL LAND USE.
I am being quite stark with this inquiry-- How many do I need to directly cite, before you will accede? Because I will totally do it.