Of the total area that is used by humans (Agriculture, Urban and Built-up Land),
- urban and built-up land is 1m km²,
- agriculture is 48m km²,
so agriculture is 48 of 49 millions km² used, that’s 98%. The remaining 2% are all streets and housing and other infrastructure together.
This chart also shows how terribly inefficient animal farming is.
Most pasture land isn’t suitable as farmland - there’s examples of overlap of course, but you really can’t draw that conclusion from the chart, it leaves out far too much information.
Okay, but can we stop using suitable farmland to grow corn cattle feed?
I’m wholly in support of this plan.
Yep for sure. The food grown to feed livestock (6M2 km) seems like it’s just feeding humans with extra steps. If you cut that out and feed humans directly. You’d still have livestock on grazing pad (32M2 km), just not the whole feedlot situation.
Yeah, and those extra steps require more land and more water and more transportation and more harvesting and more processing etc etc. Every extra step makes the whole system less efficient. We’re essentially sacrificing farmland.
We’re not sacrificing it, exactly the opposite; without the demand for plant products generated by animal ag, we wouldn’t be able to exploit all that farmland. You know, for money.
Most of the corn cattle are eating is the stalk and husks. The stuff we’re going to grow regardless and would otherwise throw away.
Near slaughter when they get fattened up on feed lots (called finishing) it’s mostly cracked corn grain, it’s more towards the beggining of life that they’re fed roughage with only a small amount of supporting grain.
During peacetime, all the corn fields kept operational with subsidy that just create corn which is fed to livestock seem like a waste.
But if China (or anybody else) pulls a fucky-wucky and makes it difficult to get food imported from outside the US, we slaughter the livestock and then have enough corn to feed the whole nation (and a lot of our allies). Without missing a beat.
Allies? Lol.
You really still see yourself as belonging to the nation that protects the world, don’t you? Despite everything.
Yeah. Trump told you not to rely on Russian gas and did you listen? No, you didnt and now you buy Russian gas (through India), thus funding Russia, while telling us to shoulder the majority of the burden of funding Ukraine. Just for one example.
This is true. But at the same time, the tradeoff I think more about isn’t pasture versus crop land, but pasture and crop land versus wild land. Personally, I really enjoy eating meat, and have no problem with its production in general. But I also think that we should reserve far more land for nature.
Imo, a good way to strike the balance is via pigouvian taxes. First, of course, a carbon tax. Animal agriculture creates a lot of carbon, so higher prices would drive consumers to lower-carbon alternatives. Then a land value tax - the trick would be deciding how much the intrinsic beauty of nature and access to it by the public is worth - but once we figure out a decent number, the scheme should work quite well. If you want to farm/ranch, you aren’t allowed to use up everyone else’s nature for free. Either generate enough money to pay the public back for using their nature, or bounce. And of course, better rules and oversight for animal welfare - I wanna eat meat, not meat produced with unnecessary suffering.
This combination of approaches would reduce meat consumption and land use in a fair and ethical way, while still not being overbearing or playing favorites by doing things like banning x or y. Unfortunately, this is very much a pipe dream - at least in the US right now, as we have, umm… more pressing issues.
If we stopped hurting animals we could rewild a lot more land. All that pasture, boom, back to the wild. Then, all the farmland used to grow feed for animals, split it up into what is necessary for human flourishing and then the rest can also go back to the wild.
That’s the efficient use of land to feed the maximum number of people while maintaining the maximum wild acreage.
If we stopped hurting animals
So you’re saying “if everyone went vegan/vegetarian…” And I have a lot of doubt about the practical viability of this plan. People have been eating animals longer than we’ve had money or governments… or fire. So I’m betting it would be a bit of a tough habit to break. Development of affordable lab-grown meat could go a long way - but my bet is that there will be subtle (or not so subtle) differences between lab grown and real meat for quite a while, and there would be an indefinite market (maybe luxury, maybe just middle class) for real meat for the forseeable future.
Hence, rather than relying on people to voluntarily reduce meat consumption (they won’t) or applying heavy-handed and clumsy tactics (banning meat, deciding who or what is worthy of meat and when), we simply apply a price signal and reasonable regulations. The animals live relatively happy lives in reasonable and sanitary conditions. Then one day they wander down a hallway and are popped in the forehead with a bolt, and that’s it. Then the levers of prices can be pulled to gradually push peoples choices in long-term pro-social directions - gradually reducing meat consumption over time in whatever way makes sense to them, while wild land increases and carbon emissions decrease.
It’s interesting that you think prices are voluntary.
If meat is too expensive for poor people to eat, then it’s the same as banning poor people from eating meat.
I don’t think I said that? But using price incentives allows people to make the choice between spending their money on the same amount of a now more expensive good, or to change their behavior somehow. Hence, a poor person who previously ate beef every day has a number of options such as eating beef only on certain days of the week, eating a smaller portion of beef each day, or eating a less expensive kind of meat.
If we recognize that meat production has negative externalities, then to reduce these externalities we need to reduce meat production, which will necessarily reduce meat consumption. Above you seemed to be implying that the ideal solution would be cessation of meat production entirely - which I have to point out, would also result in poor people being unable to eat meat. So, are you defending the right of the poor to eat meat, or do you want to take the meat off their plates?
Really I assume that what you are getting at is economic fairness, which is not something I bothered mentioning because it didn’t seem relevant to the point I was making. But anyway - pigouvian tax schemes are often paired with social benefits. The government uses the taxes raised to either facilitate the social change it wants to create (eg, using a carbon tax to fund transit improvements) or returns the funds to citizens directly as a dividend which offsets the cost of the increased price of goods (in this case, there would be a break even point somewhere around lower middle class where the dividend recieved would be greater than the increased price of meat).
Again, price “incentives” are just a ban for poor people. A poor person who can’t afford beef is banned from eating it. It’s basically illegal with extra steps, because they can’t afford to buy it and the only alternatives are illegal.
If we’re going to ban meat we should apply the ban equally and fairly, instead of just banning poor people.
Would you think, “I really enjoy sex with kids,” is a convincing position to take?
No, it doesn’t.
The entire mid- and western US is largely unable to grow crops - “this land was made for the buffalo, and hates the plow”.
See Bowl, Dust.
To make it grow crops, we’ve been pumping out a massive aquifer since the early 20th century. Subsidence caused by this is a major concern, in addition to the aquifer not refilling as fast as we use it.
In the western portions of CO, basically all of Wyoming, NM, Arizona (arid places), crops simply can’t grow at any significant level - but that land can grow crops for grazing animals, especially cows. Sheep and goats destroy such grazing land, which explains the conflict between cattlemen and sheepherders in the 19th century.
Really the entire breadbasket is naturally suited to cows, not crops, as it supported millions of bison.
You should probably read more before pontificating.
Yes, but you omitted all the croplands we use for feeding non-human animals.
Poore and Nemecek estimate that 50% of croplands are used for human food, 38% is for livestock feed and 12% is for non-food uses.
https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
Also, if our goal is to find the truth in all of this, why be mean?
They didn’t really omit that as an oversight, it’s just not relevant to their thesis - agricultural land used for animal feed is not super relevant to the disparity in land utilization, as 80% of all agricultural land usage is pasture/grazing. Only 7% of agricultural land is used for growing animal feed.
Agreed about being a little mean though, although I do sympathize with being frustrated about this as AG land use is a very often misunderstood statistic.
You raise some valid points, but I don’t see why it’s necessary to be so rude about it.
This is true, but personally, I vote that instead of cows we reintroduce the buffalo. Let the herds roam free across the land. Allow people to hunt the buffalo for food if they want - but you must use a bow or blackpowder rifle, and can only mount a horse or a bicycle.
A death from arrow wounds is absolutely agonizing, especially for a creature as large as a buffalo - it’s awful that we still allow it. But black powder is much more humane (relatively), and many states have black powder seasons - including several for buffalo. Though if we’re allowing black powder, we really should just let people use proper hunting rounds to minimize the suffering of the animal.
Black powder isn’t as humane a round if something goes wrong. Way better to hunt with a semi-auto, just in case you need a quick follow up shot.
A person concerned about being humane doesn’t murder vulnerable individuals in the first place.
Uhh what? I’m assuming you’re some militant vegan… people eat meat, that’s not going to stop ever.
assuming you’re some militant vegan
it’s worse than that: they’re an evangelical vegan
Beefalo
What do you think the buffalo live on genius ?
Animal food use should be pulled back a lot. But let’s also concentrate on how much of agriculture area is used for non-food.
I’d hazard a guess that is the point of the graphics considering the special markings highlighting the fact.
Weird to include textile farming with meats. Sure wool is a textile, but so is cotton, flax, wood fibre, jute, hemp etc.
It would have made more sense to divide agriculture into food agriculture and non-food agriculture. And then go into calorie supply.
i think the reason for that might be that some native communities actually use the same animal for multiple products, i.e. using sheep for their wool but also for their meat.
Not just native cultures. Very little of any animal goes to waste, from food to clothes to compost. If capitalism is good for anything, it’s finding value in every part.
Well done for mentioning hemp. Hemp’s actually a great example confounding the over-simplified division, being great for both food production and non-food production, like sheep too (for wool and meat). Efficient use would not be wasting anything from any production, further confounding the over-simplified division. Capitalist big industry has a bad habit of not doing that kind of efficiency though.
There is a “non-food crops” slice in the agricultural land part which seems to do exactly this though.
You can see this very clearly flying almost anywhere. It’s most obvious in places like the Midwest US, but even between cities in more densely populated regions, there’s so much farmland. Islands of concrete in oceans of ordered crop fields.
People will say this is vegan propaganda
this is vegan propaganda
people, come on man
It was the obvious joke reply. True or not, works either way. [Edit: and works either way as to whether replying to the original post or that reply.]
it certainly is, it’s just that vegan propaganda is nearly always true
Considering there is missing data, it is.
What fucking data do you think exists that changes this message. Seriously, even if it is off by a ridiculous factor, it still doesn’t change anything. You’re looking for any excuse.
Well, there could be way more sheep and goats than we think there is (since they include textiles in the livestock category).
Why are lakes, rivers, and coastal water bodies under habitable land?
Because they are habitable? You can build on them, or use boats and such to live on them.
But if we count boats, then a large part of the oceans should count as habitable as well.
And of that, 70% is used to host or feed animals. The waste is insane.
The big takeaway for me is that maybe we should cut down on animal protein and have more plant protein in our diets.
We feed livestock almost as much plant food as we do ourselves (6m2 km vs 8m2 km). Not to mention the space taken up for grazing uses most of our agricultural land.
I really hate the political meme of “they’re taking away our meat!” It’s been drummed up pre-emptively, before these sorts of illustrations can possibly take hold.
I saw this great documentary about a US Deep South native, a fried chicken lover, a CEO as white and conservative as you can get on a mission to develop the best plant-based chicken on Earth. This nut has frycooks in kitchens constantly testing it. And his pitch is awesome: it already tastes better, and if he could scale up, it’s cheaper, too. But anticompetitiveness in the global livestock industry, and PR smear campaigns, are apparently near insurmountable obstacles.
…I hate all that.
Truth doesn’t matter. Neither does practicality. It’s like we’re living in a cyberpunk novel already.
This does not even seem close to the truth. Just a gut feeling though, not proof of anything.
It does seem to be missing mining/quary land, logging operations, oil fields, non-urban infrastructure (like highways), and parkland that kinda straddles human and wild land.
Not sure any of those other than the parks would add up to over 1%, though.
Around where I am, I could believe it, though. Outside of the cities, there’s many areas where you just see farm fields split up by roads and power lines from horizon to horizon.
It’s close, I worked on a paper pretty much doing exactly this a while back and we had included all of this, metal and oil extraction, all roads, railways, even golf courses on top of your housing. We were at 1.2% of world’s land usage. So I’m sure whatever they got is sensible.
Logging might be missing, but in our data logging was part of forests. So it ties in that regard.
Most unsustainable “logging land” is basically turned into grazing land. Brazil and the cut rainforests are a great example. But logging can be quite sustainable too: with some caveats, that can basically count as forest.
Oil fields are tiny, and share lands with other projects. See: west Texas, with cattle and windmills on the same land as the wells.
Parkland is often more “wild” than actual wild. Especially nature reserves.
IDK about highway statistics, but they really don’t take up a lot of physical land. Though their effect of dividing wilds is certainly understated in the graph.
IDK about mining either, but also it doesn’t seem like this would take up a ton of land. It’s really concentrated by necessity, and the worst environmental effects are usually related to pollutants or other knock-on effects.
The one fishy thing to me is grazing land. In places like Africa, there are lots of tribes and other low tech herders, and if you walk around, it really feels like their unfenced areas straddle the line between wilds and grazing lands. It’s nothing like (say) west Texas with vast fields of clearly dedicated grazing land.
Just a reminder that the peaty lands or vast tundras that are only suitable for grazing sheep and goats, or horses are likely also included into these statistics.
If you want to have a more visual perspective, you can check this brazilian project that tracks land cover in Brazil:
https://plataforma.brasil.mapbiomas.org/coverage/coverage_lcluAll in yellow is pasture, and in pink, cropland. The site also allows to see change over the years
14% barren land seems low to me.
essentially all deserts
basically all areas that are bright yellow on this map :)
That’s what I mean. 14% seems low just from eyeballing it. I guess if people live there, no matter how few, it gets counted as ‘habitable’. It always blows my mind when you zoom in on some of the most inhospitable places on Earth, you’ll still see little pockets of humanity eking out an existence there.
I guess if people live there, no matter how few, it gets counted as ‘habitable’.
My guess is
- barren land = little water. there’s probably a maximum amount of precipitation it must have a year.
- glaciers = no energy. there’s probably an upper limit on average yearly temperature or sth
- habitable land = has both water and sunlight (literally anything plants need to thrive)
High elevation land in the Himalayas and South America is unusable. Also land in the arctic zone in Europe and North America.
Deserts are not actually barren.
I believe It’s close, I worked on a paper about a decade ago, and our numbers were not too dissimilar, actually it’s ridiculous how similar they are. We went with the most extensive data hunt on land usage. We had non-arable land at 14.7%, which rounded up to 15% in our summary. We got multiple sources for global precipitation levels. We got registries from US, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Canada, Australia, etc totalling 65 countries, we extrapolated the rest, our extrapolation was actually 70% of the paper. We back tallied registry numbers with global weather data.
Forests are not used by humans?
