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.

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[–] 78 points 10 months ago (66 children)

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.

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  • [–] 74 points 10 months ago* (12 children)

    Okay, but can we stop using suitable farmland to grow corn cattle feed?

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  • [–] 18 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 16 points 10 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago*

    At that point we don't need to farm animals.

    Best thing to do at that point would be to outlaw breeding of new farm animals, send the remaining ones to sanctuaries, and let them live the rest of their lives out on their own terms. Might need to sterilize as well.

    All of this would aim to restore natural populations of cows, pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, etc. in the world to native levels. And if those animals aren't native, then imo there is no reason to help sustain them. Release to the wild at some point and let nature take it's course. Of course, this also means restoring natural predators to ecosystems like wolves, which would help keep populations in check.

    Those species that are native, however, but are declining and on the brink of extinction: those we should focus on for conservation and regeneration.

    It's a tough balance, but it can be done ethically

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago

    The US could feed its own population multiple times over if we used something like 30% of our current agricultural farmland subject to growing animal feed instead for growing things like corn, soybean, and wheat, as well as vegetables and fruit.

    We'd still need to import some stuff, but we could cover the vast majority of Americans' nutrition doing this WHILE at the same time re-wilding the country and helping restore biodiversity.

    Hope to see this shift in my lifetime

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago*

    Y'all are threatening to kill your "allies" while trying to overthrow their democracies. You have no allies, and you sure as shit wouldn't try to help them in a food shortage.

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 15 points 10 months ago*

    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.

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  • [–] 23 points 10 months ago

    It's not only pastures. Growing animal feed is vastly less efficient than growing food for humans directly. We could stop farming animals, use some of that land for growing human food, rewild the excess, and rewild the pastures.

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago (51 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago* (6 children)

    Passive aggressive ad hominem.

    Either engage directly with the portion of the argument you take issue with, or ask for clarification regarding the comment.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago* (4 children)

    Isolate the nihilistic portions of text, quote them, explain why they are nihilistic to all the thread readers and the OP.

    Then inquire if the person you're confronting stands by that or has a different take in it.

    Or, be rude and make it more reddit-like.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago*

    I mean, it sounds like you've studied the philosophy more than I have. I did a bit of reading into it in my teen and college years, and got frustrated by the fact that every time I found an argument that seemed like the answer, another argument would come along and undermine it. There is a saying in philosophy, something like "it's not about getting answers, it's about asking the questions." And once I figured that out, I mostly lost interest, because I wanted answers, dammit.

    The answers I came up with were that:

    1. As an average individual, just don't be a dick. You have an intrinsic internal moral compass that will point you more or less in the right direction. You aren't the type to go on a murdering spree, and you don't have the power to have any real impact on other peoples lives. So chill out, be nice to people, and go actually live your life rather than studying moral philosophy.

    2. People or institutions with significant amounts of power should actually think about the impact their actions and policies will have. You are not one of these, so your opinion doesnt really matter - but it is fun to pontificate anyway!

    represent contradictions,

    In my experience, trying to live without contradictions ends up being quite onerous. To actually get anything done in life, at a certain point you need to accept the fact that you are human and have contradictions, shrug, say "fuck it", and just start doing something.

    obligate nihilists

    I had to look up what this is, and it seems like you're saying I'm a moral relativist. Which... yes. I am. And it seems really obvious that this is true. At the end of the day, I have my own intuitive sense of ethics, others have theirs, and we mostly agree, and so we live in relative harmony. If there were greater disagreements, there might be less harmony - but I have yet to run into many people with whom my ethics didn't harmonize on a day to day basis (and those who did, I simply stopped spending time with), and so it isnt something I really need to delve deeply into.

    It’s why we had slavery for 10,000 years and Donald Trump is currently in office. There are lots of reasons why people suck at ethics, but it’s mainly lack of education

    There is some psychological bias that is at play here that I can't remember the name of. But it is basically the fact that intelligent and educated people are no better than dumb and uneducated people at arriving at true conclusions to emotionally charged questions. The dumb person will say "well I like it, so fuck you". But the intelligent person will use their superior intellectual ability to construct complex, abstract justifications for their preexisting beliefs and say "and therefore I'm right, so fuck you."

    Anyway, I feel like this effect is at play right now, because you clearly care a lot about philosophy. But the idea that more ethics education would lead more people to making more ethical descisions is laughable. My bet is that the main result would be more internally consistent logic in the loonies' manifestos. Sure, maybe Kant derived the ethics of each of his daily actions from first principles - but also, Kant never got laid, so you've got a uphill battle trying to sell that way of life to the average person. People - including educated people - make most of their daily descisions based on practical considerations - often subconsciously. The way to get people to behave more ethically is to change their environment and social group - not to put their noses in books.

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  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    Tacking "no offense" and "genuine question" onto what is essentially "Hey is your moral view the most basic possible description of authoritarianism or are you smarter than that?" really doesn't help it not be offensive or make you sound genuine. If you're sincere in those statements, I really suggest you rephrase this because right now it reads as extremely patronizing.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    No. I guess if I really had to peg my ethical system down, I would choose rule utilitarianism or something similar. But practically, I just try to be nice to people and to do what I feel is the right thing, which I know via what is revealed to me directly via a lifetime of emotional experiences after interacting with others and making various choices.

    But I'm confused - why do you ask?

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago*

    Well, some of your opinions made me think you were concerned with the suffering of animals (human and non), while others made me think you were not so concerned. This sort of juxtaposition is common, and it made me wonder about the way you see the world.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (36 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (34 children)

    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).

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago* (33 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago* (24 children)

    "Just because they're poor doesn't mean they shouldn't get the option to contribute to the suffering caused by the meat industry" is the weirdest take I have ever seen on this subject. I'm not sure I disagree, just, I think your priorities may need some examination.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago* (22 children)

    No I know what you meant - but this just seems like a "have cake / eat cake" issue. For example: you may have noticed that there are far more poor people than there are rich people. If the goal is to minimize animal suffering and reduce the impact on the climate, banning poor people from eating meat would be a great way to do it.

    I just don't think there's a feasible way to rapidly reduce meat consumption without creating an incidental luxury market, and being concerned about that is (to my mind) almost a parody of equality. Yes, the rich suck. But being forced to tailor a good solution to the incredibly pressing problem just to make sure the rich don't get to exercise the incredibly vast, nearly all-encompassing privilege they already luxuriate in is an unreasonably large burden to attach to an already almost insurmountable task.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (20 children)

    This is ignoring what they actually said, which is a great deal more nuanced than the perhaps overly reductive way you're presenting it here. They very explicitly address setting these rates to reduce meat consumption in low income brackets, not prevent it entirely, presumably with the intention of adjusting those rates to see a steady reduction of meat's share of the average diet without causing undue hardship as people transition to a plant based diet.

    Again I do understand what you're saying, I just think it's a bit of an absurd thing to earnestly argue. Every solution does not need to address every issue in society - inequality can be addressed independently and the more pressing concern is reducing the harm done to both animals and the climate. Theirs is a good solution - it is not perhaps ideal, but it is more feasible than any other proposal I've yet seen.

    (aside from all that, the argument that their plan might be the inciting incident that sparks a broad proletarian upheaval of society is a really poor argument if you're trying to convince me we shouldn't do this...)

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (18 children)

    as they march vegans like me into gas chambers.

    Okay, I think this has gone beyond the point of where it needs to be treated with any degree of seriousness. I've never encountered a vegan that was more concerned with the social inequality of the poor not being allowed to eat meat than they were with people eating meat at all before, so congrats this has been a unique experience.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (8 children)

    I’m slightly exaggerating, but it would absolutely empower reactionary conspiracy theories and give them ammunition to draw disaffected poor whites into their echo chambers. There’s already a persistent conspiracy theory that the (((global elites))) are conspiring to stop white people from eating meat (to make them weaker and less masculine) and this would just empower them.

    I fail to see how your counterproposal to outright ban meat would not lead to this same scenario (probably faster).

    Also, you're ignoring the option to provide a divedend (monthly, if you like) to citizens from the tax revenue to offset increased meat prices. With the dividend, the poor would be largely unaffected, and mostly the result would be the middle class reducing their meat consumption from excessive to moderate.

    Also also, you keep talking about how this scheme bans poor people from eating meat. But I have to say, this reminds me of the criticism that gas taxes hurt poor people since now they have to pay more for gas - ignoring the fact that many poor people simply don't drive cars, because they are too poor to afford them. And so a gas tax spent on improving transit ends up helping the poorest, because what people need is transportation, not cheap gas.

    Also also also, if this sort of scheme were ever implemented, I highly doubt it would result in widespread food riots like you see in a developing nation when they are literally starving in the streets. Worst case, it would result in the people who implemented it being voted out of office and having the policy rolled back. And with a dividend program and a gradual pricing rollout, this would be even less likely.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    Meatless Mondays happened. It’s definitely possible to ration meat.

    Confused. I remember this being a volutary phenomenon with individual participation. Maybe a few university cafeterias participated. Not a government mandate for no meat sales on Mondays.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (4 children)

    WWII rationing wasn't meatless mondays, I don't... buddy.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

    Why not just own the mistake, instead of presenting a totally separate concept as though you were correct in the first place? That would be fine, we all screw up. Getting hostile when someone gets exasperated because you're trying to cover for a mistake in a clunky way is the opposite of productive.

    (edit: You've edited your comment since I wrote this to include the second line. No, the two are extremely different programs that are not at all comparable and your meaning changes completely when moving between the two.)

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Why not just point out that I made a mistake, instead of making-

    I don’t… buddy.

    -snide comments like that? It was clearly meant to humiliate me for making a mistake.

    You mocked me, so I got hostile.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago*

    No that was meant to criticize your behavior. If you want to be treated with respect, reciprocate in kind. Seriously, that was an insulting thing for you to have done in the first place. People were engaging with you more or less from an assumption that you were serious, even though what you're saying is pretty absurd - but you're not going to give them credit for being sincere with you, and now you're trying to present like I did a bad thing?

    Buddy.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (7 children)

    So we can't do vegan social policies because the... white supremacists might use that as evidence of a secret jewish conspiracy to stop them eating meat in order to make them less manly.

    And that's your real concern.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (5 children)

    okay, nobody has proposed that as a solution. Also that's... insane.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (3 children)

    ... Is this a prank? Am I taking the bait? What is happening.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    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

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    It doesnt seem that complicated. The government gave people free money during covid just fine. Could be a monthly dividend

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    It would need to be a weekly dividend,

    I've only ever been paid monthly or bimonthly, ut whatever. This is a nuts and bolts issue, and doesnt impact the actual concept.

    government shutdowns,

    Don't do that. No other country does that.

    landlord

    Fun fact - land value taxes are even better for prompting markets to build additional housing! I also have a whole spiel on urban land use reform, but that's for another time.

    every grocery store would raise the prices of meat alternatives

    Under reasonable market conditions, yes, there might be a brief price increase when the policy went into effect - especially if rollout were not handled appropriately. But the nice thing about markets is that high prices prompt more competition - if veggie burgers cost $0.15 to make and sell for $15 because there is a shortage, it won't be long before competitors enter the market and flood it with cheaper alternatives.

    Under reasonable market conditions. I'm aware that there is some reasonable suspicion of price collusion happeing between national grocery suppliers, and that should be dealt with. But it should be dealt with regardless of the policy I'm proposing.

    price controls, rent controls,

    Absolutely not. This would be taking a sound economic policy and then blowing up the economy with objectively bad economic policy. Markets only work when prices can change in response to market conditions. If you have a shortage of something like housing or veggie burgers which is distorting the market, you want to incentivize the creation of more of it (while identifying and elimiating - within reason - barriers to production). Price controls do the opposite, worsening shortages. You want high prices to bring more sellers to the market

    it’s more complicated

    I mean, this is true of everything, is it not?

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    Artificially raising prices is also a form of price control.

    Price controls and rent controls can also be accompanied by state intervention in the supply side, to prevent shortages. High prices are effectively a ban on the poor having access, and besides, markets are so 20th century. We have the computing power now to entirely replace them with central planning. Let's use those data centers for something important, instead of generating slop.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    What's the argument for having equality of outcome? I don't think I've ever encountered anyone in support of this before.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago*

    I covered this in my other replies, but there's two elements at play.

    The first is that unequal access to food will create resentment, as poor people are forced to cut back or seek alternatives while rich people are unaffected. Resentment leads to resistance, and before you know it you have food riots. People will fight back, and maybe violently, which leads to the second element: high food prices are one of the major causes for government collapse.

    Messing with access to food is the best way to get people to revolt, but in the absence of a revolutionary movement they're just going to listen to whichever charismatic leader blames the (((NWO globalist agenda))) for taking away meat and uses the nostalgia of "LOOK AT WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU" to whip people into a violent frenzy. If you take away their meat, they'll eat you.

    It has to be fair or it won't be sustainable.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago

    Eating animals causes unnecessary suffering though.

    It's unnecessary because you can get all of your nutrition through plant-based sources. And if that's not enough, there are plant-based meat alternatives as well as lab grown meat on the horizon.

    You don't have a need to eat meat because you have options to eat other things that cause less to no suffering.

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