2020-08-18, 04:53 AM
Well, I had been a little baffled by that sentiment, tim (that ending animal agriculture would be disastrous and catastrophic for humanity), which you've expressed several times now in this exchange, and which until now I've just let pass by, because you had said that you didn't want to get into a debate - and as I would have required further clarification as to what on Earth you meant, it seemed best just to let it pass by.
However, your reference to "starving" people seems to suggest that you think that the disaster and catastrophe is that there would not be enough food to go around without animal agriculture. I respond to that argument on the page to which I referred earlier under The conversion of inedible vegetation argument.
In summary, in case you don't care to click on that link, data from reports by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations demonstrate that - because many animals are fed cereal in feedlots - globally, by weight, we feed almost three times as much cereal to animals as we gain in meat from them. Ceasing to farm animals altogether would thus result in a net gain in food availability for humans, regardless of any loss of productivity due to no longer grazing otherwise unproductive land (because we could eat that cereal ourselves rather than feeding it to animals and having it reduced in weight by a factor of three as it is converted into meat).
However, your reference to "starving" people seems to suggest that you think that the disaster and catastrophe is that there would not be enough food to go around without animal agriculture. I respond to that argument on the page to which I referred earlier under The conversion of inedible vegetation argument.
In summary, in case you don't care to click on that link, data from reports by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations demonstrate that - because many animals are fed cereal in feedlots - globally, by weight, we feed almost three times as much cereal to animals as we gain in meat from them. Ceasing to farm animals altogether would thus result in a net gain in food availability for humans, regardless of any loss of productivity due to no longer grazing otherwise unproductive land (because we could eat that cereal ourselves rather than feeding it to animals and having it reduced in weight by a factor of three as it is converted into meat).