The whole point is that you need way more crops in general to "produce" the same amount of calories & proteins. That's because feeding the animals with crops instead of eating them is highly inefficient in comparison to eating them directly.
"As an example: beef has an energy efficiency of about 2%. This means that for every 100 kilocalories you feed a cow, you only get 2 kilocalories of beef back."
With how much meat is eaten right now, there is just no way we have enough grazing land to produce enough meat. 99% of meat comes from factory farms. [1] These animals are always fed with crops, so there will always be land usage to product food for animals. And it is way more inefficient.
"If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land.
Of all the land we use for agriculture, 77% of it is used for livestock."
These 77% are only responsible for 18% of the produced calories and 37% of the produced proteins.
So, if you leave out water consumption and most importantly animal walfare, eating meat is the worst thing you can to for the environment (when talking about food).
Does someone know why the counter for this issue is at "70", but the repo only shows "21" issues in total? Maybe there are deleted issues that are not part of the total counter?
If you look at the land usage for animal products and compare it to their calorie & protein supply, the story gets even worse.
In short:
Of all agricultural land, ~77% is used for meat/dairy production.
This 77% are responsible for only 18% of the calories and 37% of proteins, the rest comes from the plants in our diet.
The numbers may vary a bit, but the scale stays the same. It's ridiculous.
Of all the cropland we have, 57% is used to produce human food and 43% is used to produce animal food.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets#more-plant-based-d...
The whole point is that you need way more crops in general to "produce" the same amount of calories & proteins. That's because feeding the animals with crops instead of eating them is highly inefficient in comparison to eating them directly. "As an example: beef has an energy efficiency of about 2%. This means that for every 100 kilocalories you feed a cow, you only get 2 kilocalories of beef back."
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets#livestock-waste-a-...
With how much meat is eaten right now, there is just no way we have enough grazing land to produce enough meat. 99% of meat comes from factory farms. [1] These animals are always fed with crops, so there will always be land usage to product food for animals. And it is way more inefficient.
[1]: https://www.livekindly.com/99-animal-products-factory-farms/