Soooooooo "Roughage Products" which is fiber, that humans also need to eat BTW, is usually something like 25% of pelleted food. The main ingredient in pelleted food is usually digestible by humans and between 6% to 15% protein, it's like 25% to 30% depending on the pelleted food. Pound by pound going by the estimates that "eat cow advocates" use you need 12 pounds of food per pound of beef produced, if half of that is grass and half is balanced (which is about what you get for very fancy "grass fed" meat, because it's rated on % of life in grass at like 75%, but the cow eats way more when it's big), you are using around 1.5 pounds of grain per pound of beef. 12 pounds is the lowest estimate, it can go up to 20 or 22 pounds. Yeah corn and soy are less nutritious, but the reason those get planted industrially is that cows eat it. Other stuff like chickpea, rice, beans, hemp, could be grown instead of subsidized crop for cows and just feed cows grass and forage, which is better for the cows too.
In San Francisco right now there's no "entire life on farm" meat on the market. If I want to eat your "ideal cow" that eats _mostly_ inedible foods I have to buy land and raise it myself or get it alive from a farm. It's not a product one buys for human consumption. Cows in the US eat mostly human edible foods.
I don't think we had a famine in the last half century that was caused purely by production. The beauty of a working free market is that starving people are willing to pay quite a lot for cheap food, and so it's virtually impossible to starve just by being poor. The problem was always that the food couldn't get to them. I'd bet on a half-half mix of regulatory issues and fighting.
But yeah, production issues can increase price, which will create a whole lot of issues downstream - for example even if people won't literally starve, some of them won't be able to both eat and make rent. Which will predictably piss them off, and this is how you get Arab Spring as a consequence of corn ethanol.
> In San Francisco right now there's no "entire life on farm" meat on the market. If I want to eat your "ideal cow" that eats _mostly_ inedible foods I have to buy land and raise it myself or get it alive from a farm. It's not a product one buys for human consumption. Cows in the US eat mostly human edible foods.
Search for "100% grass fed beef". There are many ranches that sell it around the country, even in California. Some deliver, some sell in farmer's markets, and a few products are even available in markets like Sprouts.[1]
The fact that it's not available in most supermarkets could be fixed.
On other hand they can be grown where there is enough land and enough water... Just because parts of the world has lack of water doesn't mean there is lack everywhere. In many parts there is even enough rain.
Other factors aside, are you claiming that 100% grass fed beef is equivalent to grain finished cattle? I don't have any information to the contrary, and some do take liberties with terminology, but I'd be very interested to learn how this labeling is applied.
I see. I eat meat and I know about the issues (health wise and environmentally). I’m trending towards less, largely for health reasons.
My ideal world (in my head) is that human beings don’t interfere with animals at all (to eat, as pets, to showcase). We should interfere in only cases where it’s critical (like a natural disaster treating animals).
In San Francisco right now there's no "entire life on farm" meat on the market. If I want to eat your "ideal cow" that eats _mostly_ inedible foods I have to buy land and raise it myself or get it alive from a farm. It's not a product one buys for human consumption. Cows in the US eat mostly human edible foods.