That's the main reason a lot of companies are working on lab-grown meat. If they manage to get it cheaper than cows, the impact will be enormous. In principle it should be possible, since it requires far less resources.

The recent book Clean Meat covers the field in detail. Steaks will be a while, but for ground meat we're a lot closer than I'd expected. Dairy is even easier: no cells, just fats, sugars, and proteins that can be produced by engineered yeast.

(The book also has a chapter on just going vegan, but points out that despite decades of advocacy, people's behavior has barely changed. When people can afford meat, they eat it, and it's been that way for pretty much all of human history.)

The land used for feed is super low-value land that has no better use. It does contribute a bit to global warming though. The collective action problem we have to solve in order to stop global warming is much more difficult than just getting people to stop eating beef. If you believe feeding livestock in the most cost-effective manner available is wasteful, then there must be an implied route toward less waste. Maybe:

-the government should decree beef and pork illegal

-or implement some sort of high tax or cap and trade measure for livestock and meat

-and perform a massive propoganda campaign to teach people that they should raise their own chickens, eat more beans, and eat less meat/protein overall.

The problem of people not starving to death around the world is not an issue of food supply, it is an issue of food distribution.

Feeding the world's hungry hasn't been about agricultural output for a long time- it's more about transportation and distribution.

> What about the gigantic consumption of water this implies?

The water isn't destroyed. It goes right back into the ecosystem. The planet surface is 70% water. We aren't running out of water.

> how many people could we feed? The US could probably feed the entire world with meat, with unlimited energy / $$. People going hungry is not a food production problem, it's an economic and logistic problem. If we use plant based food, we could probably feed 3X the world problem (or use 1/3rd the land). World hunger isn't caused by lack of productive land.

Your other point on meat requires more land use and energy than plant food is correct.

Sure, 70% of the earths surface is water. 97.5% being salt water and 2.5% being fresh water. You can't use sea water to irrigate agriculture. You can't drink sea water from the faucet. Additional money/ cost and work would be need to make the water drinkable. Please consider that many states like California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, water is a valuable resource. And yes, we are running out of cheap drinkable water. That's why most of the west coast gets most of their water all the way from Colorado.

desalination exists. the key word in is cheap. It's an economic and energy problem, not a water resource problem. They get water from Colorado because its cheaper than desalination. Once it's not, they will get water from the ocean.

also, all water requires money / energy to process before we drink it or use it on crops. It's just a matter of much money / energy you use depending on the source.

This is indeed an incredible inefficiency to say the least. Going vegan is the single biggest way you can have a positive impact on climate change[1]. It's also really simple to do! And you can even get free support and dietary advise over at challenge22.com when you're ready to make the transition. The animals, the planet, and your body will be better off as a result.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

You're comparing alfalfa and oranges. You're not going to grow wheat on pastureland that can support sheep or cattle. Much less other vegetables.

You're also making the assumption that agricultural land is a resource that needs conservation, when there is a massive surplus of it. We've allowed huge tracts to revert to forest on the east coast.

Allowing more to revert to forest would help moderate CO2 levels. Assuming, that is, we didn't do what we're doing with U.S southeastern forests: converting vast areas into wood pellets, so they can be fed into power plants in Europe.

65% of the grain grown in the US is fed to animals:

https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel...

Start feeding that directly to people instead and you can use the rest of that land a lot more efficiently. And that's not even addressing all the other nasty externalities of breeding that many animals.

More efficiently for what?

Just because there is a surplus of agricultural does mean we should use it.

The one that we use is already causing massive environmental problems.

Grasing is not an inocous activity, there are the methane emissions that are very impactful.

I'm sure I'm misunderstanding you but... How is conservation of agricultural land not important?

I mean, isn't not being good stewards of the land what gave us the dust bowl?

Conservation isn't the best word there. Maybe optimization is better. It's not scarce, we don't need to agonize over calorie outputs per acre. And if you're going to do that, you don't want to be intensively farming most of this cattle country - there's one of the reasons for the dust bowl.

Ah okay, that makes more sense. Thanks.

From a resource perspective there is no surplus, due to opportunity costs in land conversion. Mid-term prospects for meeting global food demand boil down to increasing production yields. (Sure, distant technology will probably change this a bit).

http://www.futuredirections.org.au/publication/the-future-pr...