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A comment on Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says. Parent comment

Re:Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction,... by _Microft on Monday May 06, 2019 @10:25AM (#19839663)
Reason is biology/physics. You need ten times the biomass to create an equivalent biomass at a trophic level that is one higher. It HAS to be more inefficient to eat meat instead of crops because it raises your trophic level by 1.

(Worst case is eating what were apex predators like e.g. tuna fish)

About trophic levels:

Level 1 are producers like plants. Herbivores are level 2, carnivores eating herbivores are level 3, carnivores eating carnivores are level 4 and then there's the apex predator that is not eaten by anything, usually.

Some links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency#Ten_perc...

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Re:Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction,... by eMSF on Monday May 06, 2019 @12:52PM (#19841241)
Well... except for the fact that I don't have a gut to make use of any of the biomass that grazing cattle can harvest from a field. And eaten or not, that biomass is part of active carbon cycle, and if left on the field, will decompose back into the atmosphere.
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Re:Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction,... by _Microft on Monday May 06, 2019 @05:01PM (#19843840)
About 36% of all crops were used to feed lifestock in 2017. [0], table on page 7 (PDF page numbers).

So - no need to graze.

[0] http://www.fao.org/3/ca0239en/CA0239EN.pdf

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