This seems to suggest that you think our meat comes from animals who kinda exist and compete mutually with crops when actually we feed most of our crops to animals.

If there was an ecological disaster that killed crop production, we wouldn't waste it by feeding it to animals for a grossly inefficient luxury item.

It's like when people try to make a "pro-meat" claim by pointing out how much water it takes to grow a pound of almonds, only possible because they never looked up how much water it took to grow a pound of beef.

> If there was an ecological disaster that killed crop production, we wouldn't waste it by feeding it to animals for a grossly inefficient luxury item.

This is what I interpreted the parent comment as saying.

Most animals can feed on wild grasses which we can't digest. They can serve us with a lot of resources and stay alive too (milk, wool, eggs). But if the event is so severe that even grass is gone, then rats are left and canibalism.

A good point.

Also:

https://www.covercropstrategies.com/articles/1368-adding-hay...

There's also strong logic in having hay as part of crop rotation, which as we know, is vital to reduce the need for fertilizer.

On top of this, there's loads of land useless for anything other than grazing. Too dry, with no irrigation (only usable for grazing in the spring). Too rocky, too much of a slope, soil quality not right (too much clay, etc, etc), yet still able to support grasses.

There's a lot of grazing done, in and outside of the US.

Lastly, and this was mentioned GP, it's vital to produce more than we eat each year. Extremely vital. Part of all the subsidies we have, is to ensure farmers DO grow more than required.

To ensure that the free market, doesn't bottom out pricing too much, because we have farmers over producing. If you want to start removing subsidies, then you should first ensure people have a year's worth of canned emergency food on hand.

If people get hungry, that's where the knives come out. If your kid is hungry, you're going to feed it.

That's what I meant by meat pyramid (we're both arguing the same point)

Government encouraging overproduction of food makes absolute sense. It's this or to store backup because to run food production at an efficient "only as much as I needed" models a disaster waiting to happen.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines

Historically, governments would operate grains silos and be an intermediate purchaser, to control the cost of grain - keep it slightly higher in good years, and keep it stable in bad years by dipping into reserves.

IIRC a lot of countries were forced to abolish these price controls by the WTO, and then were screwed over when they got a bad harvest and poor people had no food.

That's an interesting question: how much would it cost to keep 3 years of food (let's assume the bare minimum - refined white flour) in reserve for the entire United States? What is the cost of food subsidies over the same period?

There’s some issue with storage - long term storage of food leads to the nutrients decaying.

Solution: rotation system.

I think India does this and has been doing it since WWII under “public distribution system”

OTOH shifting away from meat consumption would probably force more species diversity in our food production. I think corn and soybeans account for most of the crops grown for livestock feed, but humans eat a more varied diet. I image that would improve robustness against blights or whatever.

I think more mindful government strategies would do that. Right now it is: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/United_S...

Yeah, I think that is what the Danes did in WW2, and why they had more people survive the lean times when the Nazis took their food.