The animals are a range. So.ething like ranching may be assigned a ton of water, but it's not like the rain will stop falling on forest because there's no cows there, and the only water being taken out at the end is the weight of the cows.

If you're missing river and aquifer water, you want to tackle the users of river and aquifer water

> the only water being taken out at the end is the weight of the cows

And the water needed to produce all of their food, which is way more calories than they end up giving back.

And their daily water need, which comes out as urine, which pollutes the nearby environment.

> If you're missing river and aquifer water, you want to tackle the users of river and aquifer water

Exactly. If that is farmers growing crops to feed livestock, tackle that.

Luckily horses do not _need_ alfalfa. Farmers love growing alfalfa because if you give it sun and water in the right setting you can get damn near 14 cuts off a field of it in one year. This by comparison puts a grass hay field or even a nice neutral horse feed, Timothy grass, to shame. Alfalfa is a nutrient dense power bar that is given to horses kept in boxes. I would argue a happy horse would have a range of grassland to graze on, vs compressed cubes or squares of dense, sugary alfalfa that is replacing a normal ration.

tldr: alfalfa is an unnatural food for unnaturally kept horses

source: have horses on range land.

Agreed. We have several packs of wild horses near where I live in the mountains of New Mexico--so many that some people find them a nuisance. They thrive quite nicely on whatever they can find, and they certainly don't find alfalfa.

(Aside: Anybody who wants free horses to break (not to turn into dog food), let me know.)

First, feed lots are a blight. Feed lots are not the only way to raise livestock.

Second, there is very much a way to manage water while ranching — the main thing is to have the herds help you maintain healthy soil (which retains and regulates surface water), rather than destroying it like in feed lots. You make sure you can move them to a different section of the land.

Third, livestock and crops can co-exist onsite, and there are mutually beneficial processes between the two. Most farmers and ranchers do one or the other. Combined with notill and letting limited grazing on fallow land, what would be toxic runoffs from manure turns into adding fertilizer back into fallow lands.

Fourth, price of meat should reflect the added cost. People keep using feedlots because they want meat factories and cheap meat.

Solutions already exist.

this solution is not scalable for "high density" animal farms. Which makes it economically infeasible.

The "high density" animal farms are the feed lots I was talking about, the very ones I'm calling a blight. I also address this in my fourth point -- price of meat would need to reflect not using feed lots.

It's only not a solution because people want cheap meat. And just to be clear, I'm not advocating for all plant-based, vegan diet or using vat-grown meat. I think a clearer assessment of what we actually need to thrive, nutritionally speaking, would be of benefit.

You are referring to Grass-fed premium meat?

This is already available only to rich people at gourmet grocery shops for $13/lb for ground beef, and $30 for 12 oz for a steak

If you are advocating to remove the cheaper options of meat, and leaving only grass-fed and premium meats available on the market - I am not sure this is a good approach.

This is very elitist approach that could come from coastal elite only

No, I am not referring to grass-fed premium meat. The kind of ranching practice I am thinking of goes beyond just raising cows in a pasture.

I also don't live on the coast. I'm not sure where you got that idea from. I don't know if you can call me an elite.

A friend of mine looking into the Carnivore Diet plans out hunting trips, where taking down big game, plus some smaller game and a share in livestock (such as chickens) would feed the whole family for a year.

He's using the protein for fitness and bodybuilding. And yes, he can totally afford taking time off and having the fitness, skill, and equipment to hunt. There is a virtuous cycle where fitness enables the physical capability to go hunt, which feeds back to fitness. That's not a lifestyle that is accessible to everyone, either by personal interest or capital to get started.

But, the unanswered question is still: how much meat does a family really need? There's been a meat inflation going on since the 80s. We don't really think about the McDonald's Quarter Pounder as a big burger anymore, and yet, when it was introduced, it was considered huge. Now it is supplanted by the Double Quarter Pounder.

How much quality meat do you really need? You need less of those grass-fed gourmet meat to stay fit. Poorer quality meat, such as ones from McDonald's, has net-negative nutritional value. You get this illusion of eating a lot of meat, for cheap, but what you actually get out of it is poorer health.

How much of the craving for large volumes of meat is coming from you, or coming from the gut bacteria that depends on that volume of meat and signals your brain to seek it out?

How much is the meat factory industry incentivized to keep the meat flowing?

So I state it again -- I think clearly assessing what we actually need to thrive, nutritionally speaking, would be beneficial.

need vs want. I think in America want is what dictates consumer choices. Anything that doesnt play well with want will not fly in the US imo.

although I agree with your overall argument

Let's say we eliminated all agricultural use of animals tomorrow. All that would accomplish is one-time shift the point on the continuum that the earth and society can support.

The real problem, and the real elephant that no one wants to address, is the human population size.

People have been addressing it for a long time, it's called family planning, look it up.

We are addressing that. Human population is predicted to plateau in 2080 and begin to decline after that:

https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

> The real problem, and the real elephant that no one wants to address, is the human population size.

Usually nobody engages this because it's a boring conservative talking point. Do I consume too much? No, it's the world that's overpopulated. And they usually have drastic authoritarian solutions that have no chance of being enacted. But go ahead, you have the floor, what are your proposals?

As a special case it's worth noting that some 20 European countries are experiencing depopulation at a rate of around 10-20%. Countries with a significant welfare & national pension system cannot survive long term depopulation if there are not enough taxes coming in to pay for it.

Almost every single one of those countries are in eastern europe, definitely not countries with "significant welfare & national pension system". The depopulation is also mainly due to migration, not fertility.

Great, let’s start with the highest fertility countries!

Well, might want to look those up before you continue down this line of thought.

> All that would accomplish is one-time shift the point on the continuum that the earth and society can support.

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-g...

Built-up land is 1% of habitable land.

Forests 38% of habitable land.

Agriculture 46% of habitable land.

Of ag (100%), there is

    77 % ... livestock (18% calories, 37% proteins)

    23 % ... crops for humans (82% calories, 63% protein)

Plants already play a significant role in providing us with the majority of our sustenance.

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https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares, and return 35% of habitable earth to wildlife and nature

https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century

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

Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2022/03/15/it-may-be-uncomf...

The animal agriculture industry is the leading cause of most environmental degradation that is currently occurring.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...

Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries

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We could stay on our 1% of habitable earth, lower our agricultural footprint from 48% of land to 15%, use quarter of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, double forest area and store entire 1.5C carbon budget (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4) in the process, and enable return of wildlife and sealife (also storing a lot of carbon in them https://www.oneearth.org/how-restoring-key-wildlife-species-...).

All of that just by eating plants, something we are perfectly capable of doing and thriving on (https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/).

Fortunately the human populations growth is slowing down and we are expected to peak somewhere close to the end of this century.

And no one would ever question the precious Californian wine industry