These aren't happy cows grazing in sunset, but from factory farms. About ~36% of crops are fed to livestock.

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-m...

That's a good point, but I feel like the linked article does a disservice by treating grain and animal products as largely interchangeable from a diet perspective. They are equating in terms of calories, but that's a bit of a false equivalency, considering one is used largely as a protein source while the other is not. The article disregards that people eat those sources for very different purposes. (I say this even as someone who is an advocate for vegetarian and vegan diets).

You can use the land to grow beans and other plant protein as opposed to grain. There is another level of opportunity costs. Without the need to use land to produce animal products, we can use less land and grow a larger variety of crops.

"Can" for sure. However, I doubt the land use would change much without other systemic modifications, like changing farm subsidies (which tend to be very resistant to change).

That depends on what land you're talking about. Beans can only grow well in certain places. Ungulates such as cattle have a particular ability to convert low quality plant matter into high quality protein which almost exactly matches human needs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestible_Indispensable_Amino...

Beans are great, but the amino acid ratios aren't ideal for humans and they are deficient in certain essential amino acids which we can't synthesize. It's certainly possible to get near optimal ratios and quantities with a mix of plants but this takes a bit of planning.

I said beans and other plant proteins which includes soy, hemp, legumes, oats, nuts, amaranth, etc. which are already grown in the US regions where land is used to graze cattle. Not sure why you're singling out beans.

I'm not singling out beans, just using them as one example. All of the other plant proteins you listed have similar quality issues.

Soy is a complete protein. IF you need all the essential amino acids, you eat a variety of sources. https://www.chhs.colostate.edu/krnc/monthly-blog/plant-based...

>It's certainly possible to get near optimal ratios and quantities with a mix of plants but this takes a bit of planning

This is true for any processed food. And I’m using “processed” liberally here. Meat must generally be butchered and cooked before consuming, but we’re just so used to it we don’t consider it “processing” or “planning” to do it.

So much planning! You have to eat beans AND rice to get all of your essential amino acids. That's two whole foods! Ah well, too complicated. Instead I'll grow alfalfa in the desert to raise and slaughter cattle. I'll eat just the meat by itself, and now I've got zero fiber but I don't have to think about all those complex amino acids with my feeble, plant-based mind.

Cattle farming is a huge contribution to deforestation though:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/7-commodities-forests...

I personally don't eat meat, but I don't think it is a good-faith argument to say that rainforest deforestation in south america is a particularly good argument against cattle farming elsewhere. Those people are just unscrupulous in a different dimension.

It's not just South America. It's even in places like the UK

>Most of the UK and Ireland’s grass-fed cows and sheep are on land that might otherwise be temperate rainforest – arable crops tend to prefer drier conditions. However, even if there were no livestock grazing in the rainforest zone – and these areas were threatened by other crops instead – livestock would still pose an indirect threat due to their huge land footprint

(and those "grass-fed" cattle are also fed crops too)

>Furthermore, most British grass-fed cows are still fed crops on top of their staple grass

https://theconversation.com/livestock-grazing-is-preventing-...

Worldwide, perhaps. But TFA is about Texas and Kansas. West TX where some of the largest cattle herding occurs, is largely semi-arid grassland.

In the Alpine regions of Europe, you see this a lot - areas in the valleys that can be used for crop farming, are farms (at least if they're not built up) and the cows graze in the summer on the higher-up slopes and meadows where you mostly couldn't grow wheat at all, and even if you could you wouldn't get a combine harvester up that kind of incline to harvest it efficiently.

And then emit higher methane in the process even in areas where it could theoretically work out largely due to lower slaughter weights and longer times to raise them

>If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401