> What is the answer to feed everyone during these budget constrained times? It can’t be tofu, can it? There are just too many of us.

You are very wrong here by order of magnitudes. The US produces about 5 billion bushes of soybeans. 1 bushel is around 60 lbs. Having made tofu myself, depending on the type of tofu you make 1 lb of dry soybeans is anywhere from 1.5 to 2 lbs of tofu(remember we are adding water to the mix so we increase weight). If 1 bushel is 60 lbs and we produce 5 billion then we have 136 million metric tons of soybeans which makes 272 million tons of tofu which is enough to feed the entire US several times over.

I'm not suggesting we actually do it but to answer your question of "is tofu the answer," it could be. The vast majority of our soybean crop was sold to other countries until Trump tariffs made China switch from us to Russia. I'm not sure what the current status of our soybean production is but we have the crop production to feed the entire US.

Thanks for the math. Obviously not everyone will go for Soyfu, but I'll attempt to integrate it into my diet. I've had it, it's an acquired taste, but what isn't really. I remember hating black caviar growing up in Ua.

Tofu is amazing when it's used for things tofu is made for instead of as a sad meat substitute. Miso soup isn't miso soup without tofu, and mapo tofu is one of the most amazing flavors in existence. (It's sichuan, so it's not for people who can't tolerate flavor.)

I'd recommend checking out Serious Eats for Kenji's "Vegan Experience" recipes. He has some tofu recipes for omnivores that I really endorse. His tofu banh mi is divine.

I just want to chime in and say it's a rather nice to see an earnest and pleasant response like this.

To your first point about the small animals in the fields that are harmed by agriculture, I think that's worth having concern about overall, certainly. But many of the animals that people currently consume are fed large quantities of crops that incur that same cost. The average beef cattle is eating such things for 18 months prior to being slaughtered, breeding sows do the same for 3-5 years, and their offspring 5-6 months on average.

If there are advances in things like cultured meat that can be produced in a sort of industrial setting at a competitive price it might be possible to drastically limit both the conscious and inadvertent harm to animals.

> mention how many other sentient beings are massacred while plowing a field. Rodents, insects, snakes, birds, etc. Is that a myth?

Loads of small field animals are killed when eating vegan. Loads more are killed when eating omnivore, because you have to plow even more field to also feed the factory-farmed animals.

> In the meantime, the US is overrun by dear and boars, and I’ve been learning archery.

Assuming you stick with it, I think that could be a good idea.

The deer are full of Chronic Wasting Disease and we've half given up trying to stop it. Many states have stopped their targeted culling programs because they're ineffective once incidence is above 5%. You're suicidal if you eat meat that you know comes from an animal with a prion disease.

I've never hunted (yet). Have fished plenty but that doesn't count.

I lived for a year in a suburb of Charlotte NC a couple of years ago, and there were herds of whitetails on my dog walks.

I'd like to learn more about "Chronic Wasting Disease" if you have any resources, because on podcasts or r/Archery and the like, "harvesting your own food" is par for the course. Thank you.

Decent overview from the US CDC https://www.cdc.gov/chronic-wasting/about/index.html in one study, Rhesus monkeys were infected by eating CWD infected meat. There's no cure or mitigation of prion diseases so that'd be enough for me to stay away from hunted deer in any county with reported incidence of it. And deer range and roam, and not every place in the country is as on top of testing for it as everywhere else. Maybe I'm Chicken Little, but I don't like the odds.

Thanks. Wild stuff, pun intended. Even though the article mentions “The disease hasn't been shown to infect people”, just the thought of a “maybe” is deterrent enough. But then, who knows what’s in the meat I’m getting from Costco. Perhaps the fish are next and the Soylent future is upon us.

There's a case to be made for wild/hunted meat. But the majority of meat production worldwide relies on feeding those animals farmed plants, and that entails a lot more plowed fields than farming plants for direct human consumption does.

> What is the answer to feed everyone during these budget constrained times?

It's much more efficient to use land to grow food crops for people to eat directly than it is to grow food for livestock and then have people eating the livestock.

It's one of the reasons that I've been pescetarian for a few decades - it's unsustainable for everyone to eat substantial amounts of meat and there's a lot of deforestation just to sate people's desire for burgers.