I'm not at all in favor of dropping meat.

But unless I'm mistaken I think you're implying that by removing beef production, you'd have to substitute it with additional vegetable or grain production.

Where I think the pro-vegetarian argument would actually be that by decreasing meat production, you actually recover more vegetable/grain farm capacity since it's much more efficient for people to eat their veggies directly.

Just like it would be much more efficient to eat the 10lbs of sardines it takes to grow 1lb of salmon. (NB. I didn't look that up, but I think it's in the ball-park.)

It's an interesting topic.

>But unless I'm mistaken I think you're implying that by removing beef production, you'd have to substitute it with additional vegetable or grain production.

There are a lot of non-simple factors involved for example dairy and meat account for a majority of most people's protein intake, this would mean substitution for increased protein nutrition from plants (limited mostly to soybeans).

>Where I think the pro-vegetarian argument would actually be that by decreasing meat production, you actually recover more vegetable/grain farm capacity since it's much more efficient for people to eat their veggies directly.

This statement is mostly true for using vegetable/grain production land whose produce is used for cattle feed-lots right? What about cattle that get the larger % of their food from grazing?

Also there is a significant difference between human quality/desired food and animal feed. For example a lot more corn is used in animal feed than in human consumption - this is especially effective because maize is a c4 plant and until genetics gets there will continue to completely dominate other cultivatable plants in terms of yield.

p.s. I'm not saying that meat production in the US is ecologically friendly - it definitely is not - feedlot greenhouse gas production is almost entirely unregulated, they cause massive damage to local watersheds etc - but it's possible to do terrible damage to the environment with vegetable growth as well; I'm just arguing for a more or less objective view of the situation (and I don't think meat is evil is the correct answer).

Surely you know a claim like that should include some citation.

There was a good article I read awhile back (which was more global rather than limited to a specific nation) but I can't seem to find it now - nevertheless for example (random google search, an article about Mongolia (source: USDA; ref: http://bit.ly/1MD20ZN):

About 80 percent of agricultural production is animal-based while the remaining 20 percent mostly comes from field crops, mostly wheat. Only about 1 percent (1.35 million hectares) of total land is suitable for crops