Land use by diet type.

ElKavo

This is a real eye opener. When I came across this data at first I was shocked, take some time and read.

Just how much land does your diet choice actually take up?

If every on the planet adopted a typical Irish diet we would need 105.8% of the total habitable land just to feed us. Thats habitable land folks not just farming land.

More on this here ==> https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

davidjtaylor

Here's what every vegan knows, or at least should:

the dominant contributor to dietary land requirements is livestock rather than crops

And guess what? The bulk of crops is fed to livestock.

ElKavo

davidjtaylor wrote: »

Here's what every vegan knows, or at least should:



And guess what? The bulk of crops is fed to livestock.

Oh the sweet delicious irony!

Tar.Aldarion

That's crazy.

gozunda

The problem with such general 'one size fits all" calculations as given in the above link, is that they ignore the specifics such as - what agricultural land is capable of producing with regard to topography and climate.

Large areas of agricultural land in Ireland and many other parts of the globe comprise permanent grassland which is best suited for grazing and / or not suitable for the growing of specific arable or horticultural crops

david taylor wrote:

Here's what every vegan knows, or at least should:

:the dominant contributor to dietary land requirements is livestock rather than crops

And guess what? *The bulk of crops is fed to livestock.

* It may surprise many here that the bulk of crops fed to animals worldwide are made up of by-products or waste of those crops grown primarily for human consumption or crops which do not meet human food standards.

For example the bulk of the soya crop grown world wide is processed primarily to extract soya oil which is used in huge quanities in the processed food industry.

Industry figures show that approx "85% of the world’s soya beans are processed, or "crushed," for the primary purpose of producing soya bean oil - the crushed soya meal is a waste product of that process. See:

Method:
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-1a15085c3bbe4115bd46205c3b92a82e.webp

Process:
https://www.soya.be/soybean-oil-production.php

Also.
http://www.oilseedandgrain.com/soy-facts

As shown above soya meal is actually a waste product of the process of extracting this soya oil from the soya beans. The majority of soya meal which is being used to feed animals is in fact a waste product of soya oil production for human consumption.

This process is the same for many other crops world wide - with human grade crops making the best return and being primarily used for human foodstuffs.

Rather than wasting the by products of processing - the following are used to feed animal and include milling by-products and wastes resulting from grain cleaning processes; hulls of some seeds, e.g. pea, barley, buckwheat. By-products of the food oil industry: solvent-extracted cake from oil-yielding rape, sunflower, flax, and products formed during refining of plant oils, lecithin and fatty acids. By-products of sugar processing: beet pulp, molasses, defaco-saturation residue. By-products of the starch industry: potato pulp, potato cell juice and other, when corn or wheat is processed - residues of seeds after starch extraction, gluten, germs etc etc

It obviously makes sense to reuse crop wastes which would otherwise would not enter the human food chain, to feed livestock as required. What most figures ignore is that where for example 60% of a certain crop used to feed animals- that this 60% is frequently made up of the portion which is not suitable for human consumption.

The above article whilst interesting reminds me of the fictional piece of information - which stated that the entire population of the planet could be accomodated on the Isle of Wight*. Interesting but not really useful ....

*Turns out this is not correct either - the Isle of Wight would only accommodate just over a third of the world's population

¯\_(ツ)_/ ¯

ganmo

OP have you any info on the HALF index they used in the piece? I couldn't find anything on it