As negotiations get underway at COP28, we compiled a list of the leading research documenting the connection between meat and greenhouse gas emissions.
The proportions are even more striking in the United States, where just 27 percent of crop calories are consumed directly — wheat, say, or fruits and vegetables grown in California. By contrast, more than 67 percent of crops — particularly all the soy grown in the Midwest — goes to animal feed. And a portion of the rest goes to ethanol and other biofuels.
this assumes that none of the exports are eaten directly.
if this is the best you have, you are basing a pretty heavy claim on a pretty thin interpretation. maybe you can find a better source, but I doubt it. I think you will find that people eat 2/3 of global crop calories. the method of excluding exports from food-uses and including them with animal feed seems sloppy at best, but possibly dishonest.
Sure - if you assume that fewer than 17.1 m acres of the 62.8 m acre category of “other grain and feed exports” (i.e. less than 27% of it) are animal feed, and none of the wheat exports end up in feed, then the total acreage of food eaten by someone and food eaten by animals are equal.
That seems pretty unlikely, though.
Global numbers aren’t great, because diets are really different in different countries. The meat eaten by the average American dwarfs the amount of meat eaten by the average Latvian or Peruvian person.
>more land is used to grow feed crops than to grow crops directly eaten by people,
citation needed
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/ is where I first saw that number, though it’s paywalled now unfortunately.
https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel-animal-feed says
https://web.archive.org/web/20240108235444/https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/
you will forgive me if I don’t take your word for it
>Most cropland is used for livestock feed, exports or is left idle to let the land recover.
this is pretty ambiguous syntax.
it does not plainly say what you claimed
Look at the numbers on the map behind the text.
77.3 m acres of crops eaten directly by people.
127.4 m acres of feed crops. 52 m acres fallow.
The feed crops alone dwarf what’s eaten by people. Both feed and fallow is over double the number of acres of crops eaten by Americans.
this assumes that none of the exports are eaten directly.
if this is the best you have, you are basing a pretty heavy claim on a pretty thin interpretation. maybe you can find a better source, but I doubt it. I think you will find that people eat 2/3 of global crop calories. the method of excluding exports from food-uses and including them with animal feed seems sloppy at best, but possibly dishonest.
Sure - if you assume that fewer than 17.1 m acres of the 62.8 m acre category of “other grain and feed exports” (i.e. less than 27% of it) are animal feed, and none of the wheat exports end up in feed, then the total acreage of food eaten by someone and food eaten by animals are equal.
That seems pretty unlikely, though.
Global numbers aren’t great, because diets are really different in different countries. The meat eaten by the average American dwarfs the amount of meat eaten by the average Latvian or Peruvian person.