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From your first sentence, I understand that feeding everyone in the planet is a priority. You also assert that, if we move to a plant-based diet, we would need 9x less plantations^. Do you believe those plantations will be abandoned? Or, rather, that they will be used to feed humans and thus lead to an overabundance of food and a 9x population growth?

I believe that "ideal" is nowhere near a diet requiring supplementation and leading to metabolic and cardiovascular disease.

^: I see this "fact" touted around quite a lot. Could I get a source? Here you can actually see a figure of 67% of global crop yield by weight used to feed humans: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/0340...



9x less plantations:

0.58 cows per hectare - http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/62085

274 kg meat on a cow - https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/junk/cow.html

10470 kJ of food energy per kilo of beef - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef

1000 days to rear a cow - https://www.withouthotair.com/c13/page_77.shtml

Therefore 0.58 * 274 * 10470 / 1000 = 607 kJ of cow, per day, per hectare.

In comparison, wheat yields 3120 kg per hectare per year - https://www.statista.com/statistics/237705/global-wheat-prod...

1368 kJ per kg - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat

Therefore 3120 * 1368 / 356 = 11989 kJ of wheat, per day, per hectare.

So, by my calculations, you need 19.75x more land to grow a kJ of beef than a kJ of wheat.




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