Of the total area that is used by humans (Agriculture, Urban and Built-up Land),
- urban and built-up land is 1m km²,
- agriculture is 48m km²,
so agriculture is 48 of 49 millions km² used, that’s 98%. The remaining 2% are all streets and housing and other infrastructure together.
Yep for sure. The food grown to feed livestock (6M2 km) seems like it’s just feeding humans with extra steps. If you cut that out and feed humans directly. You’d still have livestock on grazing pad (32M2 km), just not the whole feedlot situation.
At that point we don’t need to farm animals.
Best thing to do at that point would be to outlaw breeding of new farm animals, send the remaining ones to sanctuaries, and let them live the rest of their lives out on their own terms. Might need to sterilize as well.
All of this would aim to restore natural populations of cows, pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, etc. in the world to native levels. And if those animals aren’t native, then imo there is no reason to help sustain them. Release to the wild at some point and let nature take it’s course. Of course, this also means restoring natural predators to ecosystems like wolves, which would help keep populations in check.
Those species that are native, however, but are declining and on the brink of extinction: those we should focus on for conservation and regeneration.
It’s a tough balance, but it can be done ethically
Or go a step further and stop doing animal farming.
Yeah, and those extra steps require more land and more water and more transportation and more harvesting and more processing etc etc. Every extra step makes the whole system less efficient. We’re essentially sacrificing farmland.
We’re not sacrificing it, exactly the opposite; without the demand for plant products generated by animal ag, we wouldn’t be able to exploit all that farmland. You know, for money.