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.
No, it doesn’t.
The entire mid- and western US is largely unable to grow crops - “this land was made for the buffalo, and hates the plow”.
See Bowl, Dust.
To make it grow crops, we’ve been pumping out a massive aquifer since the early 20th century. Subsidence caused by this is a major concern, in addition to the aquifer not refilling as fast as we use it.
In the western portions of CO, basically all of Wyoming, NM, Arizona (arid places), crops simply can’t grow at any significant level - but that land can grow crops for grazing animals, especially cows. Sheep and goats destroy such grazing land, which explains the conflict between cattlemen and sheepherders in the 19th century.
Really the entire breadbasket is naturally suited to cows, not crops, as it supported millions of bison.
You should probably read more before pontificating.
Stop farming animals, rewild the pastures, grow human food where animal feed was once grown.
Yes, but you omitted all the croplands we use for feeding non-human animals.
https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
Also, if our goal is to find the truth in all of this, why be mean?
They didn’t really omit that as an oversight, it’s just not relevant to their thesis - agricultural land used for animal feed is not super relevant to the disparity in land utilization, as 80% of all agricultural land usage is pasture/grazing. Only 7% of agricultural land is used for growing animal feed.
Agreed about being a little mean though, although I do sympathize with being frustrated about this as AG land use is a very often misunderstood statistic.
You raise some valid points, but I don’t see why it’s necessary to be so rude about it.
How is that rude
This is true, but personally, I vote that instead of cows we reintroduce the buffalo. Let the herds roam free across the land. Allow people to hunt the buffalo for food if they want - but you must use a bow or blackpowder rifle, and can only mount a horse or a bicycle.
A death from arrow wounds is absolutely agonizing, especially for a creature as large as a buffalo - it’s awful that we still allow it. But black powder is much more humane (relatively), and many states have black powder seasons - including several for buffalo. Though if we’re allowing black powder, we really should just let people use proper hunting rounds to minimize the suffering of the animal.
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I lack a magic wand, I can’t suddenly stop people from killing altogether. Meat consumption is down, though, and hopefully will continue to fall until it’s a practice we stop as a culture. In the short term though, we should at least try to make sure those pointless deaths come with as little suffering as possible - people are souring to the cruelty of bowhunting, and that is at least a start.
I don’t really understand how my capacity for language is relevant to that concept, but okay.
Black powder isn’t as humane a round if something goes wrong. Way better to hunt with a semi-auto, just in case you need a quick follow up shot.
Beefalo