There is no need to maximize human consumption calories per acre. If America’s farmlands can sustainably support 300million people with a variety of foods including eggs and meat (it can), then there is no reason to eliminate the animals from that food supply just because you could support 1billion people by being more efficient. In a future communist state of America I’d write in the constitution that every man woman and child is entitled to 2lbs of domestically produced beef and 1dozen eggs a week and that attempting to undermine, sabotage or profit off that right would be criminal.
The emissions alone are enough to make us miss climate targets
To have any hope of meeting the central goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to 2°C or less, our carbon emissions must be reduced considerably, including those coming from agriculture. Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. Thus, major changes in how food is produced are needed if we want to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
The level of harm is an order of magnitude different. It’s not quibbling over some small details
To produce 1 kg of protein from kidney beans required approximately eighteen times less land, ten times less water, nine times less fuel, twelve times less fertilizer and ten times less pesticide in comparison to producing 1 kg of protein from beef
There is no need to maximize human consumption calories per acre. If America’s farmlands can sustainably support 300million people with a variety of foods including eggs and meat (it can), then there is no reason to eliminate the animals from that food supply just because you could support 1billion people by being more efficient. In a future communist state of America I’d write in the constitution that every man woman and child is entitled to 2lbs of domestically produced beef and 1dozen eggs a week and that attempting to undermine, sabotage or profit off that right would be criminal.
The emissions alone are enough to make us miss climate targets
(emphasis mine)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
The level of harm is an order of magnitude different. It’s not quibbling over some small details
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25374332/
Moreover, mandating a consumption level like that is exactly how one keeps factory farming just as entrenched as it is today