[ed_balls]

Just to play devil's advocate

1. Livestock is a really good energy storage. In case of war, natural disaster crops diseases there is a backup. Most people that survived Holodomor, because the had cows.

2. No animal protein maybe bad for your health (meat is a different story)

3. Crops need a lot of herbicide

[Retric]

Your #1 is false.

Grain crops store really well on their own, as in decades, cows on the other hand need to eat constantly.

What they are good for is eating indigestible cellulose like corn stalks, but modern farming is largely feeding them grains specifically cultivated to feed them.

[bumby]

>modern farming is largely feeding them grains specifically cultivated to feed them.

In cattle at least, they spend much of their life grazing before going to feedlots.

[ed_balls]

I should rephrase that. Beef is bad in terms of efficiency - about %2. But cows are magic devices that can turn grass into milk and beef.

[dralley]

1. The Holodomor wasn't a natural famine. People starved because the food was physically taken away from them and distributed elsewhere (like cities), starting with the grain. Once they ran out of grain and couldn't fill the (unreasonable from the start) quotas, they started taking away livestock also.

[ed_balls]

Yep, I'd fall under war against Ukrainians. Cows can turn grass into milk and beef. Most families that had livestock survived. Those that lost it died. Source: Standford lecture on Youtube about Holodomor

One of the main reasons why Mongols were so effective was use of livestock en mass. It gives you food, cavalry, transportation and clothes from grass. You get the shortest logistical supply chains in northern Eurasian plane.

[eliaspro]

But if we wouldn't feed those crops to animals first to convert them to protein, but instead consumed them directly, we would need just a fraction of them and the herbicides required by them.

[TylerE]

We can’t eat grass and hay. Cows do. They have multiple stomachs just to digest it.

[tpush]

2) Not true.

3) More livestock => more crops => more herbicide