[CurrentB]

Now I'm curious. Why can't the same land be used to grow a soy bean for human consumption vs animal consumption? I would naively assume that at worst some land might yield top quality crops but that it would at least be usable as an ingredient or something?

[fooker]

Soybeans are an interesting example, because the almost all the soybeans we grow right now are sort of dual purpose.

But in a way that may be different from what you'd expect. The same crop yields both soy milk/oil/tofu/sauce and then the end products after extracting all that goes into animal feed.

Without the need to feed animals maybe this can be repurposed for bio-diesel or ethanol similar to corn, I'm sure there's some way to make that economically viable with enough scale. But this doesn't really free up much land to produce human food with.

All land is not equal. And unless you subscribe to 'interesting' ideas like forcing the world to survive on insect paste, either animal farming is here to stay or we cut down a bunch more forests.