[ip26]

Monocropping field corn to feed cattle has always stood out to me as a big one. Monocrops are inherently vulnerable, beef is a luxury good not a necessity, and the total input for a pound of beef is extremely high compared to most other food items. I haven't personally done the math, but I understand beef production enjoys significant subsidies at multiple steps.

Another topic, a common desire among ecologists is to incentivize more natural habitat at the margins to support native plants, insects, and birds. It's fairly simple, easy to measure the cost & implementation, and the goal would be it would ultimately be better for everyone, with healthy predator populations and so forth.

[ip26]

Edit: just wanted to add, the vast majority of all corn grown in the US is field corn for cattle, we're not talking some small portion of US agriculture.

[kwk1]

Indeed--for example around 70% of the corn grown in Illinois, one of the top corn-producing states, goes directly to Illinois hogs.

[tyu1000]

Ranching is way better for natural habitat than cropping. Cattle in the North American prairies graze on native grasses where on cultivated land (in Saskatchewan, for peas, wheat and canola) all native grasses are ripped up for crop and riparian and wetland areas are destroyed to increase acreage.

[ip26]

Yes, however last I heard, ranched cattle represents something like 1% of the beef market.

[ahje]

Exactly. Meat produced from grazing animals is not neccesarily a bad thing -- many fields are simply not suited for farming, and grazing animals may be able to produce more food per square metre compared to withering crops.

Problem is that most meat simply isn't produced that way.