[jbob2000]

It takes energy to process soya into an edible patty. It does for meat patties as well, so I am curious about the comparison (eg. a soy patty takes x Kw to make, a beef one takes y Kw).

Where I think meat has an advantage is that "we" don't need to use energy to make the patty taste good, the cow does that naturally using the feed. But a soy patty needs all sorts of things added to it and we need to use energy and water to actively process it into something edible.

If we were just eating the soya beans as we pulled them out of the ground, it would be far more sustainable. But beef tastes great right off the cow! Soya is quite bland.

[spacemanmatt]

You have to include all the energy that went into feeding the cow over the period of its life.

[mises]

Except much beef is raised on grass. Some of that isn't even watered. This is effectively solar-based.

[cannonedhamster]

It's more efficient to ship grain than cattle, and most cattle still requires feed to get to market size. The whole mythos behind cattle drives was to get them to a location for slaughter and shipping. The same exact thing you said about cattle is the same as grains, except cows require more water external to the grass.Cows also require maintenance above what crops typically do as well. Ranchers are very good at what they do, however it's still a ton of work. Farming is slowly becoming significantly more automated, which is a good thing as less people are interested in becoming farmers.