[663e1b]

>Undoing this damage, while also managing to feed the nearly 10 billion people expected to populate the earth by 2050, is going to require lots of ideas integrated together.

Back of the envelope calculation: The global cattle population is around 1.5 billion. A cow eats between 8 and 16 Mcals per day, which is roughly 4-8 times what is recommended for an average adult (2 Mcals). If we diverted all those calories to humans we could feed 6-12 billion of them (neglecting protein, vitamin and mineral content).

[bryanlarsen]

Those calories are the way the world handles crop failures.

Let's assume that normally 2/3 of the grain calories are fed to livestock. Then we get a massive crop failure and global yields are 1/3 of expected. Price of grain goes up, farmers can't afford to feed their cattle so slaughter their breeding stock and the price of meat goes down. In the short term meat consumption goes up to counter-act the loss of grain calories due to the failure. In the medium term the smaller amount of livestock eating grain means humans eat a higher percentage of the grain grown. In the long term it's a new harvest and cycles repeat...

[eppp]

This seems to ignore that cows eat calories that humans cannot.