[summm]

Meat can be easily substituted, so I'd consider that discretionary spending. Furthermore, producing meat consumes many times the plants, than if humans directly consumed those plants. So in an emergency, just stop producing meat and you'll have plenty of plant-based food left.

[speeder]

Can you eat grass? I know I can't...

Yes, producing meat requires animals eating a ton of plants and they also need a lot of water.

Except that can be mostly grass (that humans don't eat), and the water is just rainwater (that the animals in question will piss later, so it will end on the ground anyway).

The reason why animal-based farming exists is because it is the only way we have to get any food in certain parts of the planet where the only thing that grow naturally is grass.

[adrianN]

There is a certain level of meat production that uses only waste as fodder, land that has no other agricultural value, and doesn't require destroying areas of high biodiversity to make room for our animals. The current global levels of meat productions are extremely far away from this. We cut down vast swathes of forests to get cheap farmland, both for grazing as well as for producing grain and soy as fodder.

[MisterMower]

The Great Plains in the US are huge. Lots of cattle grazing out there in an environmentally sensitive way. Most of the feed is hay cut from fallow farmland. Maybe what you’re describing happens in South America, but it’s not at all what happens in the US.

[datavirtue]

Cows eat grass? Farmers are all panicking and buying hay (premium hay that tests properly for nutrients) at outlandish prices. You need a crap ton of the right hay to keep beef cattle alive. No to mention all the corn to fatten them so that your meat gets graded as choice+.

[relaxing]

That is not how the water cycle works.