[mywittyname]

Beef prices have been extremely high for a while now, having over doubled since the pandemic started, and going up 5x since 2010. The people suffering from food insecurity haven't been eating beef as a staple. It's a luxury.

Industrial beef is fed grains that could be instead used to feed humans (or, at least the land used to produce these grains can instead produce human food). This is a far more efficient use of calories. People worried about food insecurity should be looking at reducing meat production for this very reason.

[mastazi]

My argument is that if all beef in the world magically disappeared this minute due to an evil curse, food prices would go up across the board, regardless of food categories. I may be wrong.

> It's a luxury.

IMHO it's not a luxury in the same way that caviar and champagne are, it's a luxury in the same way that fresh greens are a luxury compared to frozen peas.

[mywittyname]

Momentarily, for sure.

Medium or long term though, practically all other domesticated animals are more efficient than beef on a per-calorie basis. Chickens in particular, are substantially more efficient. Best case, replacing beef with chicken could increase meat yields by 10x, worst case, by 3x.

https://awellfedworld.org/feed-ratios/

[mastazi]

> practically all other domesticated animals are more efficient than beef on a per-calorie basis

yes, this is true, although some of those, like chickens which you mentioned, or pigs that are mentioned in the link you shared, are dependent on grains - unlike beef, which can be grass-fed.

But there are more animals besides beef that can be grass-fed, and they might be more efficient than beef.

It would be interesting to know the feed conversion ratios of goats and sheep for example.

The problem of goats and sheep is that, in a regenerative faming context, their manure is not perceived to be as effective as cow manure.

For this reason, would be interesting to measure both feed conversion ratios AND manure production ratio.

Knowing the effectiveness of manure in a regenerative farming context is very important, unless we want to continue depending on fertilisers made from petroleum which is just as bad as burning gasoline in terms of global warming.

[swader999]

Most ranchland is ill-suited to other uses.