[itake]

You can't eat private insurance.

The consequences of not being able to produce enough calories is severe. It is much better to overproduce and everyone gets fed than producing just enough and a climate event erases out 20% of our calorie production.

[thinkcontext]

The US produces an unbelievably enormous calorie surplus way beyond what is needed for the health of the country and in fact its detrimental.

The biggest is not even used as food, over half of corn acreage is used for ethanol. That's an amount of land that's truly beyond comprehension. Its a horrible program as well, corn ethanol is worse than the gasoline it replaces in terms of carbon footprint when taking land use into account. And it raises the price of food. And we even subsidize it multiple times, we subsidize the crop as corn and then we subsidize it as ethanol. Biodiesel and renewable diesel (different products) have spiked in recent years as well, most of that is made from soy, canola, or corn oil. They have similar problems though aren't as bad as corn ethanol.

Another huge negative surplus is the amount of liquid calories, mainly soda, that are consumed. Most nutrition science that I've read points to the enormous amount of liquid calories as the part of the US diet that is driving obesity epidemic. There are of course other aspects to the obesity as well.

Finally, substituting some of the US consumption of beef with chicken and some of the chicken with beans.

To recap US overproduces calories to the point that it hurts the country. It damages the land, the ocean with dead zones, the climate with carbon. We pay for it multiple times in subsidies and with higher food prices. It hurts our health which we pay for in suffering, shortened lives and health costs.

[9rx]

> over half of corn acreage is used for ethanol.

That doesn't mean much without more details. Corn is used as a tool in the crop rotation to enable growing foods for humans to eat. As we learned before ethanol's time in the sun, farmers are going to grow it anyway to support their rotations. The only question is if it is better to recapture that into usable energy or to let it rot out in the field.

> ... when taking land use into account

But if not taken into account? The harsh reality is that ethanol plants are unable to pay cost-of-production-level prices for corn. It now typically costs $5+ to produce a bushel of corn, while ethanol plants generally start to lose money as the price rises above $4.50 per bushel. You're not growing corn for ethanol. You accept selling corn to ethanol buyers when you can't find a better home for it.

Corn especially is a tough one to predict. A couple of years ago yields around here were nearly 100 bushels per acre higher than normal! Even if we put in the mightiest effort to grow exactly the right amount of corn for reasonable food uses, that 100 bushel surprise means a good 1/3 of your crop has no predetermined home right there. Of course, it can go the other way too. If you end up 100 bushels per acre short of what you expected...

Between needing to grow extra to protect against unexpected low yields, combined with unexpected high yields, half to the corn crop having no home (and therefore ending up as ethanol) isn't that far outside of what cannot be reasonably controlled for.

> To recap US overproduces calories to the point that it hurts the country.

That's fair. We don't have the technology to do better, unfortunately. Maybe once LLMs free up software developers once and for all they can turn their focus towards solving this problem?

[thinkcontext]

> Corn is used as a tool in the crop rotation to enable growing foods for humans to eat. As we learned before ethanol's time in the sun, farmers are going to grow it anyway to support their rotations. The only question is if it is better to recapture that into usable energy or to let it rot out in the field.

This doesn't make sense in light of the large expansion of corn acreage that corresponds to ethanol policy.

https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10323 https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_corn_acres_planted

[9rx]

> large expansion of corn acreage

Corn acres have expanded, but the same is also true of other crops. Given corn's role in the crop rotation, it stands to reason that when other crops expand, corn comes with it. There are a lot more mouths to feed nowadays. The world's population has grown by approximately 30% since the last change in ethanol policy.

> that corresponds to ethanol policy.

The ethanol subsidy in the last policy change ended in 2012, yet, as you point out, corn acres have continued to expand, which seems contrary to what you are trying to suggest. What specific correspondence are you finding?

[casey2]

corn->ethanol is government subsidized robbery. I paid for those nutrients let them rot. Now consumers have to buy more and eat more calories to get the same nutrition. All so we can have net negative ROEI ethanol?

[9rx]

> corn->ethanol is government subsidized robbery.

There was that brief period where subsidies were enacted to spur on construction of ethanol plants to take up the excess corn that was rotting leading up to that time. They have long since come to an end. You could still call E10 requirements a subsidy, but you'd only be paying for that if you willingly chose to consume the product.

> Now consumers have to buy more and eat more calories to get the same nutrition.

Why?

> All so we can have net negative ROEI ethanol?

I'm not sure your math is mathing. Recapturing something, even with some marginal loss, is still a greater return than nothing.

[mapt]

Your buffer here is meat. Cattle are tremendously inefficient consumers of grain. Eat your burgers in the bountiful years, then slaughter 75% of the herd in a hardship year, eat well for six months, then spend the next three, four, five years eating more grains while the herds recover.

Ethanol is another one.

That's the sensible way to do it.

Somehow I doubt that it's the way we do it... But maybe the variability is coming from world trade and developing nations.

[cperciva]

Cattle are inefficient consumers of grain, but highly efficient consumers of grass. Most land used for pasture can't effectively be used for anything else.

[hombre_fatal]

This argument might sound good, but those cattle are fed crops, not just sunshine and the grass they walk on.

Most crops grown in the US are used as animal feed. They are dependent on arable land that could be used to grow food for humans directly and much more efficiently. We just like the taste, so we accept the inefficiency.

[hunter-gatherer]

Eh. The "inefficent calorie conversion" take is sort of lazy and misses the nuances. I just looked it uo, and it seems that only about 55% of yields are for feed, and there is definitely some more nuance there, since a lot of feed meal comes from stalks and parts if the plants humans would not consume. This notion of calorie inefficiency also misses the mark on what would be planted and harvested instead to contain the same bioavailable nutrient profile thay comes from meat. In otber words, using land for feed to convert grains to another type of food is probably more necessary than just "taste".

I don't care to research it further, but I own a small 5 acre farm and can attest that some crops grow in some areas and some don't. So even if you did map it all out on a piece of paper where you'd get all your beans and lentils and whatnots I doubt it would work in real life. Cattle can handle a couple hard freezes. My tomatoes can't.

[LinXitoW]

You’re right that a lot of livestock feed is crop residues/byproducts humans don’t eat—but that doesn’t make beef “necessary” or erase the land/opportunity-cost problem. Globally, ~36% of crop calories go to animal feed and only ~12% of those feed calories come back as animal-product calories (Cassidy et al.). Livestock still consume ~1/3 of global cereal production (Mottet et al.). And in full-system LCAs that include grazing + feed land, meat/dairy provide ~18% of calories and ~37% of protein but use ~83% of farmland; cutting them can reduce farmland >75% while still feeding the world (Poore & Nemecek / Oxford). Plus, even if pasture isn’t croppable, it can be restored—land used for animal foods has a big carbon opportunity cost (Hayek et al.). Nutritionally, major dietetic bodies say well-planned vegetarian/vegan diets can be nutritionally adequate, with attention to nutrients like B12.

[bruce511]

There is, as you say a lot of nuance here. Making cattle go away doesn't suddenly make say 55% more wheat suddenly appear on market shelves.

Indeed the argument to remove beef production has always struck me as an interesting starting point to a longer conversation.

So ok, cattle are gone, and there's now say 30% more grain on the market. Presumably this lowers prices to humans? Do people suddenly eat 30% more bread?

Health, and weight, issues aside (not sure an increase in carbs at the expense of protein is a win), do people just shift to other protein (like chicken). Does this mean a huge oversupply of grain, and a consequent drop in prices?

Let me put it another way. Does removing a market currently consuming 30-50% of the crop make things better or worse for farmers?

IMO Having livestock feed as a market keeps prices up, and as this article points out they're still too low. Killing off the cattle market kills off grain farmers too. I'm not sure that's the win people think it is.

[mapt]

We feed the average cow >10lbs of grain and also some alfalfa for every pound of meat we get out right now.

Part of the cull would likely be shifting towards more grass fed production. Another part would simply be prioritizing chicken or pork for a while.

[direwolf20]

Americans would riot without burgers.