I believe both of these questions have been thoroughly answered by the scientific community.
You’re right that meat is more nutrient dense than plants. But if we were to replace meat production with crop production for human consumption at scale, we would be averaging far more (I think on the order of 10x) human calories per acre.
When you replace a beef farm with vegan food production, you’re not just planting crops on the beef farm. Each of those cows eats for years–crops that humans generally wouldn’t eat grown on other farms specifically as livestock feed. You need much, much more land and resources to produce 100 calories of meat than you do to produce 100 calories of vegetables.
I believe both of these questions have been thoroughly answered by the scientific community.
You’re right that meat is more nutrient dense than plants. But if we were to replace meat production with crop production for human consumption at scale, we would be averaging far more (I think on the order of 10x) human calories per acre.
When you replace a beef farm with vegan food production, you’re not just planting crops on the beef farm. Each of those cows eats for years–crops that humans generally wouldn’t eat grown on other farms specifically as livestock feed. You need much, much more land and resources to produce 100 calories of meat than you do to produce 100 calories of vegetables.