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The other thing is that we eat inefficiently. The corn that is fed to a beef cow to produce 1 lb of hamburger could provide many more calories if just eaten by people in the first place. (Granted, they're fed low-grade feed corn, the stuff that's rejected for human consumption, but that feed corn still takes up land and resources to produce - land that could be used to produce more nutritious crops than corn). Buffalo and ostrich produce more protein on less feed. Soy has tons of protein and has other health benefits. The amount of land we devote to growing food for our food is truly ridiculous. And we're not overpopulating, we're over-subsidizing and overproducing. We grow/farm more food than we can eat in this country, and the government keeps prices down so we can export it, thereby ruining the chances of smaller, less industrialized nations of ever developing viable export crops. And sustainable farming doesn't really take up more land, it just uses the land differently and in a way that gives you less control over the animals. A lot of the confinement in factory farming is not for space efficiency but for procedural efficiency - easier to feed, water, medicate the animals if they're all in one place and you don't have to chase them down.
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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
- Anatole France
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