Sorry, I was messy in my use of terms above. I believe that best practice is to always include units when discussing efficiency, else apples and oranges. You are correct. Grazing cattle can be an efficient means of generating some portion of human-food-nutrients/acre-time in some regions under current conditions. Sustainability is a term that is somewhat more difficult to express in clear units, and resiliency even more so. Maximizing efficiency is obviously to some extent at odds with maximizing resilience within a boundary since resilience calls for reduction of dependencies. For example, even in a region where grazing cattle was most efficient practice in terms of human-food-nutrients/acre-time, the possibility of a shared dependence on viral pestilence within single species, would suggest that mixed use for cattle and wheat production would almost certainly improve resilience of region, given that arguments suggesting that wheat is incapable of providing any degree of human nutrition are for the purposes of this analysis put aside.BRUTE wrote:beef production can be extremely efficient: basically no inputs besides a bunch of solar energy on land that couldn't even be used for growing crops, and a bit of water.
Unfortunately, with all due respect offered, I feel compelled to suggest that the article you linked above may be somewhat misleading in it representations. When CO2 emissions are expressed in terms of total kilogram reduction/nation-year, and the U.S. comes out on top, it is kind of like if I proclaimed that my total cookie intake reduction/human-week was the greatest 9 weeks out of the last 52 compared to everybody else on this forum, even while surrounded by empty Nabisco boxes and crumbs.
OTOH, I believe that the most political way to discuss CO2 emissions is by using terms such as kilograms/nation, and the second most political way to discuss CO2 emissions is by using terms such as kilogram/capita and then linking this term to nation. Less political terms would be (kilogram/acre )/(biomass/acre.)
Generally, I believe that resource depletion is a problem past the point of remediation through public policy, although at any stage and in any way the problem reaches regional emergency status, government intervention will almost certainly occur. For instance, some models indicate that if oil production does decline by an average of 5%/year through 2040, as suggested by HSBC, likely leading to extreme stagflation, the average discretionary income (above current poverty level) of American citizens will likely decline to the level of 1 thrifty-level market basket of food/week = approximately $45/capita-week. Of course, not so much of a problem for members of this forum who abide by some sort of alpha strategy since this is still around 2 Jacobs of total spending.