While I generally agree, I have seen the argument that grass will grow in thin soil where crops will not, so you can theoretically turn land that’s unusable for crops into being usable for producing beef…
But that was more of a land use argument than an environmental one.
This is literally the origin of livestock farming. And it isn’t just about infertile soil or difficult terrain - it’s a simple matter of scale. If you have more land than you can farm, you graze livestock on it. Livestock also acts as a super important calorie sink over the winter when you can’t farm.
Then there are places like Iceland, where large scale agriculture is literally impossible, and the only way to produce food domestically is to graze sheep on the small bits of vegetation which can grow in volcanic rock.
While I generally agree, I have seen the argument that grass will grow in thin soil where crops will not, so you can theoretically turn land that’s unusable for crops into being usable for producing beef…
But that was more of a land use argument than an environmental one.
This is literally the origin of livestock farming. And it isn’t just about infertile soil or difficult terrain - it’s a simple matter of scale. If you have more land than you can farm, you graze livestock on it. Livestock also acts as a super important calorie sink over the winter when you can’t farm.
Then there are places like Iceland, where large scale agriculture is literally impossible, and the only way to produce food domestically is to graze sheep on the small bits of vegetation which can grow in volcanic rock.