> But doesn't a vegetarian diet require more hectares than a meat based one?
The animals we eat are mostly fed by what is cultivated on the arable land, exactly because of the modern habits of everybody eating meat every day. Most of the animals never see the pastures. The demand is too big and getting much bigger.
So we feed the animals, and most of the energy stored in their food is converted to the maintenance of the life of the animal, not the meat you get when you kill it.
Compare that with feeding the humans directly (with mostly vegetarian diet): most of the animal food you grow, transport and feed to the animals never end up becoming meat.
The animals we eat are mostly fed by what is cultivated on the arable land, exactly because of the modern habits of everybody eating meat every day. Most of the animals never see the pastures. The demand is too big and getting much bigger.
So we feed the animals, and most of the energy stored in their food is converted to the maintenance of the life of the animal, not the meat you get when you kill it.
Compare that with feeding the humans directly (with mostly vegetarian diet): most of the animal food you grow, transport and feed to the animals never end up becoming meat.
See for example:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/1...