

I think what you’re missing here is the concept of the trophic pyramid or ecological pyramid which explains how energy is transferred from one level to the next. In general only about 10% of energy is transferred from one level of the pyramid to the next.
Only 1 to 2 percent of the energy from the sun is absorbed by photosynthetic processes and converted into food.[2] When energy is transferred to higher trophic levels, on average only about 10% is used at each level to build biomass, becoming stored energy. The rest goes to metabolic processes such as growth, respiration, and reproduction.[3]
Right now you’re just thinking of the cattle themselves, but to support the cattle there is the additional land space of all the food they eat (and also the lagoons for their shit). If we were to plot them in the food chain, then plants/grains would be the primary pruducer on the bottom tier of the pyramid, with cattle at the next tier. To gain 1 lbs the cattle would need to eat 10lbs of grains. Obviously cattle weigh much more than just 1 lbs so the land to support their 1100 lbs weight ends up being massive and not something a lot of people think about when they end up eating a burger. And above the cattle in this trophic pyramid we could place humans as a secondary consumer where there is another loss of energy as you go from one trophic level to the next. Not to mention 1 lbs of cattle is not 1 lbs of take home beef. A quick search on this number is ~35-45% of live animal weight ends up as take-home beef.
You had asked about what the plots would look like with replacement foods grown instead of animal agriculture. The trophic pyramid answers that and we could forecast if we were to remove an animal based product then we would require only 10% (on average) to replace it with primary source non-animal food
This is why I believe that if anyone seriously cares about the environment then the single, biggest thing they can do at an individual level is to reduce or eliminate their animal consumption. This doesn’t mean I think we shouldn’t care about AI data centers and other major elements of environmental impact, it just means that for me personally my diet I have direct control over. I can and should still care about other environmental impacts but I don’t need to ask a city board to stop feeding me animal products–I can make that choice on my own.



To the people who downvote our community, i also explained this concept of animal agriculture requiring more land because of the ecological pyramid: https://slrpnk.net/comment/23745702
You do not necessarily have to eliminate all meat, but reducing or eliminating your meat consumption is imo the biggest impact an individual person can make to help the environment.