We're exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet. The alternatives are either less people on the planet, lower standard of living, or resources from off the planet.
Artificial meat seems like a pretty exciting workaround. Beef has a feed conversion of something like 10:1. So, if you imagine a post-beef world, we will need only 10% of the field corn & soy to produce similar amounts of artificial meat. Corn, by the way, is the US's largest crop.
This has a lot of open questions around, e.g. what happens to all the corn & soy farmers. But if we're just talking about the planet's carrying capacity at Western standards of living, it seems clinch.
Headlines I'm expecting in 10 years - "problems caused by artificial meat are as bad as the obesity epidemic caused by processed food."
There is no need for artificial meat, just eat less meat, and eat more veggies, nuts and beans. They are way better for you and provide a lot of micro nutrients (anti - oxidants, phytochemical etc) that may or may not exist in artificial meat. Artificial meat is a processed food, and like any other may have the same problems.
> So, if you imagine a post-beef world, we will need only 10% of the field corn & soy to produce similar amounts of artificial meat. Corn, by the way, is the US's largest crop.
The US produces 14 billion bushels of corn, but only 36% of that, 5 billion bushels, is fed to animals. Your numbers suggest we could reduce those 5 billion bushels to half a billion bushels, but that only reduces the corn crop to 68% of the current size, not the 10% your comment might lead one to believe.
And if we're talking about carrying capacity, acres start to become relevant. Not all corn acres are created equal. While individual fields can easily push 300 bushels per acre, the US average yield is only 170 bushels per acre. When the pressure is on due to less need for corn, it is is the lowest yielding acres that will give up first. Instead of only needing 68% of the acres, you might need more like 75% of the current acres.
Having said that, corn is fed to more than cattle. In a post-beef world, it is likely that people will still want to eat pork, chicken, etc. I was not able to find any hard information about how much of that 5 billion bushels is directed to cattle, but we might be looking at needing more than 80% of the current corn acres in a post-beef world to feed the animals that don't result in beef.
> what happens to all the corn & soy farmers
Probably the same as usual. These cash crops are typically planted before the market need is understood, so even if the market cratered due to artificial meat, they would be planted anyway. Then, with so much surplus product in the ground, the price will crater. Once the price craters, opportunists (possibly with help from the government) will start to take a hard look at what they can do with this corn and soy being practically given away for free. New markets will emerge, and eventually the price will recover. There will no doubt be some casualties along the way, but at the end of the day, not much.
This is kinda bullshit though. Our lifestyle is the problem, which is multiplied by our population. If you just took the US and Europe, wiped out everyone else, we'd still be destroying our world.
