"To try to understand how much impact efficiency has had, we can try a simple counterfactual: What if we held today’s demand constant, but produced it using the efficiency levels of 1960?"
I do not think this is the right counterfactual. The demand for animal-based foods cannot be assumed to be constant because it is affected by the efficiency of animal farming. For the efficiency levels of 1960, animal-based foods would have remained way more expensive than now, and therefore the demand for them would have been much lower than now. Moreover, there would have been less population growth if the efficiency of all agriculture had remained at 1960 levels.
Agricultural land per capita has been decreasing (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agricultural-area-per-capita?country=~OWID_WRL), so this does not imply that greater agricultural efficiency tends to decrease cropland. Lower efficiency also tends to result in lower population growth, which contributes towards decreasing agricultural land. Furthermore, even if greater agricultural efficiency decreased not only agricultural land per capita, but also total agricultural land, it would still be the case that a lower efficiency of animal farming in particular would have implied less agricultural land holding the efficiency of the production of plant-based foods constant.
Total agricultural land increased a lot after the industrial revolution (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-peak-agricultural-land?country=~OWID_WRL), so increases in efficiency have overall increased agricultural land. However, agricultural land seems to be now starting to decrease. I assume due to the continuation of increasing yields, and sufficiently slow population growth, and sufficiently growth of the consumption per capita of animal-based foods.
I have read Weighing animal welfare and dove deeply into the models. My review is 3 stars "at least they tried". The models give 10% credence to all animals having the same welfare range as humans. This is simply nonsense that drags up the mean. More weight is given to the behaviour vs neurophysiological model (60/30 IIRC) where the behaviour model is lacking a lot of data for these animals and the neurophysiological model destroys their p(sentience). I think assuming wild animals live net negative lives in ways where extinction is beneficial is extremely counterproductive and would advise against it given the uncertainty and benefits these animals often provide to the ecosystem.
Thank you for at least bringing up the cruelty of how we treat farmed animals.
Professor John Webster has said: “Broilers [chickens raised for meat] are the only livestock that are in chronic pain for the last 20% of their lives. They don't move around, not because they are overstocked, but because it hurts their joints so much.”
I prefer your other comment Vasco. Bringing mites and nematodes into the calculation as if these are animals of serious moral concern is nonsense. The idea that wild nematodes and mites live net negative lives and that evolution has not enabled them to hedonically adjust to their natural environment is, frankly, unlikely.
My estimates of the effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails are based on Rethink Priorities' (RP's) mainline welfare ranges (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/y5n47MfgrKvTLE3pw/p/Qk3hd6PrFManj8K6o), which are the estimates enabling welfare comparisons across species respecting the most research-hours. There is an open access book about the project which produced them (https://academic.oup.com/book/58809). They are still very uncertain, but I do not think one can confidently dismiss them as "nonsense".
"To try to understand how much impact efficiency has had, we can try a simple counterfactual: What if we held today’s demand constant, but produced it using the efficiency levels of 1960?"
I do not think this is the right counterfactual. The demand for animal-based foods cannot be assumed to be constant because it is affected by the efficiency of animal farming. For the efficiency levels of 1960, animal-based foods would have remained way more expensive than now, and therefore the demand for them would have been much lower than now. Moreover, there would have been less population growth if the efficiency of all agriculture had remained at 1960 levels.
Agricultural land per capita has been decreasing (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agricultural-area-per-capita?country=~OWID_WRL), so this does not imply that greater agricultural efficiency tends to decrease cropland. Lower efficiency also tends to result in lower population growth, which contributes towards decreasing agricultural land. Furthermore, even if greater agricultural efficiency decreased not only agricultural land per capita, but also total agricultural land, it would still be the case that a lower efficiency of animal farming in particular would have implied less agricultural land holding the efficiency of the production of plant-based foods constant.
Total agricultural land increased a lot after the industrial revolution (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-peak-agricultural-land?country=~OWID_WRL), so increases in efficiency have overall increased agricultural land. However, agricultural land seems to be now starting to decrease. I assume due to the continuation of increasing yields, and sufficiently slow population growth, and sufficiently growth of the consumption per capita of animal-based foods.
I have read Weighing animal welfare and dove deeply into the models. My review is 3 stars "at least they tried". The models give 10% credence to all animals having the same welfare range as humans. This is simply nonsense that drags up the mean. More weight is given to the behaviour vs neurophysiological model (60/30 IIRC) where the behaviour model is lacking a lot of data for these animals and the neurophysiological model destroys their p(sentience). I think assuming wild animals live net negative lives in ways where extinction is beneficial is extremely counterproductive and would advise against it given the uncertainty and benefits these animals often provide to the ecosystem.
I have only read the sequence of blogposts (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/y5n47MfgrKvTLE3pw), not the book. I am not familiar with the estimates of the book, but I know they are different from Rethink Priorities' (RP's) mainline welfare ranges (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/y5n47MfgrKvTLE3pw/p/Qk3hd6PrFManj8K6o), which are the ones I used to estimate the effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Rjutj7Jd2v2KHvDyA/cost-effectiveness-accounting-for-soil-nematodes-mites-and) (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/J62ZWBJyAtWqSr4eH/animal-farming-impacts-soil-nematodes-mites-and-springtails). RP's mainline welfare ranges are based on 9 models, each having a weight of 1/9 (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xUvMKRkEOJQcc6V7VJqcLLGAJ2SsdZno0jTIUb61D8k/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.pzbfji6xhlaz). The equality model you referred to, under which the welfare range conditional on sentience, and on the rate of subjective experience of humans is 1, is not among the 9 models. The neuron counts model is included among the 9. For small invertebrates, the contribution from the neuron counts model is negligible. However, increasing the weight of the neuron counts model from 1/9 to 8/9 would only make the final welfare range 1/8 (= (1 - 8/9)/(1 - 1/9)) as high. This is far from enough for my results to be significantly changed. For example, I estimated eating chicken meat benefits soil animals 4.81 k times as much as it harms directly affected animals for crops replacing temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands. In this case, the effects on soil animals would have to become less than 0.0208 % (= 1/(4.81*10^3)) as large for the effects on directly affected animals to be larger.
Thank you for at least bringing up the cruelty of how we treat farmed animals.
Professor John Webster has said: “Broilers [chickens raised for meat] are the only livestock that are in chronic pain for the last 20% of their lives. They don't move around, not because they are overstocked, but because it hurts their joints so much.”
Thanks for the post, Robert!
"Of course, we need to use some land to feed people. But the less we use, the better."
I think decreasing agricultural land is harmful due to increasing the number of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails, which I guess have negative lives (with more suffering than happiness), although I am very uncertain (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/J62ZWBJyAtWqSr4eH/animal-farming-impacts-soil-nematodes-mites-and-springtails). More broadly, I believe animal farming impacts those soil animals hugely more than directly affected animals (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/J62ZWBJyAtWqSr4eH/animal-farming-impacts-soil-nematodes-mites-and-springtails). For example, I conclude 0.1 kg of chicken meat causes 2.87 animal-days more in directly affected animals, but 6.16 M animal-years less in soil nematodes, mites, and springtails for feed crops replacing temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands, which is 783 M times as many animal-years.
I prefer your other comment Vasco. Bringing mites and nematodes into the calculation as if these are animals of serious moral concern is nonsense. The idea that wild nematodes and mites live net negative lives and that evolution has not enabled them to hedonically adjust to their natural environment is, frankly, unlikely.
Thanks for the comment, Garreth!
My estimates of the effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails are based on Rethink Priorities' (RP's) mainline welfare ranges (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/y5n47MfgrKvTLE3pw/p/Qk3hd6PrFManj8K6o), which are the estimates enabling welfare comparisons across species respecting the most research-hours. There is an open access book about the project which produced them (https://academic.oup.com/book/58809). They are still very uncertain, but I do not think one can confidently dismiss them as "nonsense".
I am very uncertain about whether soil nematodes, mites, and springtails have positive or negative lives. I calculated soil nematodes, mites, and springtails have negative lives with a probability of 58.7 %, 55.8 %, and 55.0 % (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Rjutj7Jd2v2KHvDyA/cost-effectiveness-accounting-for-soil-nematodes-mites-and#Welfare_per_animal_year__and_annual_welfare), which are only slightly above 50 %.
https://optimistsbarn.substack.com/p/dont-demonize-efficiency-in-animal/comment/131455267?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=77t65