Beef and lamb receive 580 times more in EU subsidies than legumes, a report has found, despite scientists urging people to get more of their protein from less harmful sources.
Analysis by the charity Foodrise found the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) provides “unfair” levels of support to meat-heavy diets that doctors consider unhealthy and climate scientists consider environmentally destructive.
It found beef and lamb were subsidised 580 times more than legumes in 2020, while pork was subsidised nearly 240 times more. Dairy, meanwhile, received 554 times more in subsidies than nuts and seeds.
the oil, a few years ago when I last looked this up, was about half the value of the he soybean, despite only being 1/5 of the weight of the bean. and it was tending upward. I don’t know if it’s definitive to say one way or another, but my interpretation is that over 4/5 soybeans are processed in an oil press to extract the oil, and we feed the industrial waste to livestock.
I found this graphic. Even if we feed the waste the industrial waste to livestock and deduct that from the demand for animals (76 % – 13.2 % = 62.8 %) which I don’t think we can do 1:1, over 60 % of the world wide soy bean production is only done for animal feed. From the graphic I don’t know if the mentioned waste is even fed to the animals.
But in the worst case scenario eating plant based would save 60 % of soy beans from ever being made, while the new demand from the plant based diets must be lower. Because lots of non-plant based people eat soy products already, especially in Asia and it still only makes up 20 % of the soy bean production right now.
you’re misreading this graphic
a soybean is about 20% oil.
13.2% is human edible oil, biodiesel is another 2.8%, and another .3% is lubricants. that means 16.3% of the global crops oil is extracted. that’s about 85% of the total crop that’s pressed.
that leaves about 69% as industrial waste, which we feed to livestock, and another 7% of the crop is fed directly to them, but this includes crop seconds.