Have you actually spent any time in livestock ag?
My parents farm rotates crops and every 4 years they plant a cover crop that restores nitrogen to the soils, and bulks it up with other nutrients. To control the cover crop, they use livestock to graze it. They also eat that livestock. Their methods are better on the agriculture land, it helps repair the damage that intensive crop production does create (any way of generating food does damage.) From the animals they raise, they use everything.
In Kentucky, I know a farmer that pasture raises livestock on rocky sites....ones where crops can't be grown. In Raleigh, theres an entire community of folks that raise chickens in their backyards for egg production. Somehow I think thier chickens are generally well cared for and providing for food that wouldn't be used otherwise.
And if we in the developed world all did our part to take responsibility for raising our own food, there would be less stress on the system, but I'm pretty sure that I am one of the very few people in my school that raises a significant portion of my own vegetables.
If you are concerned about things like feeding the world, what are you personally doing to ensure that you are putting as little extra burden on the food providing communities? Are you going beyond not eating meat and criticizing those that do? Or do you stop at the point that it becomes inconvenient? Please don't think that crop agriculture is easy on the land or is viable everywhere, it certainly isn't. And saddly, as we continue to be destructive to our environs and place high demands on limited areas, we will collapse the most fertile areas of crop generation...and unlike livestock, it is harder to grow crops in areas that aren't already suitable for those crops (ie some crops won't grow in rocky or alkaline or clay soils, but I can find an animal that can graze all of those areas.)
