Diet With Some Meat More Efficient Than Vegetarian Diet

Cornell researchers report that a low-fat vegetarian diet is very efficient in terms of how much land is needed to support it. But adding some dairy products and a limited amount of meat may actually increase this efficiency. "If everyone in New York state followed a low-fat vegetarian diet," they conclude, "the state could directly support almost 50 percent more people, or about 32 percent of its population, agriculturally. ... Surprisingly, however, a vegetarian diet is not necessarily the most efficient in terms of land use. ... The reason is that fruits, vegetables and grains must be grown on high-quality cropland, he explained. Meat and dairy products from ruminant animals are supported by lower quality, but more widely available, land that can support pasture and hay. A large pool of such land is available in New York state because for sustainable use, most farmland requires a crop rotation with such perennial crops as pasture and hay."

This suggests that adding grass-fed beef in the diet might be more efficient than the vegetarian diet.

Here's a link to the October 2007 article in the Cornell Chronicle.