Every feed lot owner knows exactly how much feed it takes to make a steak. And from known crop yields, how many acres it takes per cow. It shouldn't be too hard to calculate the amount of feed your farmer gets per acre, then compare the two systems. Proving the Regenerate the Soil advantage should just be a matter of math. Does he really get more steak per acre than the feed lot does?
I'd like to see those real numbers compared to the enviro-whackos bazillion tons and an ocean of water per steak.
Regenerative Ag is not just about cattle. Beef and dairy is just one small subset. The primary difference being most agricultural croplands no longer are used to raise those animals, as they have generally get removed and their impact replaced with agrochemicals. But as this was your question, I will take a stab at answering this subset of a subset.
Obviously this varies quite a lot depending on the quality of the feed and the breed of cattle, however, feed conversion ratios in the neighborhood of 6:1 (6 lbs of feed per pound of gain) are common in modern beef cattle feedlots. The blends are an amazingly complex issue as well. For simplicity's sake I will use the most common corn, soybean meal, alfalfa hay model. There are three stages starting with 60% corn, 40% alfalfa; 73% corn, 27% alfalfa; and finishing with 86% corn, 2% soy, 12% alfalfa. (these are general %'s that do not include additives like Dicalcium phosphate, Limestone, Potassium chloride, Urea, Salt and trace minerals) They also require about 10% roughage (usually low quality straw or hay) with minimal nutrient content, to prevent various digestive ailments, as the cattle's digestive system is not evolved to handle concentrated feeds.
It is further complicated by the fact almost all beef cattle are set stock grazed (called stockers) prior to entering the feedlot, often on land unfit for crop production for a variety of reasons. When the cattle start out thin and ragged, they’ll gain at a quicker rate on spring forage for stockers or feedlot concentrate for finishing. That’s because they’re eating better than they previously had. This is a perverse "incentive" for cattlemen to overgraze first before transferring to the next step in the feedlot system.
So lets break it down by life cycle stages. We start with a cow calf operation that uses 100% grazing until the steers and heifers get weaned at about 700-1000 pounds. Then they move to a stocker operation that usually also grazes but that could sometimes supplement with concentrated feeds. And then finally the cattle enter the feedlots for the final 90 days or so to "finish".
So then to properly analyze yields of beef per acre in the segmented feedlot system one must include the acreage for the cow/calf operation, the acreage for the stocker operation, and finally the acreage used to grow the concentrated feeds.
Basically 2 to 3 times the acreage, but done in 2 years what rotational grazers are doing in 3 years but on a little more than 1/3rd the acreage. Keep in mind though, Illinois and Iowa cornfields are on much more productive ground. The rare regenerative farmer who has switched has found that they also can grow far far more forage on restored grasslands in these former tallgrass prairie areas.
I am not exactly sure where the myth came from that grazed cattle require more acreage to raise than feedlot cattle. But it was never the case that industrial ag is land efficient. Just the opposite. Industrial ag is across the board land
inefficient, sacrificing land use efficiency for labor efficiency (and time efficiency in animal husbandry).
And that's the very simplified analysis...
