This is exactly what I mean - the statistic has convinced you of some unwritten law that says that only livestock or humans can eat this stuff. Since humans can't, it has to go to livestock.
But you're completely ignoring that processing these inedibles doesn't have to come in the form of eating them - we can make compost, building materials, packaging. Just because something is doesn't mean it ought to.
You can't really make packaging materials from tough cellulose-y things like bean stalks because mice eat it, you can't really make building materials from it because it goes on fire, and because it's tough and made of cellulose it doesn't really break down well in a compost heap.
Do you know what composts that stuff like crazy, though?
Feeding it to cows.
And even better, it reduces methane and carbon dioxide emissions, because you're turning all that carbon into cows instead of just letting bacteria emit it as gas.
>And even better, it reduces methane and carbon dioxide emissions, because you're turning all that carbon into cows instead of just letting bacteria emit it as gas.
Cows don't work as carbon sinks if you're killing them every 2 years to eat them. You're just reintroducing that carbon in the form of sewage, transportation, and food waste. They need to be allowed to live all 20 years of their lives for the carbon efficiency argument to work. This necessitates (1) massively reducing the population of livestock by ceasing breeding (otherwise it's hurting any gains with carbon storage in the soil) and (2) finding alternative uses for the inedible byproducts of plant agriculture.
