We moved on from the horse, so why do we still need the cow?
With most of the habitable planet now devoted to livestock, technology may finally have some answers
The horse was no match for technology. There used to be up to 200,000 horses working in cities like New York City. Then they were gone, suddenly replaced by remarkable new inventions like cars, planes and electricity.
But this raises a question. If we could replace horsepower with nuclear power, why can’t we replace the cow?
Think about it. At the same time that horses have largely disappeared from our lives, the number of cows and other livestock has exploded. Roughly 40 million km2 of our planet is now used to raise livestock for food. That’s an area the size of Europe and North America combined.
This growing dependence on farmland and livestock has been costly.
“Agriculture is the largest consumer of resources globally,” says Irving Fain, founder of foodtech startup Bowery Farming. It requires 70% of the world’s water and about 6 billion pounds of pesticides every year.
Along with this massive drain on natural resources and more recent problems like disrupted supply chains and soaring food prices, there are less obvious costs as well. Almost 80% of…
