Climate change's enduring drought signals that we'll need protein alternatives to meat farming.

[NickB79]

49. We currently consume too much protein as is

The FDA's recommended serving size for meat is a piece approximately the size of a deck of playing cards. You ever see someone get served a steak that size in recent memory? A Quarter Pounder with Cheese alone supplies over half an adult man's daily intake of protein (29 g out of the recommended 56 g).

So, we have some leeway on reducing protein intake and still maintaining health before things get bad.

Once we reach the point that protein production has fallen off that much due to climate change, we have several options:

-Dairy: it is far more efficient to feed cattle grasses and a limited amount of grains for dairy than it is to slaughter them for meat. Plus, using certain cultures such as the ones used for Greek yogurt can drastically improve protein concentrations of cultured dairy products.

-Eggs: same as above, it's more efficient to raise chickens for eggs as compared to raising the solely for slaughter. Free-range chickens on small-scale farming operations can eat pests and weeds to both gain calories and reduce farmer inputs.

-Insects: yes, it grosses a lot of people out, but they are a very efficient way to grow protein on otherwise inhospitable land. I've had roasted grasshoppers before, and as long as you avoid the spiny legs, they're not half-bad.

-Longer-term, we have to change our farming styles to address the fact that weather extremes are the new norm, and we will not be going back to the good old days. Permaculture using long-lived perennial crops such as chestnuts and hazelnuts that can tolerate climate shifts shows great promise, as this research nursery in my home state has shown: http://www.badgersett.com/info/woodyag1.html

While chestnuts are fairly low in protein, hazelnuts pack over 4 grams of protein per ounce, twice that supplied by an ounce of tofu.

-Spirulina: Yes, it's technically an algae, so that will probably gross people out just like the insect statement above. However, it will grow easily in cultivated ponds in warmer areas of the world, and requires fairly few inputs to put out high quantities of protein.

But as others above have pointed out, these are all just stopgap measures unless we can get our population growth under control.