Animal products as the backbone of protein supply? Without crop feed, Switzerland could produce about 20 % more protein domestically.

Around 60 percent of Switzerland’s arable land is currently used for animal feed. If that land were used to grow food for direct human consumption, the detour through the animal would be eliminated, and more food and protein would be available per hectare. The magnitude of the loss depends on the animal species. Ruminants efficiently convert grass, and according to Mottet et al. (2017) they provide roughly 0.6 kg of human‑edible feed protein per kg of animal protein net suppliers. Pigs and chickens rely on concentrate feed; in industrial systems 2.9 to 5.2 kg of edible protein are used per kg of animal protein. For the United States, Shepon et al. (2018) show that plant‑based substitutes deliver two‑to‑twenty times the comparable nutrition per area. Thus the loss is not caused by animal husbandry itself, but by feed grown on arable land. The direction is well supported. Agroscope calculated in 2017 that a more plant‑based diet would raise the calorie self‑sufficiency from 61 % to about 80 %, cut feed imports by 85 %, and roughly halve the livestock population. An Agroscope report on the economic national supply concludes that, in an emergency, the population could entirely rely on domestic production. The supply is shifting from animal to plant protein. The two are not equivalent: plant protein must be combined to cover all essential amino acids (FAO, 2013). Other modeling results from the studies point to lower greenhouse‑gas and ammonia emissions. Livestock production will remain, but it will rely on pasture and by‑products.