Doesn't it take 4 times or something acres of planted land to produce X amount of beef?
Not quite right. What you may be referring to is the "feed conversion ratio" of FCR, which means the amount of feed the animal needs to consume for weight gain. Its simply a ratio of imputs to outputs. Feedlotting is an exacting science and I am not familiar with cattle FCR's, maybe someone else on hotcopper can help you with that. We feedlot prime lambs here when margins allow it, we use FCR and dressing percentages to establish feed intake to meat ratios. For example if we had a FCR of 6:1, that is 6 kgs of feed for 1 kg of liveweight, a dressing percentage of 50%, we only gained 0.5kgs of meat for 6 kgs of feed or 12:1. Hope this helps.
