And yet there's still a downside to this: what happens to the excess animals?
Good question. Since it is impossible to scale up the new technology in a short amount of time, there will likely be a transition period of several decades where populations of domestic animals will dwindle and many farmers will go out of business. This has happened already. Millions of small family farms went out of business in the last few decades in America and Europe, and the farms still continue to grow in size and decrease in numbers. Only economies of scale make modern agriculture (and just about everything else) work. The animals will continue to be slaughtered of course, (I'm not an animal activist, I do butcher's work on an annual basis) just less and less every year.
The end result will be that many breeds of domestic animals will end up as zoo exhibits. Just like many wild animals ended up because their habitats are being destroyed. Why should domestic animals be any different? They're after all human creations, often incapable of surviving in nature without human asistence. And the taking of land for animal food production is one of the main reason for the destruction of homes of wild animals
And there's not only the slaughter of animals. Look at the conditions in which animals are being raised. Especially chickens. Being fed with obscene amounts of antibiotics just to survive the sheer amount of bacteria that grow in the excrement beneath their feet. They have to grow so fast that sometimes they can barely move or experience a heart attack. Living in small cages in which they can barely move under an artificial day-night cycle to optimise egg production. It's a horrible life. My uncle raises chickens, so I know all this.
Of course, I would be sorry if my uncle loses his business, but he has lost one business already.
He worked in a tool factory which went out of business because it could not produce quality tools in large amounts. The factory had a large low-tech work force. It was driven out of business by German companies, who have small high-tech workforces.
Unemployment is the future of mankind. Our high-tech industries simply cannot create billions of jobs. That's why it's an absolute necessity to do away with liberal capitalism and introduce a welfare state everywhere, to keep the masses feed and reasonably educated. My uncle already receives large amounts of aid from the Croatian government. So, much in fact, that he could easily survive with doing nothing at all.
Im not happy with this, but it's the way only to go forward, and expand out of Earth eventually.
