I guess I'm not a true survivalist (I have less than ten firearms, which pretty well eliminates that LOL!); but if I were preparing for a real, honest-to-the-Goddess SHTF scenario, I'd be much more inclined to switch from my meat-three-times-a-week-with-an-occasional-splurge diet to a vegetarian diet because it makes more sense.
First, if you have limited crop-land, you'd get a lot more people-food from a 4000-square foot garden than you would from an acre of grassland for a steer to butcher. Most mammals (except for the tiny carnivorous thingies like shrews) turn a lot of plants into not so much meat. If you want a thousand pounds of steer, he's gonna cost you a ten thousand pounds of hay , grain, or any other forage by the time he's done. Obviously, you're not going to eat timothy or orchard grass or even alfalfa, but that same land that can grow a thousand pounds of alfalfa will grow a thousand pounds of potatoes, beans, onions, corn, other root veggies like rutabagas, beets, etc. as well as leafy veggies and different kinds of peppers.
And I haven't even mentioned the amount of water your steer needs compared to that row of taters and onions!
Second, there's a lot of work -- physical exertion -- involved in raising a hereford steer or a boer goat and butchering it. You have to deliver their grain and water, ensure their health with medications, make sure you have a big and strong fence for the pasture, etc. If you're living on the edge, as in a SHTF scenario, you'll need calories and lots of them. The harder you have to work to get those calories, the more you'll need. Veggies are simply more bang for the (caloric) buck.
That's one of the reasons why we sold our goat herd and limited our home-grown animals to chickens. And we don't (after a couple of times) raise meat chickens any more: expensive feed, careful watching to see that they don't eat themselves to death, butchering and plucking, scalding and cleaning, and you have a dressed broiler and/or fryer at about 3 lb. Collecting eggs and swapping them to neighbors and others and storing the rest in a water-glass solution is just easier.
I like meat a lot, and Dawn and I like to cook a lot. One of my favorites is to take a 3-4 lb pot roast out of the freezer in the afternoon, then pop it in the crock-pot overnight, getting up early to add the onions taters, carrots, rutabagas, etc. and tear that bad boy up for dinner. Even Leila-the-dog gets a bone and some gravy for her dog-food bowl!!
We cook with meat, but we also do a lot with tofu and lots of grains. We've both had plant-based meats -- some of the good, some bad -- and even a pseudo-burger from Burger King. Not bad at all, once you doctor it up.
We in America and the West have been raised so that we expect and get meat, but it's really just a luxury. And it's getting worse, with more people, less arable land, given desertification on the Southwest and the diminishing aquifers in the Midwest, with some of the most productive land found in a state (which will be un-named) that's burning itself to death. This is what the strategic-planning exercises call an untenable end-game.
The bottom line is that even in the USA, and even without a SHTF scenario, we as a people are slowly converting to plant-based food. I'm not saying the gubbmint's gonna ration your meat; they'll let the market cover it. But your (or your kids' or grandkids') choice in a couple of decades will be to buy less meat for more money, raise your own pigs, or transition to a semi-vegetarian diet. I'm not thrilled with that future, but that's the way it's going to be within 30-50 years.
Bon appetit!
