Yes; it's definitely the case that ruminants can thrive on land that is not well-suited to typical forms of arable agriculture. Of course, that land could have non-agricultural uses, too. An obvious one is that it could be rewilded, which would have all kinds of benefits. (I'm thinking specifically of the sheep who are grazed on mountaintops here in the UK. Before human use, though, these mountains would have been forested. Reforesting large amounts of Britain could naturally have very postive impacts when in carbon terms.) But that's a side issue from the Davis/Matheny debate, which wasn't about effective land use as such, but about which forms of food production are less harmful to animals.

I agree about caution and epistemic humility. But it's a lack of caution and a lack of epistemic humility that's gotten us into the mess we are in today. Massive changes in our food systems and diets in the last century have massively increased the risk that we (humans and animals!) face from the likes of climate change and pandemics. (Between chatting to you, I've been reading Jeff Sebo's Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves, which makes this point very well.) Put simply, even people who don't give a jot about animals need to be thinking about how we can change our food system, given the impacts that it's having on humans. I'd like to see the kinds of things I'm talking about in the article above -- e.g., cellular agriculture -- a part of that conversation, too. Put simply, my proposals aren't JUST about animals. I'm trying to keep lots of factors in mind. But, of course, I can't prove that one envisioned food system is the all-things-considered best in the space of one article. I can't even do it in the space of a book -- but I can, hopefully, point down a path we could go down, and offer some reasons that we should want to.

Anyway, yes, good to talk to you!