General Discussion

it is more efficient to grow veggies to eat directly than to grow veggies that you eat indirectly after being processed into meat.

What the most extreme anti-meat individuals (and not even all that extreme) fail to take into account is there is a lot of land which is suitable for grazing, but not growing crops for humans - land which is not irrigable (lack of ground water source or the terrain is too rugged ), but does grow ground cover whcih animals will eat; land with poor soil that generates a very small yield. Then your assessment is correct - that portion of land produces more calories and protein when processed into meat because what could be grown on the land is far too sparse and energy intensive for human consumption.

But all else being equal, it is nearly always more efficient to eat directly from the source than to eat from a secondary source which nearly always results in content loss.