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It's not possible to feed 8 billion people a diet rich in animal products without all the abuses and cruelties of modern animal agriculture. Those techniques weren't invented because people enjoy abusing animals. They were developed because environmentally sustainable and more humane methods simply can't scale to meet demand.

And the "paleo" diet most people eat is really just a rebranding of what people used to call the Atkins diet.

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While this is often cited as being true, and I used to believe it myself, as I've investigated alternative forms of agriculture and animal husbandry - I've begun to feel less and less that this is true. There are integrated farms that are highly, highly productive.

I feel the root cause of much of these issues is the practice of corporate farms to wall things off into atomic monocultures, and to separate animal husbandry from farming. I believe this is easier, for many reasons, but not more productive. It may be more economical, based on externalized pollution costs, and subsidized energy costs. I.E it has more to do with our arrangement of politics, rather than underlying fundamentals.

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