If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Mixed feelings, I suppose.
But your basic point still stands. The Montana native grasslands can only support a few cattle per square mile, so it definitely does not work at scale.
This should not be a veganism vs organic meat discussion, but an organic meat vs intensive meat production discussion. And a separate sustainable crops vs soil-depleting crop production discussion.
You can't feed everybody on just meat; you're going to need crops of various sorts. Feeding crops to animals for meat is incredibly wasteful, but having animals graze on land that's otherwise unusable, is a great idea. I hope this is the future of meat production. But it's not a replacement for sustainable crops.
One could readily argue that most soils are better used for sustainable grazing. Tillage is very intrusive, destructive and unnatural. Most food crops require tillage.
I used Montana as an example of a soil that would be quickly destroyed with a little bit of tillage. Luckily most soil isn't as fragile as Montana's, but virtually all soil is damaged by tillage.
It's all moot though -- our current level of meat consumption is way above the level that can be met through sustainable grazing.
What matters is how you can produce food efficiently and sustainably. There is soil that can produce more food in a sustainable manner through crops than through grazing. There is also soil where the opposite is true.
One of the key goals they set out, aside from getting people to rely less on livestock agriculture in the first place, is to try and convert more of it to CAFOs. Yeah, factory farms are ugly, but they found that it's much more efficient from a land and energy use perspective. As have other disinterested parties. The loudest voices saying otherwise seem to be ones that have a financial interest in selling more grass-fed beef.
A subtext here is that we live in a very different era than the one that the one invoked by more nostalgic approaches to agriculture. Once upon a time, people had no choice but to figure out how to feed themselves off the land they occupied, and nature put much firmer limits on how many people could occupy certain areas. Nowadays, not only is getting food shipped in a realistic option, sometimes it's even the more economical and sustainable one.
Back to Bison? Bison are much more effective at preventing forests from forming than cattle are. So "natural", but from an ecosystem protection and climate change perspective probably not the best choice. "What's best for the environment" is often a large set of conflicting goals...
This is a topic that I've just started looking into on my parent's small 20 acre farm, which run a few head of cattle and due to drought, has caused the soil to be highly compacted. Thankfully, the farm itself used to be an orchard (oranges and kiwifruit mainly), so the cattle have alternative feed sources beside just grazing land. (Believe it or not, cows love fruit, including the leaves!)
Recently I attended a seminar run by local government in conjunction with a group [0] about cover crops (which admittedly is more about vegetable farming, but parts can be used for grazing too). Their focus was mainly about getting the root structures right, which the above article hints. The link below shows a rather wide range of farms and environments that are being tested on. It also has information about 'biopesticides' [1], ie. plants that will help mitigate/eradicate unwanted pests, without need for pesticides.
[0] http://www.soilwealth.com.au/demo-sites/ [1] http://www.soilwealth.com.au/resources/fact-sheets/pest-and-...
The real solution is to reduce the global population but in the meantime switching to a vegan diet will dramatically lower your carbon footprint and help reduce the horrific suffering we inflict on animals every day because we like the way they taste. You might think you understand what it takes to put that bacon on your plate but chances are you have no idea:
http://watch.dominionmovement.com
There's also a growing body of evidence that a well-planned vegan diet is not only perfectly healthy but healthier than diets rich in animal fats & proteins.
I'm gonna call BS on this unless you provide a citation.
Many people (in the west) eat a breakfast (cereal, pancakes, waffles, bagel, toast) or lunch (PB&J sandwich, salad) that contains no meat every day or every workday. Then you have to account for all the meals where there is no meat (pizza, mac and cheese). You'd need to have a substantial fraction of the population eating meat (almost) literally every meal in order to make up for the people who habitually don't eat meat at particular meals.
Edit: I'm talking about meat for the purpose of environmental impact and sustainability here. I'm not talking about meat from the perspective of strict veganism or the milk in your coffee or the eggs in your baked goods, those have negligible impact compared to raising animals to slaughter for food.
That's like complaining about oil products used to patch roads in a discussion about the environmental impact of oil.
That's a huge reason why veganism is growing far faster than vegetarianism. People are realizing the systemic connection between the industries and understanding that all animal products must be eschewed.
I'm not denying that one can have meat at every meal if they so desire. I'm saying that as a matter of convenience many do not.
The only fast food place we ever eat at is Taco Bell because you can customize everything to have beans instead of beef. We can't really eat at Chick-Fil-A, Wendy's, etc anymore.
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/meat-nutrition/#how-mu...
So basically, raw ingredients of any kind are good to eat, processed food is not so good for you.
However I wouldn't call 500g a proper steak, only time I've seen stakes at that size is as novalty items on menus of burger/grill joints, and even then very rarely.
Since the 1970s, at least:
* Americans eat less red meat and more white meat than they used to in the 70's.
* Americans get fewer calories total from meat than they used to, yet eat way more plant material (hint: carbs) than ever before. https://imgur.com/a/LgqUMJz
* Americans and Brits are way more overweight than ever before, with the obesity "trend" starting in the late 70s or early 80s. Obesity should concern you, it kills 10 times the people that the US opioid epidemic does (300K deaths/year vs 30K deaths/year), but culture makes it much harder to take 10 times as seriously. Or talk about at all for that matter. What's a minute increase in bowel cancer comparatively?
Why fear (unprocessed) red meat in 2018, and why on earth listen to the NHS on the subject? Are people who listen to NHS guidelines actually healthier than people in the 1970's, who ate more red meat?
Why such a drastic solution, why not just lower the meat consumption per capita? Or switch to lab-grown meat?
There must be a cleansing.Why is that the "real solution"? We're close to factory-scale lab-grown meat, which seems like a perfectly viable alternative too.
Love the weasel wording
Translation
It means B12 (Yeast has poor bioavailability) Zinc Iron D2 Pills (No such thing as D3 on plant based foods) and a ton of Carbohydrates from grains potatoes legumes rice fruits etc
and people still wonder why the majority of Vegans return back to meat.
The American Dietetics Association's official position is that vegan diets are healthy for people at all stages of life but don't that that distract you from your favorite bro science blog.
And if we eat less meat, we can more easily afford to get the meat we do eat from these kind of organic pastures.
Unless I am missing something, this is really not helping the world. This would amount to something like 0.05 million calories/acre/year.
If I compare that to others (http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/Calories_per_acre_for_vario...) this doesn't seem like a realistic way to feed the global population.
If all meat farming was done this way, optimised for environmental impact and animal welfare, there simply wouldn't be space for it. We'd all have no choice but to eat a lot less meat.
The resulting diet would be something a lot closer to veganism / vegetarianism than most people's idea of a "normal" meat-eating diet.
We are only able to eat the quantities of meat that are currently considered normal by treating animals like shit and harming the environment in the process.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/vegani...
Generally speaking, beans, grains, and plant oils provide a lot of calories per input, whereas leafy greens and berries provide less calories per input than meat. So, if you replace your meat consumption with a bunch of kale salads and berry smoothies, your diet probably has a similar environmental impact to a diet that includes meat. But if you replace your meat consumption with beans, rice, olive oil, etc. then you're probably reducing the environmental impact of your diet.
I wrote a blog post about this:
http://www.richardjones.org/why-kale-is-actually-terrible-fo...
I am reminded of the vast amounts of water used to grow almonds
With regard to the methane from cows concern: just eat chicken or pork. Chicken is probably the most environmentally friendly meat (in terms of calories provided per input).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/vegani...
Save the world for whom? The tacit answer seems to be: for humans. Most vegans, including me, are vegan because we find the exploitation of animals morally unjustifiable. Our world includes the nonhuman world. And by being vegan we are saving it.
I often wonder how the plant feels when the sharp cow hoof shears a leaf or stalk as it grazes. Does it mourn the loss of the immature seed heads that fall to the ground to be consumed by the waiting insect hordes or buried forever in the soil to be consumed by the soil microbes? A generation lost to a random grazer who was totally unappreciative of the effort that the plant expended sucking nutrients from soil and carefully metering out available water all the while competing with each of its anchored neighbors for vital sunlight.
As the horse grazes the pasture do the bunches of grass shout pain filled warnings to their neighbors as they are forcefully yanked from the ground by their roots and consumed whole to be digested and deposited some time later as a turd that will feed their fellow grasses? Oh the indignity of losing your closest kin to a ruminant who deposits their crushed, altered remains on your shimmering blades so that they can feed you and your surviving kinsmen. By their deaths do you so prosper.
Does the plant yearn for mobility so that it could exact some revenge upon the aggressors? Is kudzu the plant kingdom equivalent of a super-hero – taking land that humans value for farming and agriculture out of production? Do insects pass on to their plant hosts the bold tales of the lands currently under conquest by invasive plant species? Is there something in the vibrational frequencies of the bee and insect wings that conveys information to the plants about how the plants in the next field are faring? Are they suffering from lack of water on that sunny slope? Are you lucky to be growing here on the shady side of the ridge because your cousins on the other side are spindly and dry? Is the farmer currently murdering your fibrous friends with their machines that foul the air and compress the soil so that extra work is necessary before life-giving roots can once again permeate its matrix?
Does the elm or the hackberry tree feel indebted to the birds who eat their seeds and shit them out along my fence lines so that I have new bird-shit elms and hackberries to clear each year, like magic?
Were the oaks disappointed to see the jays stealing their acorns to be deposited miles away from the mother tree thus reforesting the plains on retreat of the glaciers after the last ice age or did they somehow communicate to the birds that it would be appreciated?
I think the answer to the old question about whether a tree falling in a forest makes a sound if there are no ears to hear it has to be a resounding yes. It is the chemical scream of an injured plant crying out for another opportunity at life as it crashes to the forest floor. As humans, we don’t have ears to hear these screams and have only recently documented their existence [0]. Much remains to be studied.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/science/plant-defenses.ht...
You want diverse biota, you need to talk grasslands. Which feed most cattle in America
Employing pesticides and herbicides and fungicides erodes the viability of the cropland even further making it necessary for periodic supplementation.
Vegans have a moral issue with consuming anything that they think may be capable of being opposed to their consumption.
From parent:
>Most vegans, including me, are vegan because we find the exploitation of animals morally unjustifiable. Our world includes the nonhuman world. And by being vegan we are saving it.
I guess it's okay to fail to consider that there is a portion of the nonhuman world that might not want to be exploited. Hard to justify that you are saving that portion of it by cultivating it so you can eat it.
I wonder when we'll see the disclaimer in the movie credits that no plants were harmed in the making of the movie.
However, your mock poetry about plants yearning for freedom is close to being an ad-hominem attack. Are you saying you don't eat plants because you feel their pain? My guess is probably not. Instead, you are trying to deflect attention away from the suffering of those whom we know do feel pain.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/What-Plant-Knows-Field-Senses/dp/0374... [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Life-Trees-Communicate_Discove... [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Sensing-Communication-Interspec... [3]: https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319755953
You are correct. I am, like we all have evolved to be, omnivorous. I supped on delicious pig parts with potatoes and brussels sprouts last night. The seasonings I used included crushed plant seeds, pressed seed oils, and real butter from someone's cow.
Vegans, like those people who choose to eat meat-heavy diets are making a conscious choice to ignore a specific option from all the available food sources.
Your body has evolved to be able to handle all of it, some of it may be better for your health over the long run but that doesn't mean that you can't eat it. It means that you have chosen not to eat it for philosophical reasons.
I'm not in your head so I don't know why you have chosen to be vegan except that you say that you don't want to cause pain to that part of the biota that we understand has the capacity to experience pain. It appears to be an ethical question for you. Stick to your guns. Live your life.
I wrote the "mock poetry" as you describe it in a tongue-in-cheek way in order to have the reader see life from a different perspective, that of the plants that you would potentially be consuming. I have also followed the literature about plant growth, etc. for many years. I don't have a green thumb so I usually end up feeling sorry for the plants who unwittingly fall into my cart when I'm on my annual garden upgrade adventures. I do what I can to make their growing environment more growth friendly, ultimately so that I can eat the fruits of my, and their, labors.
After catching the NYT article that I linked I was grazing HN posts and found this one and at that point I knew that I had found the perfect article to challenge a vegan's belief system about the ethics of eating something that knew that it was being injured in the process and perhaps felt pain and sent itself into damage control as a result of the attack on its life.
I only needed to find a vegan poster who would make the argument that eating plants is more ethical than eating animals because animals feel it when we hurt them. You came along and my heart skipped with joy, or maybe I have an undiagnosed arrhythmia. I quickly began to type out in my word processor all the things you see gathered in that "mock poetry" part of my posted reply. My mind was flooded with bullshit so I flushed it into that post.
Poetry, like art, is subject to individual interpretation.
I intended to cause the reader, and you, to consider that plants may also be disinclined to accept our established usage of them as a food source. Perhaps they are in fact just resigned to their fates and immediately launch into damage control as soon as a credible threat appears.
If you took my post personally then maybe the lack of collagen in your diet has thinned your skin a bit too much. You should consider adding supplements to your diet to correct that deficiency. Of course the best sources of collagen are animal products. The choice is yours.
And that, in turn, makes even meat eaters more likely to consider voting for a political party that will restrict industrial farming practices, or to consider eating meat from farms like the authors'. And in that sense, it might still be the answer, regardless of the effectiveness of the veganism/vegetarianism itself.
I see it as equivalent to trying to discredit the value of college by pointing out Bill Gates.
Here in the Canadian prairies, the ranches are by far the best conservators of native ecosystems because cows can graze on the same plants that bison did for the last millenia.
My province of Saskatchewan is one of the biggest producers of pulse crops in the world (chickpeas, lentils, etc..) but has also some of the worst habitat destruction worldwide (less than 3% of native grasslands remaining) precisely because so much land was plowed under to produce those crops.
Yes, roaming, free living animals are good for the planet, but you don't have to eat them to have them roaming around.
. . . more of which are being used to feed livestock than to feed humans.
This article reads more like an apology and a rationalization than a balanced review of the whole situation.
A common thread in environment positive food is that it moves the environment towards a better balance and away from mono-organisms. Open fields with pasture raised livestock has this effect when used proportionally in countries where single-crop and forest has started to reduce the bio diversity, such as in Sweden. Fishing in overpopulated lakes helps so that less common species don't get out competed or eaten. Honey from bees has positive side effects that sugar canes do not. A bit less studied but possible areas is also seaweed or mussel farms since those filter water and can reduce eutrophication (through the health aspects makes this a difficult balance).
Veganism isn't the answer simply because that diet alone does not have a net positive effect on the environment, and the reduction compared to even worse diets isn't impactful enough. We have to start actually looking for actions that have a positive effect, rather than simply going from bad to slightly bad diet.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
The current problem is the end to end status quo. What we eat. How we travel. Etc. That collective mindset needs to change; and since many of these habits are social (i.e., we assume the norm around us) we need to nudge the want for change forward. It's like a row of dominoes.
Diet might not be the final answer. But it certain helps us to move in the direction of being able to tackle the really hard stuff. We can't just sit and watch. The collective fear that will create is frightening.
Edit: For typos.
It is also an estate which will have other land uses so I would be more interested in seeing what would be reasonable to expect of the same amount of land used exclusively for farming cattle in this way because I think this could be a lot higher.
Then we can argue about whether this is scalable ;-)
Then veganism could be the answer?
As for corn, it takes 0.8lbs of corn to make 1lb of meat. Its a net gain. The difference comes from grazing of course. And before we talk about "that grazing land could have been used for grain", only 8pct of US grazing land could be converted to cropland.
http://www.beefissuesquarterly.com/beefissuesquarterly.aspx?...
And it's not the logical extension by the way. Not creating is not the same as destroying.
And what happens when they can't cope, or they don't follow the rules, or they simply want to exercise their freedom to cease to exist? We end up blaming them.
It's all very absurd.
I'd seriously consider seeking out a psychologist, they are really good. There's so much light out there in the world.
We aren't really in danger of the population dying out, but we do have a need to balance out population and get health care (including birth control and other family planning) around the globe. For this, we need generous immigration policies and folks willing to redistribute money or otherwise spread these things.
You'd never consider yourself to be part of your parents carbon footprint, in need of "reduction", would you?
In a global sense, sure less population means less carbon footprint, but that isn't the end-goal of civilization. To me, the end goal of civilization is life---human life in all its myriad ways, and to its utmost fulfilment. An earth without humans is a poorer earth.
No, you don’t want to kill your children.
Everyone's social security hinges of having just as many people contributing to it today. China had to rid it's one child policy, and Japan is facing a similar problem. How do you support twice as many old people with only half as many working young folk.
I'm migration may be the answer, but if the rise of "nationalist" movements around the world is any indication. Then natives don't quite want immigrants to be that solution.
But that does not rule out other methods of reduction as well.
A vegan having no children has a smaller footprint than a carbivore having no children.
Put it another way, if the poorest half of world population suddenly disappeared, would it solve the problem? I could be wrong but I doubt it.
My understanding is that what matters is not so much how many we are, but what the richest do.
If you assume those 10 children are also going to have 10 children each, and those children are also going to have 10 children, etc. You're talking 1000 people in 3 generations.
Every birth is a tragedy.
http://www.richardjones.org/kids-are-good-for-the-environmen...
"Artificial" livestock rearing where the animals are treated as boxes into which feed can be put that emits meat does achieve a higher capital intensity, but it's reliant on cheap imported feed.
This is the kind of thing that is very hard to solve by individual market action.
But the question is how to reverse out of high impact industrial meat farming. That a tiny farm is having some success doesn’t move the needle. Veganism and buying from small farms works today on an individual basis, but how could you roll them out to an entire population. It’s also why demonizing veganism in the title is cheap clickbait.
The choices people make every day in the supermarket aren’t veganism vs buying from this person’s tiny farm. Seems tacky to compare the fringe groups while ignoring the elephant in the room. Especially when wresting the status quo would entail monumental cultural level transformation in any direction.
Veganism is not any sort of reasonable answer to any environmental problems. Our environmental problems are a pricing problem...that goes for oil, suburban sprawl, overfarming, overfishing, excessive water usage, etc. Nobody is paying for their externalities, and no amount of voluntary diet restrictions for a race of omnivores will offset that. For example, once you cut out beef, the next best thing you can do for the environment is not to cut out pork or dairy, but to stop driving in a single occupancy vehicle. Proper pricing gives you that information, fundamentalist ideologies do not.