Tag: environment

So in my environmental science class my professor said meat is the worst food enviromentally but i dont belive that but i cant articulate why could you help me by explaining why meat isnt the worst i got that animals can eat parts of crops that humans cant but i cant think of other reasons

dairyisntscary:

Grass fed beef/lamb can also sequester carbon and reduce emissions as a result, which can’t really be said of plants. Plenty of plant ag is horrible for the environment – palm oil, monocultures, etc etc, plant fertilizers are a huge source of GHG emissions, many fruits and veggies are regularly shipped around the world using up fossil fuels… there’s a lot of reasons why absolutist statements like that don’t work

If every single person on the planet did everything they could to minimize their carbon footprint, and even just their environmental footprint in general, it’d still be hardly anything next to what corporations are doing.

The idea that veganism is the best for the environment is kind of a lie because transportation (aka carbon emissions) are a massive part of agriculture of any type and the main devil in climate change isn’t even agriculture in the first place.

Individual efforts to better the planet are great especially if tons of people do them but the devil causing climate change isn’t steak, it’s corporate greed.

This question is probably dumb, but I’m really curious and haven’t seen anyone ask this. If the whole world went vegan, what would happen to the land? Arent soil exhaustion and desertification huge risks due to over cultivation? Couldnt this cause a second Dust Bowl? To avoid it, wouldn’t farmers need twice as much land for the fallow system and letting the soil rest? Again, I’m sorry if this is a lame question or you cant answer, I’m just really curious and havent seen any vegans talk about it.

dairyisntscary:

We’d have to eat more food, so we’d have to grow more plants. Only about 30% of the world’s land is arable, and some countries are completely lacking in arable soil (that’s kind of Brazil’s issue and why they use slash & burn so much) We do grow a lot of animal feed but I don’t know how interchangeable different varieties of say, soy are. Plants have different requirements and I know food-grade soy requires soil with very specific qualities.

There would also be more long-distance shipping of fruits and veggies to countries that can’t grow them /or/ more construction of greenhouses, which construction isn’t really an eco-friendly industry. More use of inorganic fertilizer because there wouldn’t be any more manure. More irrigation.

And eventually, yes, desertification, because growing plants depletes the soil. If we’re going to feed the world on plants alone we’re going to exhaust the small percent of land that’s actually arable beyond its limits.

avatar-dacia:

equagga:

earthy-phoenix:

gatorfisch:

pbstv:

NOVA Next:

Going Vegan Isn’t the Most Sustainable Option for Humanity

The vegan diet uses no perennial cropland, making it a less
effective use of land than you might suspect.

Researchers found that the carrying capacity—the size of the population that can be supported indefinitely by the resources of an ecosystem—of the vegan diet is actually less substantial than two of the vegetarian diets and two out of the four omnivorous diets they studied.

Read more

So, to summarize: vegan isn’t the healthiest option for most, it’s not sustainable, and it’s not what are bodies are hard wired for. If you choose to be vegan, go ahead. But please stop pontificating about how superior it and you are.

It’s all about filling niches.  Try growing enough veggie food in my area to be sustainably vegan. The rajneesh did it, but they had millions of dollars to make their equipment, thousands of people ALL working the fields every day, they took advantage of some strong microclimates, and they lived modestly. The grasslands here can grow hella cattle, sheep, alfalfa and grains, chickens are easy, and the ridges are perfect for goats. Gardens and orchards are not reliable due to late and early frosts and freezes, and importing loads of veggies isn’t very sustainable. And there are a lot of places with similar environmental conditions. Gotta balance it out! There’s no one right way! And the more people eat locally, the more their diets could change to match their conditions more closely which I think is neat.

People should also remember that even if crop fields are not monocultures, they’re still not a replacement for the habitat they’re built over. Non-intensive farming of food animals, however, preserves native habitat and vegetation. Some of the smaller cattle owners around here keep their herds on land that is unchanged from what it was before the cattle, save for fencing every few acres. Wildlife, especially birds, still get a lot of use out of those fields. There’s even a heron that calls one home.
Sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, geese, and pigs can all do well where I am on native forage in the warm months, and hayfields are productive enough to supply for the winters. The fields are already there – this area was once all dairies – but they’re being replaced by strip malls because local animal products are not profitable anymore. A push towards eco-friendly animal farms and local eating would thus do wonders here – not only would it save our grazeland from development by making it worth working again, but it would preserve more of our landscape and our heritage, including heritage livestock breeds bred to thrive in non-intensive systems, many of which face extinction due to the predominance of intensive systems using production crosses. Already local vegetables and fruits are making a come back, but as I said, planting vegetables means taking away native flora, so I hope what stirrings of interest in local meat I’ve already seen continue to grow. What’s written above about the importance of meat in temperate regions is definitely true – we need balance if we want to protect our natural world, because for everyone here to eat vegan, we’d need to tear down many more fields and forests to make up for our short and unreliable growing season.

I’ve noticed that there are some people frantically scrambling to discredit this.  First of all: if you take the PCRM (read: PeTA’s hired quacks) and Cowspiracy at face value, you’re really not in much of a position to complain about the reliability of the source.

Secondly: please note that the study in question is not some attempt to invalidate veganism.  For one, even if anyone were really even trying to do that, it would be an exercise in failure; you can’t invalidate personal principle.  And for another: at least the researchers who did this study don’t seem to have gone in with a foregone conclusion…which is more than can be said of a hell of a lot of the “sources” absolutist vegans invariably seem to cite.

@fucknovegans, @ableist-vegans, @furbearingbrick, @2goldensnitches, @igelfullmetal.

Source: pbstv

ARAs who make fun of anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers for not trusting professionals in the field while simultaneously being insanely distrustful of anyone involved with the animal ag industries are…. interesting in their thought process… And from what I can see they’re unfortunately the majority.

dairyisntscary:

Right?!?! I’ve literally seen them compare ppl not buying their crap to anti-vaxxers and it’s wild. No honey that’s you.