The entire industry is built on suffering. It’s bad for the animals, the workers, the climate, your health.
I get a lot of downvotes for being vegan (and I’m usually being a prick about it, so - fair) but surely even the meat eaters must recognise that animal ag needs to scale way down to be at all sustainable. At the very least we need to stop subsidising it so it’s cheaper than alternatives.
Most farms don’t grow food for humans to eat. You know this right? Like there is literally no way to sustain plant only eating for the whole country right now. It just isn’t there.
We instead grow large amounts of crops that go to animal feed. It takes a lot less cropland for plant-based diets because we don’t have to grow feed to another creature (who then will use up a large amount of that energy)
The research suggests that it’s possible to feed everyone in the world a nutritious diet on existing croplands, but only if we saw a widespread shift towards plant-based diets.
If we would shift towards a more plant-based diet we don’t only need less agricultural land overall, we also need less cropland.
In the hypothetical scenario in which the entire world adopted a vegan diet the researchers estimate that our total agricultural land use would shrink from 4.1 billion hectares to 1 billion hectares. A reduction of 75%. That’s equal to an area the size of North America and Brazil combined.
No we do not, I cannot stand this stupid regurgitated lie. You cannot eat the food they do. You cannot eat spoiled food, you cannot eat grass, you cannot eat roots and stalks, 85% of what they eat is from foraging…and you cannot grow crops on the mass majority of the land that they live on.
The water is even funnier, you cannot drink the water they do.
Per unit crop land you can produce a lot more with plant-based production
we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
We find that, given the current mix of crop uses, growing food exclusively for direct human consumption could, in principle, increase available food calories by as much as 70%, which could feed an additional 4 billion people (more than the projected 2–3 billion people arriving through population growth)
For water usage, it’s also draining from places like the drying up Colorado river. We really don’t want to use more water from that area at all
Correspondingly, our hydrologic modelling reveals that cattle-feed irrigation is the leading driver of flow depletion in one-third of all western US sub-watersheds; cattle-feed irrigation accounts for an average of 75% of all consumptive use in these 369 sub-watersheds. During drought years (that is, the driest 10% of years), more than one-quarter of all rivers in the western US are depleted by more than 75% during summer months (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 2) and cattle-feed irrigation is the largest water use in more than half of these heavily depleted rivers
Let me say this again…we are not growing in any substantial way human edible food for just meat production. This is so wrong. I’ll say it again…you cannot eat nor drink what livestock eat and drink. All of these “studies” love to leave that out. No one is going to stop eating meat, veganism is not something the majority of people can magically swap over to.
The first study’s I cited in the previous comment whole goal was to directly measure what amount of their feed was human-edible. It still found it takes more kg of human-edible feed than it produces in kg of meat. These studies aren’t leaving things out, they are just finding the opposite result
Repeating the claim without any evidence does not make it more true
I’m not starving and I don’t eat meat. I just pay more for my food even though it costs less to produce. We should be incentivising more sustainable choices, because unless we scale down animal ag we all actually will starve.
It’s not cheaper to grow crops, the amount of work that goes into growing crops is a reason we have a shortage of labor to harvest them. It’s back breaking work and requires a ton of time. It’s also not a for sure thing. One bad season and you can lose entire tons of harvest.
I think you may be underestimating the heavy level of subsidies here
Research from 2015 shows this subsidization reduces the price of Big Macs from $13 to $5 and the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see today.
Even despite that, overall in most countries it actually ends up being cheaper to do a healthy plant-based diet assuming you have more whole-foods and less say plant-based meats
It found that in high-income countries:
• Vegan diets were the most affordable and reduced food costs by up to one third.
• Vegetarian diets were a close second.
• Flexitarian diets with low amounts of meat and dairy reduced costs by 14%.
• By contrast, pescatarian diets increased costs by up to 2%.
Based on primary data (n = 1040) collected through an online survey, representative of the Portuguese population, through logistic regressions, it was possible to conclude that plant-based consumers, particularly vegan, are associated with lower food expenditures compared to omnivorous consumers. In fact, plant-based consumers are shown to spend less than all other consumers assessed
First, it is always unclear whether the omitted-variable bias exists because the “true” model is unknown. Thus, future research may include more covariates other than the ones considered here to minimize the bias. Moreover, studies like the present study rely on consumers’ capacity to honestly report information on the food consumed. Future research may consider other methodologies that can actually observe and report all foods consumed and the cost associated with them. This way, it will also be possible to capture other personal, cultural, socio-economic, and behavioural characteristics of the consumers which are difficult to assess using the present methodology. However, data of this nature would be expensive to collect.
the oxford study doesn’t account for people who don’t pay money for food, grow their own, hunt, fish, raise livestock, or even have it subsidized. basically, it doesn’t account for poor people anywhere in the developed world. you are jumping to conclusions to say that it is cheaper for anyone but the wealthiest people.
I disagree with your premise that it is misleading at all. Including things that the majority of the population does not do nor can scale to the overall population would not work for a modeling study. Most people are not hunters, including that in a cost estimation study would just be giving people a false sense of true cost. Real world data would be more reliable way for that if you wanted to try to include that in a more realistic way
The entire industry is built on suffering. It’s bad for the animals, the workers, the climate, your health.
I get a lot of downvotes for being vegan (and I’m usually being a prick about it, so - fair) but surely even the meat eaters must recognise that animal ag needs to scale way down to be at all sustainable. At the very least we need to stop subsidising it so it’s cheaper than alternatives.
You want to stop subsidizing one of the best ways to provide food to people?..yeah that’ll work out really well.
You know why governments subsidize farms? So we all don’t starve.
Plant agriculture still exists?
Good luck planting plants in areas that cannot sustain them, where a large portion of animals grazy and are raised on.
Most farms don’t grow food for humans to eat. You know this right? Like there is literally no way to sustain plant only eating for the whole country right now. It just isn’t there.
We instead grow large amounts of crops that go to animal feed. It takes a lot less cropland for plant-based diets because we don’t have to grow feed to another creature (who then will use up a large amount of that energy)
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
No we do not, I cannot stand this stupid regurgitated lie. You cannot eat the food they do. You cannot eat spoiled food, you cannot eat grass, you cannot eat roots and stalks, 85% of what they eat is from foraging…and you cannot grow crops on the mass majority of the land that they live on.
The water is even funnier, you cannot drink the water they do.
It still takes more human-edible crops in than it produces out
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013
Per unit crop land you can produce a lot more with plant-based production
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115
For another study
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015/pdf
For water usage, it’s also draining from places like the drying up Colorado river. We really don’t want to use more water from that area at all
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=wffdocs
Let me say this again…we are not growing in any substantial way human edible food for just meat production. This is so wrong. I’ll say it again…you cannot eat nor drink what livestock eat and drink. All of these “studies” love to leave that out. No one is going to stop eating meat, veganism is not something the majority of people can magically swap over to.
The first study’s I cited in the previous comment whole goal was to directly measure what amount of their feed was human-edible. It still found it takes more kg of human-edible feed than it produces in kg of meat. These studies aren’t leaving things out, they are just finding the opposite result
Repeating the claim without any evidence does not make it more true
That’s what was assumed decades ago when those subsidies began. We know better now.
No, no it’s not. All govs do this now so we don’t end up with another famine. One bad year and farmers basically will go bankrupt and have to sell.
Hell go watch Clarkson farm if you want to actually learn something in a funny way.
I’m not starving and I don’t eat meat. I just pay more for my food even though it costs less to produce. We should be incentivising more sustainable choices, because unless we scale down animal ag we all actually will starve.
It’s not cheaper to grow crops, the amount of work that goes into growing crops is a reason we have a shortage of labor to harvest them. It’s back breaking work and requires a ton of time. It’s also not a for sure thing. One bad season and you can lose entire tons of harvest.
I think you may be underestimating the heavy level of subsidies here
https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/
Even despite that, overall in most countries it actually ends up being cheaper to do a healthy plant-based diet assuming you have more whole-foods and less say plant-based meats
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study
And real world data backs this up
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800915301488?via%3Dihub —(looking at the US)
https://agrifoodecon.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40100-022-00224-9
First, it is always unclear whether the omitted-variable bias exists because the “true” model is unknown. Thus, future research may include more covariates other than the ones considered here to minimize the bias. Moreover, studies like the present study rely on consumers’ capacity to honestly report information on the food consumed. Future research may consider other methodologies that can actually observe and report all foods consumed and the cost associated with them. This way, it will also be possible to capture other personal, cultural, socio-economic, and behavioural characteristics of the consumers which are difficult to assess using the present methodology. However, data of this nature would be expensive to collect.
why didn’t you include the name of the study?
the oxford study doesn’t account for people who don’t pay money for food, grow their own, hunt, fish, raise livestock, or even have it subsidized. basically, it doesn’t account for poor people anywhere in the developed world. you are jumping to conclusions to say that it is cheaper for anyone but the wealthiest people.
I cited more than one study. The other ones looked at average real world spending data
so why include the misleading one?
I disagree with your premise that it is misleading at all. Including things that the majority of the population does not do nor can scale to the overall population would not work for a modeling study. Most people are not hunters, including that in a cost estimation study would just be giving people a false sense of true cost. Real world data would be more reliable way for that if you wanted to try to include that in a more realistic way
i refuted the one i had already seen. i’ll deal with the others later.