
If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer - LFDMR
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/veganism-intensively-farmed-meat-dairy-soya-maize
======
Djvacto
This article reads more like an ad for their farm, which granted as far as
farms that produce meat from livestock goes, seems really nice. But their
approach is not gonna work at scale, because you cannot have enough farms that
operate this way to supply meat to a whole population. They also only compare
their approach to what is basically the strip mining approach to crop growth.
They don't look at things like crop rotation, or plenty of other farming
techniques that prevent your land from becoming an arid desert. The title is
clickbait, and the actual content of the article is way off. If this had been
an article about how they tried to treat their animals better than our current
factory farming conditions, this article would have been a great look at a way
to raise livestock that doesn't make me think I'm looking at some sort of
dystopian Bond-Villain's greatest evil contraption. But instead they tried to
make it about veganism vs. eating meat, and failed to provide any actually
compelling reasoning.

~~~
bryanlarsen
There is no ecologically sound way of getting vegetable calories out of the
Montana native grasslands. The best way of feeding people using that land
would be raising Bison; cattle are an acceptable second choice.

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.

~~~
bunderbunder
There's an interesting UN report from a while back, _Livestock 's Long Shadow_
[1], that observes that, nowadays, it's not necessarily even ecologically
sound to use the grasslands in the first place. A big feature of their
findings are that large-scale grazing tends to prevent forests from forming in
wetter climates, and contributes to desertification in more arid ones. Both of
those consequences have _huge_ implications if you're worried about climate
change.

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.

1:
[http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM](http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM)

~~~
bryanlarsen
I agree that just idling those Montana ranches is probably best. Huge tracts
of land just to raise a few cattle. But then what?

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...

------
cageface
More humane and sustainable forms of animal agriculture would certainly be a
step in the right direction from the horrors of the concentrated feeding
operations that supply most of the world's meat supply right now. But those
techniques were developed for a reason. There's no way to meet the current and
rapidly growing demand for meat without completely setting aside the welfare
of the animals and the environment. The idea that we can just return to the
idyllic farms of hundreds of years ago and still feed steak to billions of
people every day is a pipe dream.

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](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.

~~~
tdb7893
One thing to note is that being vegan is very difficult and most people aren't
going to be vegan. One thing everyone can do is to cut their meat intake.
People have meat for almost every meal and it's pretty simple to cut back and
you still get some health and environmental benefits.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
> People have meat for almost every meal

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.

~~~
munin
bacon with your waffles? hot dog for lunch? meat lovers pizza for dinner?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Most people don't eat a breakfast with multiple things most days, just a quick
meal before work (or they shove a bagel in their face while driving). Most
people eat food that requires basically no prep work for lunch most days.
Eating out (with the exception of coffee and donuts in certain industries) is
not a regular occurrence for most people because it's not justifiable at their
income level.

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.

~~~
munin
The McDonalds drive through doesn't require any prep work and is super cheap.
I see tons of people load up on Egg McMuffins with sausage at 6-7am on their
way to work.

------
tomtomtom777
They make 75 tonnes of meat per year on 3500 acre.

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...](http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/Calories_per_acre_for_various_foods/))
this doesn't seem like a realistic way to feed the global population.

~~~
J-dawg
George Monbiot's comment on the article [0] basically makes the same point.

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...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/veganism-
intensively-farmed-meat-dairy-soya-maize#comment-119748600)

------
toasterlovin
A point that seems to be lost on most people who advocate for a plant based
diet is that not all plants have the same environmental impact. Among plants
_as a class_ , there is a 60x range in the amount of calories provided per
unit of resources required. So it matters a lot _which plants_ you replace
meat consumption with.

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...](http://www.richardjones.org/why-kale-is-actually-terrible-for-the-
environment/)

~~~
akskos
I can assure you that no vegan replaces meat with kale salads and berry
smoothies.

~~~
toasterlovin
Does their grocery bill change as a result of not eating meat, though? If not,
then there's probably no difference in environmental impact.

------
mnem
It’s worth reading the “Guardian Pick” comment from George Monbiot, another
Guardian journalist, for an interesting response/analysis of the articles
proposals:

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/vegani...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/veganism-
intensively-farmed-meat-dairy-soya-maize#comment-119748600)

------
rajekas
Not much that I can add to this conversation, but let me share a pet peeve:
the phrase "save the world," which is used indiscriminately in so many
contexts that's its devoid of meaning.

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.

~~~
doodlebugging
It seems that vegans have no problem shifting their consumption of food to a
part of the biota that they feel doesn’t have the capacity to understand what
is happening to them or to feel or respond to the pain of the process of being
harvested for our food.

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...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/science/plant-
defenses.html)

~~~
rajekas
Believe me, I know the plant cognition literature quite well ([0],[1] or
[2],[3] for the technical literature) which is why I would consume lab grown
meat over free growing plants if it ever came to a head.

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...](https://www.amazon.com/What-Plant-Knows-Field-
Senses/dp/0374533881) [1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Life-Trees-
Communicate_Discove...](https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Life-Trees-
Communicate_Discoveries-Secret) [2]: [https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Sensing-
Communication-Interspec...](https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Sensing-
Communication-Interspecific-Interactions) [3]:
[https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319755953](https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319755953)

~~~
doodlebugging
>Are you saying you don't eat plants because you feel their pain? My guess is
probably not.

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.

------
Vinnl
I think the main thing veganism and vegetarianism have done in recent years is
win over minds. As opposed to the clichéd vegan that will mention that fact
whenever they can, the number of quiet vegetarians and vegans around me has
skyrocketed in recent years. Even though they hardly ever discuss it, the fact
that more and more people around me, even though still a minority, refuse meat
and/or dairy products for themselves has really denormalised the role of meat
in our society.

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.

~~~
nicbou
I recently started reducing my meat consumption, and I was surprised by how
many people are doing the same without making a big deal out of it. _That_ is
the sort of change that sticks.

------
sewercake
they begin the article by saying pasture raised, organic meat is better for
the environment than single-crop, fertilizer grown crops, through a reduction
in emissions and and increase in biodiversity and health of the soil. It does
not compare it to the obvious alternative of more sustainably grown crops,
using crop rotation, cleaner sources of energy for farm equipment, etcetera.

~~~
bootlooped
It's a common argument I've heard against vegan/vegetarian diets to compare
the best possible scenario of meat production, no matter how uncommon, to the
average case of plant production.

I see it as equivalent to trying to discredit the value of college by pointing
out Bill Gates.

------
Imanari
Keep in mind that the majority of soy and corn a fed to animals. In this
context the argument that "soy farms deplete the soils and destroy forrests"
becomes a lot weaker...

Yes, roaming, free living animals are good for the planet, but you don't have
to eat them to have them roaming around.

------
bunderbunder
> Intensively farmed meat and dairy are a blight, but so are fields of soya
> and maize.

. . . 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.

~~~
esailija
Yes stopped reading there as everyone going vegan would actually plummet the
demand for industrial crops because eating them directly is order of magnitude
more efficient than eating them through inefficient proxy like meat. Any time
one eats 1000 kcal worth of meat they are effectively eating 10000 kcal worth
of soy/maize.

------
belorn
If one where to simply list behavior and action from having a positive effect
on the environment, neutral, or negative, it would not be that hard to see
that general farming is on the negative side. It can be promoted as a better
alternative to even worse things but to even cross the line into neutral one
has to go elsewhere than just cutting out meat of ones diet.

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.

------
chiefalchemist
Of course not. It's not The Answer. There is no single magic bullet.

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.

------
lbriner
There are some negative comments about the amount this farm produces but at
3500 acres and 75 tonnes of meat, I very much doubt they are attempting to
maximise their output as a farm, especially considering the other camping and
nature activities they host.

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 ;-)

------
dgarceran
"unless you’re sourcing your vegan products specifically from organic, “no-
dig”"

Then veganism could be the answer?

------
justtopost
For those omnivores amoung us who want ethical meat, I feel obliged to suggest
my favorite highly sustainable farm:

[https://cornerpostmeats.com/](https://cornerpostmeats.com/)

------
vinni2
Isn’t most of soya and corn produced used for feeding cattle to produce meat
anyway? Is there some comparison on amount of soya needed if everyone on earth
goes vegan vs soya consumed by meat industry?

~~~
Spellchamp
Yes but this article is about grazing livestock, not soya/corn fed livestock.

~~~
vinni2
Then why compare to veganism? The issue then is about sustainable production.

~~~
Spellchamp
Not sure if you've read the article. The point he's making is that sustainable
farming doesn't share all of the downsides of veganism, soil degradation for
instance.

~~~
vinni2
Sustainable Veganism is better than sustainable meat?

~~~
Spellchamp
Not sure what the question is here. But the article points to veganism on it's
own not inherently being the best option. That there are definitely ways to be
sustainably vegan, but veganism alone doesn't guarantee sustainability.

------
DyslexicAtheist
probably not a popular opinion but I think the best way to reduce your carbon
foot print is not to have children

~~~
foreigner
True, but taking your argument to it's logical extreme suicide would work even
better.

~~~
red75prime
No, it's successfully and continuously convincing others to suicide by any
means necessary.

And it's not the logical extension by the way. Not creating is not the same as
destroying.

------
pjc50
In lots of parts of the world, livestock farming is feasible in ways that
arable farming isn't: sloping, rocky terrain and so on. It's not going to go
away entirely.

"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.

------
wild_preference
This article could be written by a small scale vegetable farm as well. I could
write something similar about the herb box on my window sill. Look how great
my herb box is. I don’t even use pesticides.

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.

------
saosebastiao
The focus on veganism as an answer to environmental problems is absurd. Yes,
beef is a huge problem, and it's not particularly healthy for you anyway. But
cutting out eggs, chicken, honey, or dairy isn't going to make anywhere near
the same amount of impact, and replacing calories with some plant products
(like corn, soy, almonds, lettuce, or avocados) may even be worse for it.

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.

