Vindication for a veggie…
December 8th, 2006 by AndyI have been a vegetarian for years now, not for animal rights reasons (not that these concerns are unimportant), but because the production of meat is terrible for the environment. Everyone who has been to elementary school knows of the food pyramid, that little graphic that shows how much energy is lost with every step along the food chain. If you can get the same high quality protein from soya as you can from meat (and you can), wouldn’t it make sense to cut out the middle man and save the energy?. Well, the guys over at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization have just released a study showing that 18% of greenhouse gases and up to 40% of methane produced by humans stems from meat production. While it admittedly makes me feel good about being a veggie, I know it would be useless to try to convert anyone. BUT, I think I’m well within my “preachy allowance” if I challenge all of you to cut out meat from one meal a week. You won’t notice, and the rest of the world will thank you. If you want, you can READ THE ACTUAL UN REPORT, or READ A SHORT ARTICLE EXPLAINING IT.
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Not that I’ve done extensive thinking about this, but something that gets brought up all the time in the vegetarian debate is how much more food we can grow if we converted ranch/pastoralist land into agriculture land. However, what many people fail to realize is that a lot of the land used to raise animals is unfit for raising crops.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:14 am
I don’t know what other people are proposing, but I completely agree that converting ranch land over to crop production is asking for bad news - you would probably get some short term yields with enough fertilizer, but the land would quickly become useless for anything. That’s not the point of my vegetarianism. Much of what we feed our meat animals is corn or other crops grown on excellent farmland. That’s how it’s gotta be in a cold country where pastures are covered by snow for much of the year. THIS is the animal feed that is creating all the waste.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:43 am
That would be true, except that when it comes to modern industrial farming practices, the majority of livestock aren’t grazed - they’re fed other agricultural outputs like corn, soy, or miscellaneous byproducts.
There is probably a place for small-scale pasture-raised meat production in a sustainable system, but us Westerners need to dramatically cut our meat consumption.
Becoming a veggie is by far the fastest, easiest, and most dramatic single change you can make to reduce your environmental impact.
EDIT: Oops, looks like Andy’s already got this one covered.