Pondering about veganism and farming methods

[Soopertooter]

Sorry not a very good title. I was thinking about all the animals that are killed due to agriculture, not for meat but because they interfere with farming e.g. moles, badgers, rabbits, foxes. Additionally, all the wildlife that suffers through intensive farming and expanding farmlands.

I was wondering how many people who claim to be vegan for moral reasons would be aware that farmers frequently cull these animals? To be truly vegan I suppose it's not enough to just cut out meat and dairy but you need to know that the all the other food that you eat is also 'vegan friendly'.

Sorry.. just a thought dump!

I kind of get what you’re saying but at the same time, buying and eating meat is a bit different to buying veg that happens to come from a farm where they kill wildlife. No vegan (or at least very few) will claim to be absolutely perfect, nearly all food sources except food grown in your back garden will have their downsides environmentally or ethically. I’m sure they are aware but can only do their best and they have to eat something!

I’m glad you had your light bulb moment now but I think you will find most vegan people are usually well informed people and aware of this issue.

You could use the same attitude as a reason to give up on any cause or action that can’t be completed to 100% perfection.

But we share the earth. Where would there be land that isn't already occupied by other living creatures? Every living thing (and presumably everything that has ever lived) forms part of the eco-system that enables us to grow crops.

What would you suggest? How many animals and humans would lose their lives in order to build facilities to produce food out of thin air? Enough food to feed 7 billion people ...

No answers I'm afraid and no offense intended, really was just pondering and I think being in lockdown has meant too much time to think! I guess it means having to be fully self sufficient, but everything comes at a cost.

Or not think enough

Even being "fully self sufficient" you would be killing living creatures on your own patch of land. And contributing to ecological destruction every time you travel to, or order from, garden suppliers.

How much water would you be using? How could you guarantee flawless ecological credentials for every single thing - seeds, green manure, slug pellets, glass, fuel, etc, etc, etc, that you would be using to get started and to maintain your growing cycle?

Possibly others can recommend you some books or websites where you can explore this in depth!

I think you would enjoy listening to these 2episodes of the food programme. I found it very interesting....

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bl1k

I think it's a fair point in moderation.

But, at least in the UK, we live on land that needs to be managed in order to support the wildlife that lives there. We couldn't simply ignore it and expect that we'd get a wonderful diversity of wildlife returning to what had been farmed before. (I think this is something that people have been imagining would happen during lockdown.)

The reality is that we have land that has been farmed or managed for millennia, and it can't be just left alone. We have too many invasive species and too many species that have evolved to be dependent on human activity, including farming. If we just did nothing, we'd upset the balance. So, yes, farmers (and other landowners) might cull deer or rabbits or squirrels; they might coppice hedges instead of letting them grow freely; they might introduce sheep to graze instead of letting grass grow. But without that, what happens to all the plants and animals that the deer and the rabbits and the squirrels eat to extinction? Or the birds that need hedging to nest in, where they can't nest in trees? Or the flowers that won't grow in long grass, only mown or grazed grass? That includes most of our native orchids.