@crackofdoom
- an enormous amount of land worldwide (including in the Amazon basin) is used to grow crops....to feed to livestock.
Yes, because we don’t kill all but a few pregnant females every autumn anymore. We care enough to keep most livestock alive through the winter. I’m not talking about the abusive factory farming by the way, I’m taking about the higher welfare standards we have here where animals are largely grass fed and feed is only a supplement.
- Meat is a horribly inefficient way to produce calories vs land used.
Not really, not when the land cannot be used to grow crops. And humans need more than simple calories, we need a whole host of nutrients to be healthy. Why do you think we have an epidemic of people who are both obese and malnourished?
- *Most of the fields that you see in the British countryside with livestock in- especially, not exclusively, dairy cattle- are not a paradise of biodiversity. They are "improved", meaning that they are sown with high- calorie grass species and regularly fertilised with manure, meaning that native wildflower species have been pushed out and you effectively have a monoculture. 97% of British wildflower meadows have been lost since WW2. From personal observation, you see very little wildlife of any kind on this kind of land.
Yes, they are fertilised with natural, organic manure that supports several thousand insect species. If we did away with meat and livestock, we do away with this natural, organic manure and are left with fossil fuel based fertiliser that does not support insect species, and over time does not replenish the soil leading to desertification and less arable land able to grow crops. Yes, 97% of wildflowers meadows have disappeared in past century due to both urban sprawl and expanded farming- but you’d have that whether you eat plants or meat. That’s a function of the fact that our population has almost doubled in the past century- from 38 million to 70 million.
- *Land that is so poor that it can only be used for grazing could equally be left to grow trees, the original and best form of carbon capture (alternatively, used for regenerative grazing with low stock numbers of cattle and ponies, which would produce a small amount of good quality, expensive meat).
Grazing land- as in most grasslands cannot grow trees either because the soil is too rocky and shallow for tree roots. I agree on the regenerative grazing though, recall I’m not saying a high meat diet is best, I’m saying a diet that is mostly plant based with a bit of meat is best.
- *There are ways to grow crops without animal or artificial fertilisers. Desertification is equally often caused by over grazing- or climate change.
There aren’t really, not in a sustainable manner. You need some fertiliser at some point, the best method imho is the every fourth year it’s fallow and you do regenerative grazing so the manure fertilises. It’s true desertification can be caused by over grazing and climate change too. Which is why it’s not a bad thing to supplement the diet of grass fed grazing livestock with some feed.
- *You don't have to eat artificial meat as part of a vegetarian or vegan diet. I'm vegetarian, and have certainly never eaten lab grown meat, and eat very few meat substitutes- quorn sausages every now and then. Most of us rely far more on pulses etc.
I agree, you don’t have to. I mentioned the magnitudes higher carbon footprint of lab grown fake meat compared to real meat as an FYI.