Yeah, and the vast amounts of land used to grow those things can be redirected to other things that humans can eat.

I have no idea why otherwise smart people get such a brain block on the topic of meat-eating. These "gotcha" points fall apart if you take 10 seconds to think about it.

I'm not an expert on global agriculture, but a lot of the famous Texas cattle ranches can basically only grow grass. If the natural state of the land is brush that only goes up to your ankles you aren't going to feed much other than grazers off it. The efficient solution would be to use the good land to grow food and the rest of the land to feed livestock, and that's what tends to happen (feedlot factory farms fueled by cereal crops notwithstanding).

> the famous Texas cattle ranches can basically only grow grass

Why? Anyway, wheat is a grass.

Wheat is the simple-starch-rich seed kernel of a hybridised grass.

Much of Texas lacks water -- generally West Texas, a line extending from roughly Austin. In the US generally, the 100th parallel divides the moister east from the drier west. Topsoils are also far poorer than further east.

There was an experiment conducted some years ago on dryland farming. It ended poorly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time is an excellent telling of this:

https://books.google.com/books?id=np1RwDQfpjsC&pg=PP1#v=onep...

Not all grasses are equally edible. Most aren't, in fact.

> Why?

Not enough water.

As someone who grew up on a steep farm where grass, fruits and potatoes where the only options that worked out in practice (most of it is steep, summer is short and unpredictable) I'd say maybe you should reconsider.

One easy thought experiment that helped me understand: given how extremely poor our ancestors where and how hard they worked to make ends meet there must have been some advantage to keeping animals.

Otherwise they wouldn't have had them, because they are sometimes a real hassle and gathering food for them is time consuming I can tell you.

So maybe your idea would work in a more temperate climate. And maybe it would provide extra food for people further north, but it would mean a lot of land that cannot be used for anything but pastures would go out of use.

Yes, but remember that pigs are probably the only animals that are grown only for their meat. Cows, sheep and goats are grown for their milk also, sheep for their fleece, chicken, duck and geese for their eggs etc. Eggs and dairy are valuable sources of protein that can last a lot longer than slaughtering and eating the animal that produces them. So, in many places, where people raise animals they keep them alive for the small but steady supply of eggs and milk, and only kill them for their meat on special occasions (like religious festivals and so on).

That's my experience anyway. I spend my summers in a friend's farm and they have a small army of chickens, a plattoon of goats and in different times, a couple of pigs or so. We get fresh eggs and fresh goat's milk, but all the meat we eat is bought from outside the farm. It seems to be a very good deal actually, which was surprising to me when I first realised it, because of course the chickens and goats have to be fed. Then again- they often eat what we do (or rather, our leftovers).

> given how extremely poor our ancestors where and how hard they worked to make ends meet there must have been some advantage to keeping animals

Our ancestors generally ate far less meat.

They could also feed smaller animals like poultry on scraps of food, which doesn't really scale to feeding the billions of animals we currently raise for food.

I guess we agree.

I don't argue that we should continue todays consumption, only that going all vegan might not be a good idea.

Reducing consumption seems like a really good idea to me for several reasons. As does small scale poultry and animal farming (raising a pig or some poultry on scraps instead of throwing it away should be a good idea today as well if one could get away with it.)

Yup. Think I've heard them all over the course of 20 years.

The obvious explanation is that people don't like the implication that their behaviour is unethical and look for clever outs. Rather than simply owning that benefits > costs from their point of view (a la 'I like bacon too much').

Of course questioning motivations is not a point to be made in an argument. However it is an entirely satisfactory Bayesian explanation of why so many people take the other side of the argument with such force.

Any of your teachers/lecturers had a background from agriculture?

I'm not saying this is not possible. But I am saying - as someone who has grown up on a farm and studied farming - that it might be somewhat more complicated.

For a start, not all farmland is usable for anything but grass.

Do you know what fraction of world calories that type of land is?

Otherwise this objection is a case of 'an edge case exists, and I would like you to imagine that it is the major determining factor.'

What I am saying is you can kiss goodbye to everything except fruit, potatoes and some easy vegetables on good fields in Norway (except central East Coast and Trøndelag, they have somewhat better conditions). Fruit will be hit or miss in a lot of places and will only be an option in southern parts of the country anyways.

Same goes for a number of other places in the world.

As I pointed out from the start, the efficiency gained by growing plant food for humans instead of food for animals elsewhere in the world might more than compensate for this, -but going hardcore vegan will reduce global food production compared to a mixed approach.

It will also erase a lot of culture and landscapes that depend on active animal farming, but who cares?

I hear what you're saying. The difficulty is that you're another non quant trying to make a general argument and failing.

I'll spell out what a strong argument for the point you're trying to make might look like:

A) An estimate of the total number of calories coming from purely grazed meat on this sort of land.

B) An estimate of the total number of calories of meat consumed.

C) A/B > 3/4.

I think I did better than your quant way :-)

Without having to resort to any kind of estimates[0] I have demonstrated for anyone interested that a purely vegan alternative will render lots of land unproductive, so - even given an optimal use of the rest of the land - you will still leave unused resources on the table.

I can go deeper into this subject, but I think this will suffice for now.

And: I'm all for reducing consumption and waste, and actually enjoy the reduce-reuse-part of the reduce-reuse-recycle-idea so this shouldn't be seen as a defense for overconsumption, bad farming practices or anything but rather an attempt to bring some realism into this thread.

[0]:really my only given is that not all land is usable for effective production of anything except grass.

> lots of land.

How much in comparison to farming generally?

You're attempting a bait and switch: 1) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output if everyone switched now. 2) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output at the margin of an optimal policy.

These two things are quite different scenarios. Scenario 2) is tacitly accepting that most people would be vegan most of the time. But hey, if you want to argue that under both our optimal policies there would be many more plant eaters, fine by me.

> How much in comparison to farming generally?

This has already been answered elsewhere in this discussion.

> You're attempting a bait and switch: 1) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output if everyone switched now. 2) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output at the margin of an optimal policy.

I'm not doing a bait and switch. Here is what I wrote:

1.) in a sibling thread before this one:

> So maybe your idea would work in a more temperate climate. And maybe it would provide extra food for people further north, but it would mean a lot of land that cannot be used for anything but pastures would go out of use.

2.) On top of this thread:

> I'm not saying this is not possible. But I am saying - as someone who has grown up on a farm and studied farming - that it might be somewhat more complicated.

I write that in reply to you writing a comment in support of this comment:

> Yeah, and the vast amounts of land used to grow those things can be redirected to other things that humans can eat.

> I have no idea why otherwise smart people get such a brain block on the topic of meat-eating. These "gotcha" points fall apart if you take 10 seconds to think about it.

Back to your claim of bait and switch :

It is more like as I proceed down the thread I get more and more specific to make my point easier to understand.

I still stand by my original claim.

My point is that while vast areas can be repurposed other vast areas cannot.

I point out early on that it might be possible anyway.

I also claim that like a lot of other topics it isn't something you can understand in ten seconds like the comment you supported seems to claim.

So, now you've had a chance to 'get more and more specific' (sic.), this is my understanding of your understanding of an optimal food production policy:

1. Vegan food production wherever possible. 2. Non-vegan food where vegan food is not possible (the Norwegian uplands case).

Is that correct? Or would you like to finesse things any more?

Now we are getting somewhere. That would be one reasonable if boring policy :-) Compared to todays reports from different parts of the world about

- feedlots,

- constant use of antibiotics,

- use of food grade grain for animal feed

- unhealthy overconsumption in small parts of the human population

- while others are starving

it sounds like an improvement.

If you ask what I want though I still think we could do even better than that.

There are a number of other parameters I think we should try to optimize for as well instead of thinking just vegan/not vegan:

- Regional and national or even local production to reduce fragile dependencies and reduce the need for transport.

- Healthier food.

- Happiness.

- Better conditions, both for workers and for the livestock.

- etc

There is a reason the Dalai Lama (nor any Tibetan) is not a vegetarian...not much arable land above 3k meters (well, you can grow some barley). Likewise, next door India has so much arable land vegetarianism makes sense, China on the other hand is in between, being fairly mountainous and lacking much arable land (so they have more vegetables but still rely on meat).

Worldwide distribution changes things up a bit, but barring that entire cultures fit their habits according to the land they had, not vice versa.

What's your point?

My point that some land being suited for growing thing and some land being suited to grazing is totally a thing. If the whole world were as arable as India, we might all be vegetarians. But it isn’t.

Those vast amounts of land usually don't have viable soil for multi-year agriculture. Arable land is limited

Arable land is getting cleared out en masse to farm cattle. Cattle farming is not driven by the inability to grow crops on that land, it's driven by the demand for red meat (and dairy products).

Rainforest land is not arable. Farmers who try to grow crops (typically soybean) in the Amazon get 2-3 years of crops before the land becomes infertile, then it has to fallow again. Their only option is to add massive amounts of chemical fertilizers which washes out into the Amazon basin. Aside from leaving the forests undisturbed (which is my preference), raising cattle is better for that ecosystem than agricultural farming would be.

Slashing and burning rainforest to farm cattle or raise crops are both bad options given how critical the Amazon is to maintaining climate and biodiversity.

Either way, the amount of land and water required to raise each lb of beef is an order of magnitude greater than the amount needed for a pound of chicken, which is in turn an order of magnitude higher than the resources needed for a pound of vegetables. The expanding demand for beef is ecologically unsustainable, doubly so if people are burning down critical environments to create cow pasture.

I don't think anyone disagrees with you. My point (again) is that this land can't be sustainably farmed for vegetable/cereal crops, so cattle is the only industry that the land could be used for. I would prefer there were some sustainable ranching practices, but I don't know enough about Brazilian agriculture to comment on how that land is managed after it's cleared.

I guess the million dollar question is - who has the moral authority to tell Brazilians that they don't have the right to utilize their land and natural resources like China, USA, India, and every other industrial nation?

> I guess the million dollar question is - who has the moral authority to tell Brazilians that they don't have the right to utilize their land and natural resources like China, USA, India, and every other industrial nation?

That is going to be a very thorny issue in the years to come, thorny enough to lead to armed conflict. Climate change is a threat to humanity, much less a huge threat to the national security interests of any nation with a military. At some point the situation is going to be serious enough that military conflict will occur over water rights, environmental destruction, climate refugees, etc.

I imagine that before that happens, some country (or countries) will get hit with sanctions for environmental destruction. Of course that will be fraught because who isn't guilty of that?

But at the end of the day, what does it matter when the future of civilization is at stake? Why should the world stand by while Brazil (or any other country) destroys THE essential ecosystem in combating climate change. 100 years from now if the Amazon is gone people will wish other countries had put a stop to the destruction with sanctions or even military force.