NOVA Next:
Going Vegan Isn’t the Most Sustainable Option for Humanity
The vegan diet uses no perennial cropland, making it a less
effective use of land than you might suspect.Researchers found that the carrying capacity—the size of the population that can be supported indefinitely by the resources of an ecosystem—of the vegan diet is actually less substantial than two of the vegetarian diets and two out of the four omnivorous diets they studied.
So, to summarize: vegan isn’t the healthiest option for most, it’s not sustainable, and it’s not what are bodies are hard wired for. If you choose to be vegan, go ahead. But please stop pontificating about how superior it and you are.
It’s all about filling niches. Try growing enough veggie food in my area to be sustainably vegan. The rajneesh did it, but they had millions of dollars to make their equipment, thousands of people ALL working the fields every day, they took advantage of some strong microclimates, and they lived modestly. The grasslands here can grow hella cattle, sheep, alfalfa and grains, chickens are easy, and the ridges are perfect for goats. Gardens and orchards are not reliable due to late and early frosts and freezes, and importing loads of veggies isn’t very sustainable. And there are a lot of places with similar environmental conditions. Gotta balance it out! There’s no one right way! And the more people eat locally, the more their diets could change to match their conditions more closely which I think is neat.
People should also remember that even if crop fields are not monocultures, they’re still not a replacement for the habitat they’re built over. Non-intensive farming of food animals, however, preserves native habitat and vegetation. Some of the smaller cattle owners around here keep their herds on land that is unchanged from what it was before the cattle, save for fencing every few acres. Wildlife, especially birds, still get a lot of use out of those fields. There’s even a heron that calls one home.
Sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, geese, and pigs can all do well where I am on native forage in the warm months, and hayfields are productive enough to supply for the winters. The fields are already there – this area was once all dairies – but they’re being replaced by strip malls because local animal products are not profitable anymore. A push towards eco-friendly animal farms and local eating would thus do wonders here – not only would it save our grazeland from development by making it worth working again, but it would preserve more of our landscape and our heritage, including heritage livestock breeds bred to thrive in non-intensive systems, many of which face extinction due to the predominance of intensive systems using production crosses. Already local vegetables and fruits are making a come back, but as I said, planting vegetables means taking away native flora, so I hope what stirrings of interest in local meat I’ve already seen continue to grow. What’s written above about the importance of meat in temperate regions is definitely true – we need balance if we want to protect our natural world, because for everyone here to eat vegan, we’d need to tear down many more fields and forests to make up for our short and unreliable growing season.
The Carving Witch 