not 2 be petty on main but-
Ignorance is not realizing how much space it takes to farm all those veggies and grains vegans want to eat, or realizing how many pesticides and dangerous soil treatments go into growing those thing en mass.
I’m not saying we should burn rain forests, because god knows deforestation is causing a lot of issues in our environment, but somewhat surprisingly, the “super foods” you buy at expensive organic markets aren’t grown in a tiny little piece of land either. Farming, no matter what you’re farming, takes space, and veggie or grain farming depletes the nutrients in the soil, which animal farming then helps to restore.
Keyboard warriors who have never actually even been to a real farm can kindly fuck off. Maybe don’t burn the rain forest, but also maybe don’t shit on farmers when you know nothing real about farming.
At present a full 1/3 of the planet’s land surface and 2/3 of available agricultural land is used for farming animals. If we look at cows, for example, it takes 16 pounds of grain to make one pound of beef. That’s 94% more land, and 94% more pesticides than just eating that grain directly. All told, livestock consume 70% of all the grain we produce, 98% of all soy, and a fifth of all water consumed globally. Farmed animals take in far more calories in crop feed than they will ever give out in meat, meaning that they are literally detracting from the global food supply. If the world went vegan, we would add an addition 70% to the world’s global food supply.
Using a more concrete example if we take a 2.5 acre piece of farmland the number of people whose food energy needs can be met by this land would be 23 people if producing cabbage, 22 for potatoes, 19 for rice, 17 for corn, 15 for wheat, 2 for chicken, and just 1 for eggs and beef. It is undeniable that by any reasonable measurement we could feed far more people using far less land if the world moved towards a vegan diet. This is why even the United Nations is advocating a global shift towards plant based eating. When we consider the massive deforestation required to create grazing land for farmed animals and to grow the crops to feed them, and that 91% of formerly forested amazon cleared since 1971 has been used for cattle grazing, the impact that this would have not only on humans but the environment and endangered species cannot be overstated.
As for this odd claim about soil depletion, it is the large-scale mono-culture which is responsible for the majority of soil depletion, and as already established, the vast majority of these crops go to feed farmed animals, not humans. You’re also making quite a lot of unjust, blatantly irrational assumptions about the people you’re talking to here. Most animal rights activists have been to farms, and the idea that we’re all frequenting “expensive organic markets” is pure stereotyping. This sort of response is not just factually inaccurate, it’s also intellectually dishonest and incredibly lazy.
