So genuine question as someone who didn’t eat meat for 10 years: If we’re talking a purely efficient approach to this, then while 100% plant based is better than the current model wouldn’t there be more efficient models than that? For example insect farms fed by plant waste, continuing to fish sustainably under the plant farming model, and having free range chickens as pets and eating their eggs. I’m curious how vegans would even view this. Like is a bacterial vat that produces calories vegan? Are insects permissible? And then the chicken eggs. If you keep your own chickens and treat them good, and let them run free range, and just take the extra eggs, is that permissible to vegans? If not then why not? Genuinely curious.
I’m also curious if these models take the Haber-Bosch process into account. Because most of our plant based agriculture currently is supported by it. I’m of the strong belief that industrial agriculture is entirely untenable without it, and we’d have to switch to a food forest model, which would actually be MORE land efficient for the same calories. And since that process is reliant on the fossil fuel industry it is always going to be unstable. So it really needs to be phased out of wide use in the food supply chain. It’s a famine waiting to happen.
This is an interesting exercise, but I fail to see what problem it seeks to solve. We don’t have a food scarcity. We wildly over-produce food. We already cannot eat all the food we produce. We feed most of it to animals because that is a way of refining cheap abundant food in to expensive scarce luxury products.
What we actually need are industrial and commercial processes that consume as much food as livestock presently does, but gives better financial returns. Boom, instant global veganism.
That’s actually not true. We do have food scarcity. Just not yet in most of the world. You see, our current food production models, especially meat production but also plant food production, are highly unsustainable. It is very likely we will enter into a global famine that wipes out most of the human population sometime in the next couple centuries. It could be much sooner, could be near the end of that, but it will happen if we continue as we are now. That is because the way we farm currently uses far too much non-renewable water sources (aquifers for example), fertilizer that comes from non renewable sources (derived from fossil fuels), and land that is having its soil drained of nutrients. Veganism alone does not fix these problems. It can make them easier to solve in many cases because we waste less resources on cattle, but cattle is also only so wasteful because of HOW we use it. Back in medieval times cattle was a way to turn useless land (grazing land not suitable for crops) into calories. They’d have a small herd and let it free range. This was a boon of calories not a drain. And meat was rare to consume as a living cow makes milk and is much more valuable than a dead cow. Same with chickens and eggs. Even pigs produced useful manure for fertilizing. So while they did slaughter and eat them it wasn’t the sole purpose of raising those animals. And the animals made their lives possible through their byproducts.
I would say that the goal of any vegan should be to find a way for us to live in harmony with animals and the environment. Because we aren’t just talking about farm animals, and humans don’t just harm animals for food. Our farming practices destroy their natural habitats as well. Even if we ate only plants if we do not find a more sustainable way to farm animals will continue to suffer.
as a vegan, i generally view the things you say as much less bad than our current animal farming industry, and maybe some of them could be done ethically. but given my general experience with humans as a species, i just can’t trust any human organizations to run those things ethically, so it’s simpler and safer to avoid animal products entirely.
I mean, I hope you understand that vegans will not be experts in non-vegan solutions. I’m certainly not an expert.
But generally speaking: The only thing that produces calories on this planet are plants. Everything else is always just reusing those calories and therefore using up some of those calories to sustain its own life.
Yes, in principle there can be situations where introducing a middleman can make more calories available to us. Animals grazing on land where farming isn’t viable is the classic example.
Having insects eat plant waste could be viable, although turning plant waste into compost as an alternative to fertilizer is also already quite useful.
But then you run into the other problem, which is that the scalability of plants is hard to beat. For the most part, you throw seeds onto barren land and the magic happens. You don’t need VATs, you don’t need personnel most of the time, you don’t need electricity.
I could see certain processes being useful for certain niche situations, but so long as we can just sidestep that situation by growing plants in the next town over and transporting the food to where it’s needed, I don’t think, it’s worth the investment.
For the most part, you throw seeds onto barren land and the magic happens.
Uh… no. As someone who has actually grown plants myself for food this is not accurate. Agriculture is hard. Soil nutritional content, acidity levels, too much or too little water depending on the plant, temperature and planting times matter, amount of sun varies by plant, some plants can be grown together and some cant, pests are a huge problem and need to be managed properly, etc. I really do encourage you to get some experience growing your own food from seed if you have the land to try it out available. It’s 100% viable to do, but it’s not nearly as simple as you made it sound there. Tonight part of my dinner will be a butternut squash I grew myself. It’s quite fufilling.
A great example of how complex and fragile our agriculture currently is: That Haber-Bosch Process I mentioned? 40% of Global calories are made possible by it is the typical estimate. It’s part of the Natural Gas -> Fertilizer supply chain.
Yes, I am aware that there is more to agriculture, that’s why I prefaced it and followed it up with my actual point, which is that this complexity pales in comparison to the complexity of any more ‘engineered’ processes.
And yes, agriculture may be fragile, but we’re not gonna replace it anytime soon, because we need something that scales.
Reducing the amount of plants we need to grow by going for a plant-based diet is already a step in the right direction. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but we might even be able to cut out Haber-Bosch.
In particular maybe also interesting for you is that legumes can help to reduce the need for fertilizer, because they fixate nitrogen into the ground. And well, plant-based diets involve a lot of legumes.
That’s why they were often part of crop rotation and also the Three Sisters.
For the most part, you throw seeds onto barren land and the magic happens. You don’t need VATs, you don’t need personnel most of the time, you don’t need electricity.
So genuine question as someone who didn’t eat meat for 10 years: If we’re talking a purely efficient approach to this, then while 100% plant based is better than the current model wouldn’t there be more efficient models than that? For example insect farms fed by plant waste, continuing to fish sustainably under the plant farming model, and having free range chickens as pets and eating their eggs. I’m curious how vegans would even view this. Like is a bacterial vat that produces calories vegan? Are insects permissible? And then the chicken eggs. If you keep your own chickens and treat them good, and let them run free range, and just take the extra eggs, is that permissible to vegans? If not then why not? Genuinely curious.
I’m also curious if these models take the Haber-Bosch process into account. Because most of our plant based agriculture currently is supported by it. I’m of the strong belief that industrial agriculture is entirely untenable without it, and we’d have to switch to a food forest model, which would actually be MORE land efficient for the same calories. And since that process is reliant on the fossil fuel industry it is always going to be unstable. So it really needs to be phased out of wide use in the food supply chain. It’s a famine waiting to happen.
This is an interesting exercise, but I fail to see what problem it seeks to solve. We don’t have a food scarcity. We wildly over-produce food. We already cannot eat all the food we produce. We feed most of it to animals because that is a way of refining cheap abundant food in to expensive scarce luxury products.
What we actually need are industrial and commercial processes that consume as much food as livestock presently does, but gives better financial returns. Boom, instant global veganism.
That’s actually not true. We do have food scarcity. Just not yet in most of the world. You see, our current food production models, especially meat production but also plant food production, are highly unsustainable. It is very likely we will enter into a global famine that wipes out most of the human population sometime in the next couple centuries. It could be much sooner, could be near the end of that, but it will happen if we continue as we are now. That is because the way we farm currently uses far too much non-renewable water sources (aquifers for example), fertilizer that comes from non renewable sources (derived from fossil fuels), and land that is having its soil drained of nutrients. Veganism alone does not fix these problems. It can make them easier to solve in many cases because we waste less resources on cattle, but cattle is also only so wasteful because of HOW we use it. Back in medieval times cattle was a way to turn useless land (grazing land not suitable for crops) into calories. They’d have a small herd and let it free range. This was a boon of calories not a drain. And meat was rare to consume as a living cow makes milk and is much more valuable than a dead cow. Same with chickens and eggs. Even pigs produced useful manure for fertilizing. So while they did slaughter and eat them it wasn’t the sole purpose of raising those animals. And the animals made their lives possible through their byproducts.
I would say that the goal of any vegan should be to find a way for us to live in harmony with animals and the environment. Because we aren’t just talking about farm animals, and humans don’t just harm animals for food. Our farming practices destroy their natural habitats as well. Even if we ate only plants if we do not find a more sustainable way to farm animals will continue to suffer.
as a vegan, i generally view the things you say as much less bad than our current animal farming industry, and maybe some of them could be done ethically. but given my general experience with humans as a species, i just can’t trust any human organizations to run those things ethically, so it’s simpler and safer to avoid animal products entirely.
I mean, I hope you understand that vegans will not be experts in non-vegan solutions. I’m certainly not an expert.
But generally speaking: The only thing that produces calories on this planet are plants. Everything else is always just reusing those calories and therefore using up some of those calories to sustain its own life.
Yes, in principle there can be situations where introducing a middleman can make more calories available to us. Animals grazing on land where farming isn’t viable is the classic example.
Having insects eat plant waste could be viable, although turning plant waste into compost as an alternative to fertilizer is also already quite useful.
But then you run into the other problem, which is that the scalability of plants is hard to beat. For the most part, you throw seeds onto barren land and the magic happens. You don’t need VATs, you don’t need personnel most of the time, you don’t need electricity.
I could see certain processes being useful for certain niche situations, but so long as we can just sidestep that situation by growing plants in the next town over and transporting the food to where it’s needed, I don’t think, it’s worth the investment.
Uh… no. As someone who has actually grown plants myself for food this is not accurate. Agriculture is hard. Soil nutritional content, acidity levels, too much or too little water depending on the plant, temperature and planting times matter, amount of sun varies by plant, some plants can be grown together and some cant, pests are a huge problem and need to be managed properly, etc. I really do encourage you to get some experience growing your own food from seed if you have the land to try it out available. It’s 100% viable to do, but it’s not nearly as simple as you made it sound there. Tonight part of my dinner will be a butternut squash I grew myself. It’s quite fufilling.
A great example of how complex and fragile our agriculture currently is: That Haber-Bosch Process I mentioned? 40% of Global calories are made possible by it is the typical estimate. It’s part of the Natural Gas -> Fertilizer supply chain.
Yes, I am aware that there is more to agriculture, that’s why I prefaced it and followed it up with my actual point, which is that this complexity pales in comparison to the complexity of any more ‘engineered’ processes.
And yes, agriculture may be fragile, but we’re not gonna replace it anytime soon, because we need something that scales.
Reducing the amount of plants we need to grow by going for a plant-based diet is already a step in the right direction. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but we might even be able to cut out Haber-Bosch.
In particular maybe also interesting for you is that legumes can help to reduce the need for fertilizer, because they fixate nitrogen into the ground. And well, plant-based diets involve a lot of legumes.
That’s why they were often part of crop rotation and also the Three Sisters.
Holy shit. Are you serious?
I was simplifying under the assumption that you guys aren’t dumb and get the general point without me spelling out the exact differences.
I mean, if by simplifying you mean being wrong, sure.