Summary
Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture, with most of this used to raise livestock for dairy and meat. Livestock are fed from two sources – lands on which the animals graze and land on which feeding crops, such as soy and cereals, are grown. How much would our agricultural land use decline if the world adopted a plant-based diet?
Research suggests that if everyone shifted to a plant-based diet we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%. This large reduction of agricultural land use would be possible thanks to a reduction in land used for grazing and a smaller need for land to grow crops. The research also shows that cutting out beef and dairy (by substituting chicken, eggs, fish or plant-based food) has a much larger impact than eliminating chicken or fish.
I’m in. Impossible nuggies are the best
I’m surprised it is not a bigger difference. I was taught in school that the ballbark for energy-convertion for one rank in the food-chain is one tenth. So while one to four is a massive difference, it’s a long way from what I expected.
Coming up on six years now. 👍
Congrats! Keep it up! :)
Eh, I can’t go vegan. I’m already too limited to what I can eat without adding veganism on top. I’m all for lab grown meats though.
Why?
I, too, can’t wait for the near future where I can consume however I want with no detrimental impact on the world around me. /s
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It‘s not all or nothing, if you had clicked the link actually you would have seen a lot of “it‘s not all or nothing” in there, I‘m not gonna cite it all, but here is one example:
But importantly large land use reductions would be possible even without a fully vegan diet. Cutting out beef, mutton and dairy makes the biggest difference to agricultural land use as it would free up the land that is used for pastures.
And fair enough, maybe you won‘t be convinced ever and happily chow down on beef burgers until the bitter end, but if it can convince some people to at least choose chicken instead or even just reduce their beef use as much as they can live with, then it‘s a already a useful study regardless of the holdouts.
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They aren’t useless. It can often be useful to know what the extremes are, as a middle-ground approach would lie somewhere in between. Like, if switching wholly away from animals would free up 3 billion hectares, would switching about halfway free up about 1.5 billion hectares?
Obviously it’s not necessarily that simple but still, knowing the statistics at various extremes allows you to weigh your options, so you can compromise by combining various approaches at varying degrees and hopefully get a “good enough” outcome. The researchers here aren’t necessarily saying “all you meat lovers need to just give up meat already, look at how much land we can free up!”, rather they’re saying “hey policymakers, if we reduce our reliance on animals by around a third, we can free up a billion hectares of valuable agricultural land.”
Making animals suffer for my culinary choices is good, actually
Hope you don’t mind if I hang your beloved pets up by their feet, cut their throats, and tear their bodies apart. They’re just food so it does’t matter.
Why are you on a vegan community, then?
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Just because you don’t actually do the murdering doesn’t mean you are not responsible for the murder. Those animals that you eat are murdered to create supply for the meat demand that you contribute to. If you stop eating meat, demand goes down by one meat-eater which will decrease the number of animals that are killed. Even though you aren’t slaughtering animals, you are still responsible for the deaths caused by the meat you eat, kind of like how a mob boss is still culpable for murders that they order. Or how the global leaders that send armed forces out to murder people in other countries are considered murderers even though they never personally pull the trigger.
And before you assume I’m a vegan, I’m not, but I feel quite a bit of guilt for the animal lives that I’m responsible for taking. I’m reducing my meat intake (no meat 2-3 days a week) because every little bit helps to reduce demand for meat and the deaths it directly causes.
Okay. I don’t really care about any of your excuses written here. If you aren’t a vegan, and don’t want to be a vegan, and have negative opinions of vegans, then why do you subject yourself to looking at vegan discussion spaces?
Go outside.
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What do you think would happen to the land now suddenly free, let’s say after one day everyone waking up vegan? That land would be exploited in another way.
Or not! We could have magnificent forests, for instance.
Magnificent forests, providing extra food…
Why do you assume that exactly? If there’s no demand for more products what do you want the land to be exploited for?
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> goes to a vegan subreddit
> shits on vegans.
It seems to me the main point of the article is to cut out beef, mutton, and dairy. The difference between that and vegan is relatively small, according to the second chart in the article.
Also, where are all these sanctimonious shitbag vegans you speak of? I’ve known many vegans, and not a single one has acted that way. Maybe you’ve just met sanctimonious shitbag people, and their being vegan is irrelevant?
Go take a hike!
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Mm, the stolen pus-juice from the raped mothers of murdered children.
Imagine going to a niche subreddit, calling everyone in it a shitbag, and then using anything remotely hostile thrown back at you as evidence that you’re right.
Let us live in peace, you’re free to keep paying for tortured animal carcasses (and thank God, imagine how cruel a world it would be where animal abuse/killing was outlawed /s) and we’re free to eat plants.
I don’t go to meat eater communities and call out everyone there for paying into systems that abuse and torture sentient creatures, even though I would be just stating facts about what people are doing, not calling them names like you are.
A triggered carnist appears. Go touch some grass kid.
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Vegetarians arguably cause more suffering and death than carnists, so good going
Troll
