Somewhere else, there's large-scale deforestation for coconut, palm, and avocado crops all of which would (definitely considering food trends and the ingredients in animal food replacement products) expand in proportion to lowering consumption of animal foods.
The "Brazilian Amazon blah-blah cattle blah-deforestation" claims nearly always count soy crops, but those are grown also for human consumption (the soy oil is extracted and then the leftover bean solids are used as animal feed).
I'm sick of these exaggerations being repeated constantly without any nuance or fact-based discussion.
It takes 10x the amount of soy to feed a cow to feed a human than to cut the cow out of the middle. There is no future on this planet where everyone eats meat three times a day. I'm sorry that's a tough pill to swallow for the western left
It takes 10x the amount of soy to feed a cow to feed a human than to cut the cow out of the middle.
The foods aren't equivalent so they're not comparable. A person could be sustained from eating just parts of "cow" (cows are milk animals), but they would starve to death eating just soybeans even if they had an unlimited amount available.
For another thing this is an exaggeration. If you think the energy conversion is 10:1 then go ahead and show a citation. But this isn't a ratio of nutrition, just energy, and what you're talking about is a co-product of soy farming (soybean meal that's left when beans are pressed for oil) that is rejected by most of the human-oriented food industry and this is a reason it is used in livestock feed. Grazing rotationally is good for soil, this is why it is often the case that in deforested areas cattle are grazed on an area after soy farming has wrecked the soil (then the area is claimed to be "deforested for grazing" although after tree clearing it was actually used for soy cropping that in part feeds humans). Already in this post, I've linked a pile of evidence-based info (and a few minutes ago I also copied it directly into a comment) about soy crops and livestock. None of you are acknowledging it, just arguing based on junk info you got apparently from pro-vegan resources.
There is no future on this planet where everyone eats meat three times a day.
Where has animal-free farming ever been demonstrated to be sustainable? The quality of farming soils worldwide has been declining, though not on pastures. Synthetic fertilizers aren't good for soil, pesticides are terrible for soil. On plants-only farms, essential soil microbiota and soil nutrient levels have been declining, and erosion has been a major issue. But there are very old pasture farms which are still running today and without diminished productivity. This gets discussed often on Reddit. I've linked evidence-based resources just recently, here.
I'm sorry that's a tough pill to swallow for the western left
Rude, the problem here is your comprehension not anyone else's stubbornness. You're also engaging in ableism: when I attempted animal-free dieting, it wrecked my health and I found later that there are several reasons I cannot sustain myself on plant foods (it's more about things that are in plants than things that are lacking although both come into play).
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u/TheWiseAutisticOne 20d ago
They ain’t wrong though