my vegan brain dump...and your thoughts on it

[brimstoneSalad]

BrimstoneSalad, good points, but maybe you are missing THE point. The general thrust of the anti-vegan argument in this context is that it is possible to farm animals in ways that minimise animal suffering and death and maximise ecological function, something not possible to the same extent in crop farming. So those making this argument, for example ethical omnivores, will say they are opposed to intensive feed systems but support animal farming on something like regenerative methods

You're completely missing the point: you're alleging an asymmetry that does not exist -- or indeed, one which probably actually exists in the OPPOSITE direction you claim.

Current massive scale grain fed animal agriculture is a problem. You claim it's possible to farm animals in a "good" way here.

Current massive scale monocrop plant agriculture is supposedly a problem. It is possible to do this in an even less harmful way too.

In either case the nicer forms are less efficient ways of producing food.
You claim the asymmetry is that the "good" way of farming is not possible for crops to the same extent. Bullshit.

There are huge differences in the efficiency of feedlots and pasture raised animals, and the amount of land footprint required is also much larger for pasture because of the inefficiency of forage -- likewise for impact on global climate change, which is much higher for animals who grow more slowly. It is not possible to farm animals with less animal harm impact to the same extent. We do not have the land for it. And even if we did, it would cause MORE damage to the environment, which is going to harm human beings. Are human beings worth less than mice in your estimation?

The only way you can get away with less impact in changing farming practices is to farm LESS. But the important point is the thing that's reducing impact is lower consumption, not the form of farming being done.

When it comes to plants there are differences in efficiency between different methods too, but they're not as dramatic. Organic, which is *terrible* in terms of efficiency is still only 20%-40% or so less yield (https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2018 ... l-farming/), and we can do a lot better than that by not being stupid. The main difference for actually good methods is the amount of human labor input for harvest, but the existence of these conditions would soon allow development of new machines that can harvest in them. Also, even with organic if you eliminated animal agriculture then you *could* probably afford the lower plant yields given how much land is wasted on animal ag.

but rather that animal farming at an appropriate scale is preferable to a completely plant-based system. We can't wave away that kind of proposition as fanciful because it isn't what happens now, after all a plant-only system is just as fanciful.

A plant-only system is not fanciful. Plenty of crops are grown without meaningful animal input. Vegans are supporting a plant only system.

We are really looking for the most optimal solution which might be one in which some proportion of calories is obtained from meat and dairy.

If you really want to find it, the most optimal solution would not involve animals.

One way to start looking at that might be to say, well, in a more ethical system we'd expect most people to eat some amount of fruit and vegetables daily. I don't know how much is recommended, but for the sake of argument let's say that for a healthy omnivorous diet it is 80% of total calories. That means that we'd need to produce enough meat and dairy to supply 20% of calories in the diet.

So you're advocating INCREASING the contribution of meat in the diet globally? Do you realize that people already get a small proportion of their calories from animal ag.? Are you just completely ignorant of human diets?
In most of the world that percentage is around 10% or less, only in places like the U.S. is it over 20%, but not by enough to compensate for the global increase your proposal would create.

As far as I know nobody in ecology of health is advocating for that high consumption of animal products that you are.

The land used to grow the fruit and veg that constitutes the 80% is a baseline, if you like. It's gonna happen regardless. So what we are interested in is the comparison between the 20% balance being supplied by more fruit and veg or by meat. As meat is mainly about protein, I guess we'd be looking at protein crops rather than lettuce and tomato. We can then probably make some sort of calculation from there.

Yes, and it has been done many times already.
https://slideplayer.com/slide/12754674/ ... +crops.jpg


It doesn't matter how you farm it, beef doesn't beat soy. You could double the efficiency of beef and halve soy, or more, and beef still loses.
You will never get close with animal agriculture. There are only rare cases like milk beating wheat (in terms of protein), which is taking the most efficient animal product vs. one of the least efficient plant proteins.

The regenerative argument (or whatever you like to call it) is that we can raise cattle and sheep on natural pasture with minimal supplemental feeding. By utilising such methods the local ecology can be substantially improved over traditional animal farming methods, thereby delivering maximal local biodiversity and ecology function while also growing food (meat). We cannot do that if we grow lentils/peas/beans or whatever, not to the same extent.

Lies lies and more lies.

First, regenerative agriculture, that Allan Savory pseudoscience, is pseudoscience. It's not real, animal farming doesn't help the environment. It harms local ecology period. There's no evidence for that "regeneration" these people claim, it's QAnon religion of anti-vegans.

Second, you can ABSOLUTELY rebuild biodiversity by farming legumes instead, because you can completely return huge amounts of land to the wild. Why can you not understand this?
They can literally regrow forests rather than be a desolate parody of wilderness that is cow-overrun pastureland.

Now obviously we'll need much more land for the cattle and sheep than for the protein crop,

Duh, which is why your ecology arguments are terrible and dishonest: you clearly already recognize this fact. Now you just shift gears and change the subject:

but the claim is that for the land used for animals, it is most likely that we will not cause any significant numbers of animals to be killed beyond the farmed animals themselves.

You're ignoring harm to ecology from having pasture instead of forest. You're ignoring harm to HUMAN beings from global climate change you're promoting by increasing global meat consumption and increasing climate impact per kg meat while you're at it. You're ignoring the fact that there's no evidence to begin with that pasture harms fewer net animals than cropland. You're ignoring the fact that regardless of the numebers there are obvious ways we can easily reduce harm to cropland animals (things that have already been widely discussed like refuges provided for shelter after harvest).

Plus there are other benefits from using natural pasture to feed the cattle when compared to crop farming.

No there aren't.

Here'a really rough calculation by way of example.

Experts have already done these calculations, stop trying to reinvent the wheel, it's not helpful to the discussion and adds nothing. Scribbled on bar-napkin calculations have no place when there's peer reviewed studies to turn to.

ure, this is really very rough and ignores all sorts of other factors, my point just is that the numbers are not necessarily wildly in favour of cropping.

Yes I know you can bullshit numbers like that and fabricate an imagined greater harm without any evidence. That's not a reason to eat meat.
If you know something is causing harm on one hand, like the death of cows, and don't know how much harm is being done on the other hand and it's unknowable to you, then you avoid the known harm.

You're driving down the road and you see two boxes. On the left the box is closed, on the right the box is coming open a little and a baby is trying to crawl out. You can swerve left or right to hit only one box (if you don't swerve you will hit both boxes).
MAYBE the left (closed) box is full of more babies than the one the baby is trying to crawl out of, or maybe it's empty or full of garbage. You KNOW the right box has at least one baby in it who you will kill if you swerve right or don't swerve at all.

What do you think you should do? Should you rationalize and convince yourself that the closed box MUST have more babies in it, and thus swerve right? Because that's what you're doing right now with this whole meat argument.

That is, that's what you *would* be doing if we didn't already have overwhelming evidence of multiple forms of harm meat is doing that overwhelm any trivial difference that field animal deaths may contribute.
As it stands now there are also dozens of people tied up on the right side of the road in front of the box, and none on the left -- more people than could ever possibly fit into the left box unseen. And you're just looking past them and ignoring them, imagining how many babies are in the left box despite it being irrelevant to the obvious choice. It literally doesn't matter how many mice are dying, no remotely conceivable number per hectare, even hundreds, would mean we should not immediately end animal agriculture for many other reasons.

By the way, the issue of coproducts remains.

You haven't even heard of mock meats, have you? They're made from soy proteins left over after oil extraction. TVP is a common example.
If the soy for the oil is human food grade, the left over protein can be made so too.

Likewise, there's this little known thing called mushrooms that grow using coproduct feedstock and are also far more efficient and eco-friendly than any form of animal agriculture. You should look into it.

Finally, there are these things called biofuel, and green building (cobb, strawbale, etc.)...

Coproducts are not an issue. They're fed to animals, used for bedding, etc. because of the demand, not because we need to get rid of them or because they have no other value.

Also, I am suspicious that many researchrs do miss this pont.

So you DO think the researchers who do this professionally are morons and only you have true insight into this issue.
@teo123 remind you of anything? (flat-Earth thread)

A typical vegan argument is that 70-80% of all soy grown is for animal feed, the implication being that if we stopped animal farming we'd grow 80% less soy. I think they are mistaking what the 80/20 proportion actually represents.

We would grow significantly less soy. Some of it would replace meat as a human grade protein source, but some of that 70-80% is also fed to animals as hay or silage, not beans. They harvest the whole plant with pods for animal feed, you can find breakdowns of practice: https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/forage/s ... or-silage/
It's often done intentionally, and that's not a coproduct. Soy is also not a very efficient oil crop, so if demand for the protein dropped we would switch some of that soy crop to other oils (which are also HEALTHIER oils) which would again require less acreage -- for example, canola is almost twice as efficient an oil producer, so we would need only a little over half the land to produce the same amount of oil.

It's like you have zero knowledge whatsoever of industry practice and farming and you think cows are just eating soy meal coproduct that we *have to make* to get our oil and have nowhere else we can use it

It's frustrating that you seem to have uncritically accepted these carnist arguments and are arguing for them despite total lack of evidence, and despite the expert consensus that contradicts your claims that I have already pointed to.

[teo123]

There are only rare cases like milk beating wheat (in terms of protein)

Which shows this is a very empirical issue vulnerable to politicizing with the numbers, not something which can be reached by reason. Therefore, it can't be truly known. It's a very soft science, softer than linguistics. At lest, in linguistics, you don't have such politicizing with the numbers.
I don't think arguments based on stuff like that hold a lot of merit, and I think that we sound uninformed when we use them.

You're ignoring harm to HUMAN beings from global climate change you're promoting by increasing global meat consumption and increasing climate impact per kg meat while you're at it.

I don't think that's remotely the right attitude to have towards pasture-raised meat. How can it possibly be worse than factory farmed meat? It doesn't lead to antibiotic resistance and animals are without a doubt better off.

[SupaFly]

@brimstoneSalad Thanks for all of your thoughts. You obviously have extensively more knowledge about these issues than most everyone out there. If you have not already done so, I would encourage you to start a blog or publish a book, or at least get your writings from this forum out to a wider audience. My only suggestion would be to tone down your criticism of other's knowledge (or lack thereof) since even if your arguments are true, they might be less likely to accept them based on your tone. In any case, I really appreciate all the time and effort you put into your posts.