EnviroLink Forum

Of the four reasons to become a vegan: religion, animal welfare, personal health, and environmental concerns, it's this last one that I think should have the final say on the issue; since the present oversized world population puts even more stress on the environment by adopting meat and dairy diets. It's a simple, obvious problem: the conversion of plant food sources to animal protein is at best a 5:1 ratio with chickens, and closer to 10:1 for beef. If the trend to meat consumption in Asia was reversed, and North Americans stood up to the powerful meat and dairy industries, we would at least have a fighting chance to scale back world population to sustainable levels.

This recent article posted on the Guardian website over the weekend shows that these issues are becoming especially urgent, as water scarcity spreads around the world: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/aug/26/food-shortages-world-vegetarianism:

Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world's population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages......

You know those animals we eat, right to left? Ever wonder what they eat? Why, plant matter of course...very fibrous stuff that...what do you know, comes from the same plants humans grow for their own food. Would you not want to convert non-edible portions to food by feeding it to animals? After all, it's only your time, energy, and water going into growing it. You know those ratios you spoke of? They work for plants too.

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I use red, not because of anger but to define my posts to catch rebuttals latter and it makes the quote feature redundent for me. The rest of you pick your own color.

Life is a time capsule we strive to fill with precious memories.

The conversion to grass fed animal products would seem to be in order. The supplementation with the by-products of soy oil and corn oil production could be included.

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“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
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The report that was posted at The Guardian specifically focused on the growing crisis of water scarcity around the world. The fact that animals eat stuff that we don't, doesn't deal with the fact that so much extra vegetation has to be grown to feed them. Most of the feedlots in Canada and the U.S. that are stock raising beef and dairy cattle just shovel in the same corn and soybeans that they feed to us in processed foods. If it wasn't for the subsidies on corn and soybeans, there would be a lot less of these water-intensive and OIL-intensive plants grown. If we went to a more vegan diet, agriculture would be organized a lot differently than it is today...which is primarily focused around the beef, chicken and pork industries.

No, the soy products generally fed cattle are the byproducts from the production of oil and the same applies to corn. After the production of corn syrup or ethanol the waste by product is fed to the cattle. Cattle are also fed on grass most of the time prior to being fattened in the feed lots, which does not require any addtional vegetation to be grown, just land cycled into fallow production.

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/an128

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With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

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I use red, not because of anger but to define my posts to catch rebuttals latter and it makes the quote feature redundent for me. The rest of you pick your own color.

Life is a time capsule we strive to fill with precious memories.

I saw this same post in several vegan websites and to be polite, I never voiced my objections to the claim in of the article that water shortage would result in a reduction of meat. If you look at the people in the driest parts of the world, they are primarily meat eaters (and some 100% meat). The reason for this is the ground is not moist enough to sustain a crop... not even a crop of hay. The only animals that can survive such a land are grass eaters... and those that eat the grass eaters. In the shortage of water for irrigation of human crops (especially cotton), land will be turned into grain crops. I have worked at grain cleaning companies and on grain farms and know that only about 1/3 of the crops are fit for human consumption. The rest gets turned into animal feed or if it is bad enough, composted and used as land-fill in swamp land. That animal feed has to go somewhere and it is definitely not going to animals in pastures eating cheap grass (along with wildlife). If you want more wildlife, stick to pastures for cattle (but not sheep... they kill the grass without a human shepherd moving them around). Grain farming is highly destructive to wildlife areas. Water shortages are primarily caused by a lack of burrowing animals who allow the rain water to stay on the land and a lack of beavers to keep the water table up. Beavers, gophers and prairie dogs can only co-exist with cattle farming and never work with grain farming (There are law suits in my area because one farmer never bothered to kill the beaver and blow up the dam and caused a few million dollars in crop damage because of that... yep, sue the farmer for letting a beaver do it's thing). Dropping water tables and lack of water is purely from grain and cotton production that has replaced the buffalo for as far as the eye can see... grazing animals.

I will have to add that I agree that massive starvation will occur because of the lack of water... the people around the world will have to grow their own food rather then rely on the "bread basket of the world" of the North American prairies. Look at how few people can survive in Mongolia... they can only eat meat due to the grass taking 2 years to recover from being grazed once... that is what the prairies will end up being like if the weather keeps changing the way it has lately.

Like I said before, the way agriculture is practiced today is unbalanced to begin with. We would not have so much soy, corn and wheat gluten in our diets if it wasn't for the multibillion dollar farm bill subsidies that somehow get passed every year by Republican lawmakers concerned about government spending! Would we be using so much soy oil if the price doubled? Or would we be drifting back to olive oil and other sources?

It's not just about animal factory farming either -- the entire way that agriculture is carried out today with GMO seeds, large scale monocropping made possible by oil-based fertilizers and pesticides, massive irrigation projects pumping aquifers (including the Oglala) dry, and last but not least - the adding of mined phosphates to the fertilizer mixes which is also a fixed natural resource that will be completely tapped out within a few decades....all of this has to be scrapped and farming has to go back to the mixed farming and crop rotating ways that were done prior to WWII. The yields will be much lower, but the present green revolution garbage is almost at an end...and reaching that end much sooner than later because of the pressure of increasingly unstable climate changes.

And all things being equal, if we're using the land to feed animals to be eaten by us later, the conversion process means that there has to be less total food available for us to eat. Historically, areas of the world like the Far East and the Indian Subcontinent, that had higher population densities, did not have diets high in meat as western and less populated regions. In fact, the great increase in meat consumption that has accompanied China's growing affluence, has been considered one of their big contributing factors to their sudden increase in carbon emissions.

From your link, I notice that the list of alternatives which they feel should be used more widely as animal feed contain many which can and are added to our food or used in making other products. Some of those items catch my eye because they were once used in making textiles before clothing all became oil-based synthetics....but guess what, we are going to have to rediscover all of the natural fibers again if we ever escape the Oil Age. One thing for sure, just saying we'll devote more of what we presently consider waste products to feed our livestock in our present unsustainable agriculture methods does not address the water shortage issues mentioned in that Guardian article

Cane Molasses, Citrus Pulp, Soy Hulls, Hominy Feed, Brewers Grain, Corn Distillers Grains, Corn Gluten Feed, Cottonseed (whole) ,Peanut Meal, Corn Stalks, Grain Sorghum Stalks, Wheat Straw, and Soybean Stubble, Cotton Gin Trash, Cottonseed Hulls, Peanut Hay, Peanut Hulls, Wheat Middlings, Cull Vegetables, Rice Bran, Rice Mill Feed or Rice By-Product,

I forgot to add this article, which I found while looking for stuff on the present factory farming practice of feeding dead animals to natural herbivores. Here's what they also feed the animals which provide the beef, pork, chicken and dairy products on your supermarket shelf:
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/impacts_industrial_agriculture/they-eat-what-the-reality-of.html
Same Species Meat
Diseased Animals
Feathers, Hair, Skin, Hooves, and Blood
Manure and Other Animal Waste
Plastics
Drugs and Chemicals
Unhealthy Amounts of Grains

From Ann; " Water shortages are primarily caused by a lack of burrowing animals who allow the rain water to stay on the land and a lack of beavers to keep the water table up." Come now, water shortages are caused from too many people. Sure ground water is affected by the lack of burrowing animals, from to many people and their pets killing them. That is only the upper ground water, mainly, and not the deep aquifers being used up for very long time spans(for drinking water and irrigation to get 6 times the yields as 'dry' farming). It also doesn't include the river waters used up by peoples' demands, for drinking water and agriculture/irrigation.
For the thread title, food shortages from AGW droughts and too many people will force more people into a less meat diet or even vegetarianism. Food shortages will also drive some to poach wild game to extinction or low numbers. It will drive others to wars, and still others to cannibalism.
'Greek historian Herodotus wrote 2,500 years ago, “Man stalks across the landscape, and deserts follow in his footsteps.” Indeed, even Plato saw the impact of man upon the land. Much later, Abraham Lincoln’s ambassador to Italy and Turkey reported similar environmental destruction and scalped landscapes. Even President Nixon acknowledged the challenge of curtailing population growth.'
Food shortages will lead to malnutrition and compromised immune systems, which leads to more disease. Food shortages will drive people to use soils totally up(no organics left) and use poor soils prone to desertification. It will drive more people to slash and burn more forests for short term soil and high CO2 output. The more people, the more food shortages, until the effects of water loss, soil loss, and cheap energy depletion cause large reductions in yields and distribution with the mass die off of humans.
Large areas will be devoid of even bugs to eat as the "horsemen" pass, leaving human skeletons and bone fragments behind.

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"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
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― Chief Seattle

Ummm but you clearly said:

'

Which is incorrect, but you also stated:



but you seem to exclude vegetables from the vegan diet.



So vegan is now non-animal, non-soy, and non-corn? Sounds like it would be hard to have any kind of balanced diet with all of the exclusions.



And who will stop eating when the production drops significantly?



Those changes which would tend to preclude the normal varieties of plants being grown? If more drought tolerant species are developed for the more arid areas and more flood tolerant species for the areas which will get more rain we might be able to muddle through a bit longer.



Since alll things are not equal this is a logical diversion from the actualityl




Really? You can digest cellulose?



Well, if you can eat most of this stuff you are not human.



You should not look at what of this is in the food you consume.

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With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

???????????????? I'll need an explanation for that point.

'

Which is incorrect, but you also stated:


So, I guess you come here bearing an agenda! Either your work has some relationship with meat and dairy or you're afraid the government is going to force you to become a vegetarian. For my part, I only have a casual interest in going in depth on this topic, because there is too much obvious sense in the premise to waste time debating it with people who are going to insist that water consumption will not vary whether a population is vegan or not. Most of the food we're feeding animals that we want to eat later is less food available for humans, as the conversion ratios from plant to meat protein vary from 5:1 to 10:1. It takes a great deal of water to produce grains. Less water would be wasted if we were eating them ourselves, rather than feeding them to other animals. As for the mix of ingredients in compound feed, here's the rundown of the most common ingredients listed in the Wikipedia entry on the subject:

Ingredients:
The main ingredients used in commercially prepared feed are the feed grains, which include corn, soybeans, sorghum, oats, and barley. Corn production was valued at nearly $25 billion in 2003, while soybean production was valued at $17.5 billion. Roughly 66 percent of sorghum production, which was valued at $965 million in 2003, is used as livestock feed. Approximately 60 percent of barley production, which totaled 227 million bushels (4,610,000 metric tons) and was valued at $765 million in 2003, is used as livestock feed. Annual oat production in 2003 was valued at $218 million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_feed#Ingredients


Corn and soybeans hardly qualify as a vegetable diet!


We were muddling through fine for thousands of years before the advent of seedless GMO plants came along. These new plants are highly specialized for specific environments and cannot adapt to the sort of changes which we are experiencing with greater frequency. And what good does it do to develop more drought tolerant and flood tolerant species when the same area can experience record floods two years ago, and has been subjected to record droughts this year?

I didn't say all of it could be eaten. But some of those fibers can be used for making other products after switching from oil-based sources. A quick example I first heard of two years ago is Straw-bale construction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw-bale_construction


???????????????? I'll need an explanation for that point.

No on both counts and you lost a lot of credibility going there.



Possibly because your argument is critically flawed.



No, it is not. If you base your assumption on a flawed premise nothing will remove that initial flaw.



That also does not take into consideration the fact humans are taking their food from some of this feed first or that some of the products being fed cannot be digested by humans so there is a conversion of non-food to food.



This would be true IF the animals were only being fed food humans could consume, but that is not the case and this fails badly.



How about a real source such as the USDA for example. But wait, the USDA classifies anything not grown for human consumption as feed, even though it may be used at least in part for human use.



I suppose humans did not consume any of the oats, but then again oats are generally fed to horses rather than animals raised to consume. Dogs, cats, and all of the pets we have are included in this figure as well. I suspect the figures for feed are inclusive of the products used for other things and the residual used for feed, but the references for this article are sorely lacking.




What do they qualify as if not vegetables? They are not animal nor mineral, so what are they?



Not with 7 billion people to fed we were not. We have been modifying plants and animals for that whole period of time. We have gotten better and better over the years.



And you believe the natural adaptation will be able to respond faster?




Not much no matter what is planted, but it does when there is an extended drought or increased flooding over the norm.



So you switch the discussion mid-stream for what reason? Which is more important food of straw bale construction? If we cannot support ourselves with the food production as is your premise, why would we need straw bale construction?



Check for the allowable levels of insect parts, animal parts, excrement, and the like in the food you consume if you think you really want to know.

Also, how exactly does growing crops under rain fed conditions consume the water?

http://afrsweb.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/pe ... igarss.pdf

About 70% of Iowa and Illinois is primarily cropland; corn and soybeans are the predominant crops. The field sizes average 64 hectares (0.5x0.5 miles). Crops are grown under rain-fed conditions, and crop planting is completed by the end of May, with corn planted about 2 weeks earlier than soybeans. Crop maturity occurred by late September.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

The issue involves not just water scarcity but also peak oil, and not just meat but also plants. It's not about vegetarianism but being forced to eat less food that require more resources and energy, and as a combination of three predicaments take place--a permanent global economic crisis due to increasing debt, peak oil and generally a resource crunch, and the long-term effects of environmental damage and global warming--even eating less food.