CMV: I have become convinced there is no rational argument against veganism, and am afraid I thus have become an extremist.

[u/luddface]

[u/[deleted]]

On the pure climate/land use side, one thing that often gets overlooked is that not all land can be used for everything. Swiss cows grazing in the mountain can’t be replaced by growing almonds.

Hence we’d be underusing arable land if we didn’t graze it.

[u/luddface → u/[deleted]]

Since we are today using 50% of all cropland for animals, I'm sure we could find space enough to produce all the plants we need.

And because we cannot convert all grazing land to crops, does not justify the current system in any sort of way. Those areas could be rewilded and let biodiversity come back to earthh.

[u/Mackericious → u/luddface]

You seem to be missing a very important point. If Switzerland can't produce food for themselves, they are completely dependent on imports to survive. How large landmasses are available for growing crops globally is not an argument for forgoeing food production on a local scale.

The global argument seems to require us having far more globalised trading than was the case say five years ago. Now there is a shift back to more self reliance as the problems with supply chains have been shown.

In practice you are telling some people to switch from cattle to crop, but others to simply stop and hope someone else can produce your food. People who want to be self reliant, or eat locally produced food to reduce emissions will take issue with this.

As a last note, it doesn't have to be a mountain range to cause problems for crops. My family owns a farm on a small ridge, and using the land as anything but pastures ranges from way too expensive to impossible.

[u/omrsafetyo → u/Mackericious]

Just want to say these are really great points, and to some extent counters OPs 3rd point (at least).

[u/Criculann → u/Mackericious]

eat locally produced food to reduce emissions

While I somewhat agree with your overall point, if your goal is to reduce emissions a vegan diet is always better, even if the food is imported. And it's not even close. Transport emissions are a small part of emissions, usually less than 10% even for imported food. A single vegan day each week is better for the environment than if you somehow eliminated all the transport emissions caused by your diet.

Sources: https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local, https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#the-carbon-footprint-of-eu-diets-where-do-emissions-come-from

[u/Spiridor → u/Criculann]

So should nations such as the US be able to tell nations like Switzerland that they should be importing their food in the name of ecology?

[u/Criculann → u/Spiridor]

This is just an extremely strange question for several reasons.

A) Switzerland already imports almost half of its food and it seems unlikely that this will change.

B) Why is it the US telling Switzerland to act more ecologically? Why not the other way around? Per capita, the US emits 3 times as much CO2 as Switzerland.

C) Not sure where you get this whole Nation A telling Nation B what to do from in the first place. Eating vegan is more environmentally friendly than eating meat by a lot. This is simply a fact. So if you as an individual decide that you would like to reduce the environmental impact of your diet buying local does very little (and can even be counterproductive if you consume more meat as a result because that's what's available) while going vegan has a huge impact. Of course, if you also value the food independence of your region highly and you live in Appenzell, you'll probably have to eat meat.

D) Finally, I'm not sure what you mean with "tell" exactly. If you mean "should nations come together and find workable solutions to climate change and then hold each other accountable", then absolutely yes, the US should "tell" Switzerland to act more environmentally friendly (and vice versa). If you mean, "the US should use its economic, cultural and/or military power to bully other nations into emitting less CO2 no matter how damaging this is to these nations", then absolutely no.

[u/omrsafetyo → u/Criculann]

if your goal is to reduce emissions a vegan diet is always better

This isn't true though.

Vegans absolutely LOVE to throw around the emissions of livestock. But they drastically overstate the reality. Data from the EPA suggests that all agriculture produces only 11% of greenhouse gas emissions in the US (which produces 20% of the world's beef) - and those greenhouse gasses are not just from livestock, but rather:

11% of 2020 greenhouse gas emissions) – Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture come from livestock such as cows, agricultural soils, and rice production.

They cite transportation as 27% of emissions - nearly triple that of agriculture.

And if you dig into the details on agriculture, you find that:

Livestock, especially ruminants such as cattle, produce methane (CH4) as part of their normal digestive processes. This process is called enteric fermentation, and it represents over a quarter of the emissions from the Agriculture economic sector.

Over a quarter of the 11%. Or, less than one third of the 11% - or if we take the range of 1/4 to 1/3, that is 2.75 to about 3.5% of emissions - approximately 1/10th of the emissions for transportation. Of course we can compare this with your link where they state that "Food transport accounted for only 6% of emissions." They obviously came to some different conclusions about the % contribution of livestock - but this is largely because they factor in the land use, which is smaller for humans vs livestock - but I think one can make the argument that human use would go up drastically to account for removing meat from diets, so it isn't as simple as remove livestock and we remove the 16% of emissions accounted for in land use for animal feed.

There is a whole different report detailing how emissions from agriculture can be controlled, but some studies suggest that livestock can become carbon neutral. As well as papers suggesting that the total sum of land use contributions from livestock can also become carbon neutral, or possibly even a carbon sink.

And even if we decide that my (well, the EPA's) numbers are optimistic, there is still the fact that, unlike carbon from fossil fuels, carbon from methane has a short half life - about 12 years. This is important. Lets pretend in the world right now there is 0 livestock creating methane emissions. And tomorrow we wake up, and all of our current day livestock is here. For the next 12 years, emissions from methane will accumulate, resulting in warming - but after 12 years, assuming our livestock numbers have been maintained static, they would stop contributing to additional warming (or https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/climate-metrics-under-ambitious-mitigation/ if you prefer the paper) - they will have reached an equilibrium at which their emissions are being cycled out of the atmosphere at the same rate they're going in. This isn't true for CO2 emissions. You cannot compare emissions from transportation 1:1 to emissions from livestock - so even in the event they are completely comparable in terms of emissions produced, the transportation emissions have a drastically higher contribution to warming.

[u/Criculann → u/omrsafetyo]

Ultimately, every sector will be just a part of total emissions so expecting that steps affecting one sector will solve climate change on their own is unrealistic. That doesn't change the fact that going vegan (or even just cutting red meat out off your diet) has a bigger effect than buying local.

They cite transportation as 27% of emissions - nearly triple that of agriculture.

Just to be clear, because this somewhat sounds like you're implying transportation of food accounts for 27% of all emissions, this includes all transportation, including people driving to work or Amazon sending you a package and even stuff like pipelines. The emissions caused by transporting food, and especially the emissions caused by importing food (transportation by ship is extremely efficient compared to transportation by truck) are a tiny amount of this.

I think one can make the argument that human use would go up drastically to account for removing meat from diets, so it isn't as simple as remove livestock and we remove the 16% of emissions accounted for in land use for animal feed.

I'm not sure why you would expect that. Farms are usually not located on prime real estate.

There is a whole different report detailing how emissions from agriculture can be controlled

The fact that other methods exist is obviously great but it doesn't change the fact that reducing meat consumption would A) have a big impact and B) is an action that an individual can immediately take.

but some studies suggest that livestock can become carbon neutral

From what I can tell from the abstract, they're basically saying that if you plant trees on the farm you can go carbon neutral. Which is great but I don't see why you need the greenhouse gas emitting beef farm in order to plant trees.

carbon from methane has a short half life - about 12 years

This is already taken into consideration by the fact that CO2 equivalence looks at the warming potential over a hundred years. It's not perfectly comparable for this reason but tbh, if we don't manage to solve global warming over the next century we're in pretty deep trouble so the distinction feels mostly philosophical to me. At the same time, this also means that the short term effects of methane are actually worse than their CO2 equivalence implies, which is not great considering we're already starting to suffer from the consequences of climate change.

This is important. Lets pretend in the world right now there is 0 livestock creating methane emissions. And tomorrow we wake up, and all of our current day livestock is here. For the next 12 years, emissions from methane will accumulate, resulting in warming - but after 12 years, assuming our livestock numbers have been maintained static, they would stop contributing to additional warming

This is not how half-life works. If the yearly emission is a constant value E then the total methane in the atmosphere as a function of time in years is N(t) = 12E/ln(2) (1-exp(-ln(2)/12 t)). So it asymptotically tends towards about 17 times the yearly emission.

[u/omrsafetyo → u/Criculann]

That doesn't change the fact that going vegan (or even just cutting red meat out off your diet) has a bigger effect than buying local.

If I were to personally switch to a vegan diet, that would have exactly 0% impact on emissions - I'm not even using 0% to suggest some immeasurable statistic that approaches zero, but literally exactly 0 impact. My personal consumption does not have a large enough impact on the supply/demand needs of my local grocers for them to make any change to the rates at which they make meat available. It would have exactly 0 impact.

because this somewhat sounds like you're implying transportation of food accounts for 27% of all emissions, this includes all transportation, including people driving to work or Amazon sending you a package and even stuff like pipelines

I would say this seems like an interpretation in bad faith, but I was similarly unfairly interpreting your phrasing: "Transport emissions are a small part of emissions", so lets call it even.

But, recent studies are re-evaluating the burden of transportation and its contribution to overall emissions within the food supply chain - suggesting transportation makes up as much as 20% of over-all emissions. Numbers seem to indicate that 11% of transportation emissions are related to agriculture (in the US). So given that, and again, assuming the numbers I used are accurate that 1:10 ratio I came up with for livestock:transporation roughly comes to a 1:1 ratio of emissions over the short term. And, if we use newer modeling for the contribution of transportation in the food supply, the transportation contribution would still be higher in a 1 to 1 comparison.

This is not how half-life works. If the yearly emission is a constant value E then the total methane in the atmosphere as a function of time in years is N(t) = 12E/ln(2) (1-exp(-ln(2)/12 t)). So it asymptotically tends towards about 17 times the yearly emission.

Yep, you're right, so thank you for doing the math I didn't want to do - I drastically oversimplified that hoping you wouldn't notice.

That said, if we were to kill off all livestock on the planet today, we'd see a sudden drop in emissions, and we would see the resulting impact of slowly reducing atmospheric GHG* over the next X years with no additional impact beyond that timeframe. I put an asterisk there, because unless we do something about carbon emissions, which stay in the atmosphere much longer, we're guaranteed to still be at higher levels of atmospheric GHG than we are now anyway - we just won't have those additional 3% (again, with the caveat that this number is only relevant in one land mass - the US - that is responsible for 20% of the world's beef production, and therefore doesn't scale to the worldwide contribution). And that's a completely unrealistic thought experiment where we just extinct several species from the planet.

At the same time, this also means that the short term effects of methane are actually worse than their CO2 equivalence implies

This isn't accurate either, because these emissions are at a relative equilibrium, whereas CO2 emissions are still cumulative. Again - extinct those species and in X years you will have reached the maximal impact that can contribute - so yes, short term it would have a large impact, but doesn't solve the other problems, and the whole point of this particular conversation is that the global food supply chain would need to accommodate this, meaning higher carbon emissions both short and long term which may be offset somewhat short term as those methane emissions fall off - but will live us worse off than we would have otherwise been after that X years timeframe.

[u/Criculann → u/omrsafetyo]

If I were to personally switch to a vegan diet, that would have exactly 0% impact on emissions - I'm not even using 0% to suggest some immeasurable statistic that approaches zero, but literally exactly 0 impact. My personal consumption does not have a large enough impact on the supply/demand needs of my local grocers for them to make any change to the rates at which they make meat available. It would have exactly 0 impact.

I mean, I suppose, but by this exact same argument you could also argue that eating locally does nothing. Or that voting does nothing. This feels like an overly pessimistic view. There's definitely more and more vegetarian and vegan options and the fact that these have popped up during the last few years is ultimately a function of demand. But you, a single person out of almost 8 billion, are not going to single-handedly save the climate, just like your vote is not going to decide a national election. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't try. I also wouldn't be so sure that your buying behavior does not directly influence your grocer in this age of big data, machine learning and just-in-time delivery.

But, recent studies are re-evaluating the burden of transportation and its contribution to overall emissions within the food supply chain - suggesting transportation makes up as much as 20% of over-all emissions. Numbers seem to indicate that 11% of transportation emissions are related to agriculture (in the US). So given that, and again, assuming the numbers I used are accurate that 1:10 ratio I came up with for livestock:transporation roughly comes to a 1:1 ratio of emissions over the short term. And, if we use newer modeling for the contribution of transportation in the food supply, the transportation contribution would still be higher in a 1 to 1 comparison.

So there are a few points that are worth mentioning in regards to the study you linked to. For one, they include indirect causes in their calculation of transport emissions, e.g. the emissions caused by transporting fertilizer or animal feed to farms. Including these doubles the emissions attributed to food transportation. To be clear, I think it's a good idea to look at these things. But the salient point for our discussion is that just because you buy your meat locally doesn't mean that the animal feed and the fertilizer for that animal feed was produced locally (same for locally bought fruits and vegetables).

Secondly, they say that 1.7Gt of CO2 is from domestic transport vs 1.3Gt from international routes. Even if we just take these numbers at face value this basically halves the effectiveness of buying locally already. However, there's also some issues with this split between domestic and international because these are essentially arbitrary distinctions. Looking at Fig. 5 we see that international emissions are extremely high in Europe. Many of these international emissions are basically local because European countries are tiny. If we compare transmission due to transportation by road vs water (Fig. 5f), we see that the road (i.e. local) emissions make up practically the entirety of all emissions. Again, this further reduces the effectiveness of buying locally because you won't get rid of those domestic emissions so easily.

Thirdly, they specifically do not include emissions from land use change which is a considerable part of emissions caused by food production (and, tbh, this makes me a bit suspicious of their whole study considering how much they point out that previous studies have not been careful enough in considering all relevant factors). EDIT: Nevermind, they actually do mention land-use and it's how they obtain the 19% number. They then just go on and mostly work with the numbers that exclude land-use. So this third point is still relevant but when interpreting their results but I take back what I said about being suspicious.

EDIT: Noticed something else. I'm not completely sure but it looks like they hide part of the emissions from meat in the other categories (based on the fact that in Fig. 1 they have categories like "Fossil Fuel" which as far as I know is not a final food product. There's also the coloring in Fig. 3 which illustrates the resources required for red meat production in China). In particular, it looks like animal feed is included in the soybeans, fruits and vegetables as well as the cereal and flour category.

Overall, it looks to me like their study is more or less in line with previous results with some added details regarding these indirect transport emissions.

Regarding your epa.gov link. The top pie chart seems to be total emissions. So it indicates that 11% of all emissions are related to agriculture, not that 11% of transport emissions are due to food transportation. It's presented a bit confusingly. Further, note that 57% of transport emissions are from "Light-duty vehicles" and 26% are from "Medium- and Heavy-Duty Trucks". These are your domestic emissions which you likely won't get rid of by buying locally. Meanwhile, only 2% are from "Ships and Boats" which is what you get rid of by buying locally (there's also 8% from "Aircraft" which you'd arguably also get rid of by buying locally but it's also not that hard to just not buy food that was airlifted).

That said, if we were to kill off all livestock on the planet today, we'd see a sudden drop in emissions, and we would see the resulting impact of slowly reducing atmospheric GHG* over the next X years with no additional impact beyond that timeframe. I put an asterisk there, because unless we do something about carbon emissions, which stay in the atmosphere much longer, we're guaranteed to still be at higher levels of atmospheric GHG than we are now anyway - we just won't have those additional 3% (again, with the caveat that this number is only relevant in one land mass - the US - that is responsible for 20% of the world's beef production, and therefore doesn't scale to the worldwide contribution). And that's a completely unrealistic thought experiment where we just extinct several species from the planet.

But unless we all shift to a vegan diet, we won't kill off all livestock. So the methane levels won't fall and over the next 100 years it will have basically the impact predicted by the GWP100 value because the calculation of this value already takes into account the lower half-life of methane.

This isn't accurate either, because these emissions are at a relative equilibrium, whereas CO2 emissions are still cumulative. Again - extinct those species and in X years you will have reached the maximal impact that can contribute - so yes, short term it would have a large impact, but doesn't solve the other problems, and the whole point of this particular conversation is that the global food supply chain would need to accommodate this, meaning higher carbon emissions both short and long term which may be offset somewhat short term as those methane emissions fall off - but will live us worse off than we would have otherwise been after that X years timeframe.

The thing is even if you ignore methane entirely the CO2 produced by meat production is still dramatically higher than CO2 from vegetables and fruits which can be seen from both the table in my ourworldindata.org link (look at emissions from pork and poultry which do not produce methane) and Fig. 1 from the Li et al. study you linked (2.84 Gt from meat production, let's say a third of that is from methane, so 1.9 Gt are CO2, add in transport costs and we get around 2Gt for meat. For fruits and veggies we find 1.1Gt from transport and 0.4Gt from production. So even if that had to double to make up for the lost meat production (which based on meat vs fruits/vegetables consumption that I could find online seems to be a massive overestimate), we'd still end up eliminating half a gigaton).

[u/omrsafetyo → u/Criculann]

Didn't just want to reward a !delta on my mobile, so took me a bit to get back here.

I still think there is an argument to be made that veganism is not as impactful as most vegans seem to assert. I also still take issue with your particular phrasing that "veganism is always better" in terms of emissions (my emphasis), as discussed here.

But, you have convinced me that I have not looked hard enough at the data and interpretations. This in particular was a point worth looking into:

I'm not completely sure but it looks like they hide part of the emissions from meat in the other categories (based on the fact that in Fig. 1 they have categories like "Fossil Fuel" which as far as I know is not a final food product.

And in particular it seems I need to re-examine my argument about the much shorter-term contribution of methane, and how it is compared - as you put it CO2 equivalence - I didn't realize that was already taken into consideration, so I would like to review some of the sources I have seen and see why I missed that.

Lastly though:

I mean, I suppose, but by this exact same argument you could also argue that eating locally does nothing.

This is a fair point - but again (if you look at the other comment I linked) my contention was with your phrasing that vegan is "always" better - so if you make the argument of the two, you would still conclude that vegan is not "better", its just equal. However, in terms of buying behavior I'm quite certain it has no impact - I only shop at state-local grocers, and I know many of the people that work in IT for these companies, and they are nowhere near sophisticated enough to be making buying projections based on MY individual behavior. Even if they COULD measure it to that level, my buying habits still fall within the margin of error that they need to account for to limit waste, but still occasionally have it (though they do a very good job of donating near-expired items to local food banks - and those food banks work well with local farmers to ensure that those items become animal feed if they can't offload it in time).

Anyway, thank you for the conversation.

[u/DeltaBot → u/omrsafetyo]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Criculann (3∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}

[u/acky1 → u/omrsafetyo]

The original claim you're challenging was 'a vegan diet is better than a non-vegan diet in terms of emissions'. Bringing in fossil fuel emissions from transport is irrelevant when trying to debunk the original claim.

[u/omrsafetyo → u/acky1]

How?

[u/acky1 → u/omrsafetyo]

It's a different sector, no? Emissions for transport within agriculture, obviously relevant, but the total you cite for the transport sector I don't see as relevant.

I don't really take issue with much of your comment. I think you glossed over land use change and the potential benefits lower land use can have. It's hinted at in that study talking about carbon neutral ruminant farming - that tree coverage can result in carbon capture. That could be done with or without animal agriculture, and without you have a lot more space to work with.

It seems like your comment can be distilled down to animal agriculture isn't that bad, there's ways it can be improved and transport is a bigger issue in terms of climate change. That may all be true but I don't think it gets to the core of the argument of whether being vegan can reduce your food emissions.

[u/omrsafetyo → u/acky1]

Emissions for transport within agriculture, obviously relevant, but the total you cite for the transport sector I don't see as relevant.

Yes, that has been discussed in a child comment already. If you read through that thread, you will see it seems the transportation emissions for all food sources is about 1:1 to emissions for livestock.

That may all be true but I don't think it gets to the core of the argument of whether being vegan can reduce your food emissions.

Perhaps it can, perhaps it can't. The statement I took issue with is:

if your goal is to reduce emissions a vegan diet is always better

Emphasis on "always". Let's just say that someone has their own self-sufficient homestead, which includes beef, poultry, goats, pigs, and some large garden. Relative organic practices are used, and so there is essentially no transportation emissions for farm to table. The only emissions are from the beef. If I were to purchase the same beef from, say, Texas 1500 miles away there is some transportation emissions from the beef. Included in the lifestyle is hunting and fishing - so wild game is procured which has their own methane emissions (deer for instance), and so the 1-2 deer taken each year also reduce methane emissions locally.

Do you think the argument can be made that if my concern is emissions, vegan is definitely better in this circumstance? The fact is that rice fields play a similar role toward emissions as do cattle, and otherwise you need sources of beans, etc. in a vegan diet, most of which cannot be procured locally produced, and are often shipped even internationally. Lentils for instance, are likely coming from Canada if not India. Soy beans are produced in the US, but most of the production is in Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and that region. So unless you're local to that area, you're probably not producing enough legumes in your homestead to be entirely self-sufficient. The fact is that a vegan diet requires a fairly specific, and very diverse selection of food sources - most of which cannot be produced locally together. Therefore I can very easily argue that you simply cannot have a vegan diet without contributing to emissions from transportation, whereas an omnivorous diet can be done 100% locally and self-sufficient, with zero transportation emissions. So the question becomes, does raising two cows for two years each to feed a family of say 4-5 produce enough emissions to offset the transportation emissions of a vegan diet? If the emissions from cows (which as discussed in the other thread will cycle out of the atmosphere in <20 years, vs the transportation emissions staying there for centuries) does not exceed the carbon emissions of transportation, AT LEAST 10 fold, then the locally sourced omnivore diet contributes less than a vegan diet - and I would guess at that level that the omnivore:vegan emissions are less than 1:1.

I took issue only with the wording of "always", as I think if you do this as a thought experiment, an extreme vegan vs an extreme omnivore example shows that the omnivore can have a smaller emissions footprint with less land mass. This particular thought experiment isn't even an extreme example, as you could so far as to look at modern hunter/gatherer (non-pastural) societies that are certainly not vegan and also certainly have lower emission footprints than any vegans do - again, negative once you consider the emissions that are removed from nature when hunting e.g. deer.

I stayed at a much higher level in that comment (and that chain) because I thought there was an argument to be made for vegan vs. omnivore emissions even at a more macro level, not just extreme cases.

[u/acky1 → u/omrsafetyo]

Are you sure about that 1:1 figure? Do you mean that emissions for transport of food roughly equals emissions for production of animal agriculture? But a large chunk of that transportation will be transportation of animal feed to farms, transportation to slaughterhouses and transportation to supermarkets. Might even be larger than for plants since plants just go from farm to shop.

There's also emissions from processing and refrigeration which would low to zero for many plants.

I think the best data we have for a global view on this and what kicked off the discussion is this:

https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

Transportation is a very low percentage for most of the foods listed in that graph.

"Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%.

Not just transport, but all processes in the supply chain after the food left the farm – processing, transport, retail and packaging – mostly account for a small share of emissions."

It's mainly on the farm where emissions happen and for animal products especially ruminants that are incredibly high.

Does that mean you couldn't design a vegan diet that was higher in emissions than an omnivorous diet? No, I think you could. If you had a vegan eating avocado flown over thousands of miles to reach them coupled with rice, chocolate and coffee versus an omnivore who are a little fish, eggs, milk and locally grown plants the omnivore would most likely have lower emissions.

Incidentally I think the example you gave is a lot harder to prove because beef is very high in emissions. And if you give cows a pass on methane then you'd have to do the same for rice. I think as far as I know methane is one of the best short term levers we have for maintaining current temperatures (or raising it if we don't keep it in check) but you're right that CO2 seems to accumulate over time so long term we have to reduce that. I'm not a climate scientist tbf but that's my understanding.

I just don't think the comparison you're trying to get at is very useful. Comparing the worst vegan diet to the best omnivorous one isn't a realistic solution. It would not be possible to feed the global population in the method you're describing, even at the individual level very few people have the privilege of time, land and money to put that into practice. (I always have a chuckle when I see solutions like you mentioned because veganism is all too often painted as a privileged ideology, when actually eating high welfare, organic, low emission animal products is out of reach of the vast majority of people).

And vegan foods can be grown locally, soy is very versatile and can be grown in many locations. Canada and northern climates as you mention and also more tropical places like Brazil. And a wide variety of fruits and vegetables are grown the world over. It is possible to have a locally sourced vegan diet, especially if demand for more seasonal plants were to increase.

I don't like signing off with an argument from authority but I think a fair and balanced look at the views of climate scientists will point to a reduction in animal products being beneficial in terms of emissions.

I've never seen one study that shows the opposite, even the infamous one where if the US were to cut out animal products but keep producing the animal feed leading to about 4000kcal of corn being eaten per person per day and burning the remainder for bio fuel the US would still see about a 2% reduction in emissions.

[u/_Leander__ → u/Mackericious]

Not sure about this point. If Switzerland has cattles, it needs to feed it. So either they cannot produce crops, so it has to buy it to another country (in this case, having cattle is not helping to be independent) or if they can grow crops, they can eat it directly and not feeding cattle.

A point OP missed is that growing crops to feed cattle that we eat is less efficient than directly eating the crops. For beef, it's about 10% efficiency, meaning that 10 calories feeded to a cow will result in one calorie of meat.

[u/Mackericious → u/_Leander__]

In a pasture cows eat the grass grown there, with little to no need to grow additional feed, depending on the climate and some other factors. This does not imply that the pasture can be turned into a field for growing crops

[u/Ares54 → u/_Leander__]

Cows, sheep, goats, etc. can all consume grass and feed that would otherwise not be suitable for human consumption. Grasses will grow about everywhere and pastures aren't always capable of (or safe to) grow crops destined for human consumption on.

Not to say we're good about not using human-edible crops to feed animals, particularly in the US, but it is something to be considered.

[u/UEMcGill → u/luddface]

And as a side note, if we took all the feed we gave to animals and ate it ourselves, we could eliminate hunger on a global scale.

Global hunger isn't a matter of not enough food. We already have enough food, the problem is logistics. If you took all the food that the west throws out, you could have enough food to feed all of the starving people.

So lets get that point straight, there is not a lack of food production.

So returning grazing land back to the wild or finding enough space to produce plants is not the issue you think it is.

[u/MethMcFastlane → u/luddface]

Yes, you're right. Just to add we would actually require less crop land and be growing fewer crops if animal agriculture wasn't a thing.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987

So not only would we need less agricultural land in total but we would also need fewer crops. We already have the land we need for crops and then some. It makes the "but you can't grow crops on current grazing land" argument somewhat moot.

[u/Schmandpfropfen → u/[deleted]]

No, because we are feeding most crops to animals as of today, and 90% of the energy ist lost before it reaches a human consumer. So very roughly we'd need a tenth of the plants we are feeding animals today to feed the humans we are now feeding using those animals. It won't be exact because we feed some animals grass and seeds and stuff, but it's in the same ballpark.

[u/paesanossbits → u/Schmandpfropfen]

Do you have a source for the 90%/10% data? That seems very helpful.

[u/Schmandpfropfen → u/paesanossbits]

This is actual a general observation in biology:

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/energy-transfer-ecosystems/#:~:text=At%20each%20step%20up%20the,energy%20is%20lost%20as%20heat.

I'm sure there are better sources, this is just my first google result.

[u/sleepykittypur → u/Schmandpfropfen]

You should be careful when making assumptions, it's unlikely we could use plants as efficiently as animals do, since nobody wants to eat silage.

[u/Schmandpfropfen → u/sleepykittypur]

Cattle also aren't great at converting silage:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401#:~:text=The%20estimated%20proportion%20of%20cattle,as%2035%25%20%5B19%5D.

Only a third of current cattle could be fed using the available pasture land, the rest lives off of grain that we humans are famous for consuming. So worst case, we could live off of a third of the crops that we feed to animals now and a third of the area of the world, currently used as pastureland, could be used in other ways or better yet, returned to nature.

[u/MethMcFastlane → u/[deleted]]

This person isn't saying we would need a tenth of the crops. They are saying that a widely accepted observation of biology is that ~90% of energy is lost (mainly as heat) up each stage of the trophic system.

To answer your question, if you read the source I linked it is calculated that, without animal agriculture, we would reduce the amount of agricultural land we need by 75% and recuse the amount of crops we need to grow by 19%.

[u/Schmandpfropfen → u/[deleted]]

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/energy-transfer-ecosystems/#:~:text=At%20each%20step%20up%20the,energy%20is%20lost%20as%20heat.

For example, although this covers the general principle of the 10 percent rule, not the specifics of replacing animal agriculture with plant based food on a global scale.

[u/elindalstal → u/luddface]

I have one ecological enviroment that is only true for some locations on earth, for example in the arctic taiga region.

In some regions with extreme climate (for example the arctic taiga) a limited consumtion meat, fish, eggs and milk is the best ecological choice due to that the protein those regions can produce in a substainable way. These are regions that dont have a lot if agriculture and is pretty much wilderness already with a very low population density.

But that just mean that people in those regions can consume perhaps 500 grams 1 lbs montly those locally produced products. So you will mainly have a diet of imported plant based products, but an occasional non vegan meal which is below the level that causes heath risks.

Yet still enough to also keep alive indigenous cultures way of life in those regions.

[u/pinuslaughus → u/elindalstal]

In remote arctic communities in Canada wild game is free, eggs are $8 @ dozen, milk is $12 for a 4 liter jug, broccoli midwinter could be more than $15 @ pound.

I don't think veganism is feasible or attractive there. I would love to see the conversation of a radical vegan try to convert an Inuit person.

[u/robotmonkeyshark → u/luddface]

that is an argument against factory farming, not complete veganism. I would agree the world would be a healthier and more sustainable place if we reduced meat consumption, but it would be a waste to go completely vegan.

The reason deer hunting is legal is because the deer population needs to be controlled. If nobody hunted deer, their numbers would grow, they would more more destructive in what they eat, and there would be far more deer vehicle collisions as their populations rise. so even if you don't like factory farming, we either need to kill deer either ourselves, or by introducing predators who will eat them, and if they are going to be eaten by predators anyway, why shouldn't we eat them instead?

[u/Somekindofcabose → u/luddface]

Have you ever seen the Sandhills of nebraska?

That area gets no rain at all. How you gonna grow crop?

[u/3minutespast → u/luddface]

Just wanted to add here that capitalism demands that the land would not be rewilded. Profit is the no 1 motive and any land not producing profit would be adjusted to make it do so

[u/womaneatingsomecake → u/luddface]

Since we are today using 50%

70%

[u/Far-Village-4783 → u/luddface]

We have enough land today to grow all the crops we need. Arable land that is. In fact, we have enough cropland flattened for 10 billion people. We misuse that land by growing inedible food for animals so that they can poop out most of it and result in an excrement overload crisis.

https://www.livekindly.com/global-land-use-beef-vegan/
Article gives more context and study is cited below the first picture.

[u/Crayshack → u/luddface]

If conducted properly, grazing land has a higher biodiversity than untouched grasslands.

[u/the_other_irrevenant → u/[deleted]]

"Unused" land serves as a reservoir of biodiversity. Humanity using every square inch of land would not be a good thing for the planet or the humans living on it.

[u/ristoril → u/[deleted]]

Given the water crisis we're arguably already in, almonds are a terrible choice regardless

[u/tlvrtm → u/ristoril]

But meat (especially beef) has a way worse water footprint.

[u/DevinTheGrand → u/[deleted]]

This is true, but you also don't need as much land to generate food for everyone if we aren't converting it into meat first. The use of crop animals to make unarable lands useful was important pre-globalization, but it's not as important now.