Environmental vegetarianism

Environmental vegetarianism is the practice of vegetarianism or veganism based on the indications that animal production, particularly by intensive agriculture, is environmentally unsustainable. The primary environmental concerns with animal products are pollution and the use of resources such as fossil fuels, water, and land.

Environmental impact of meat production

Main article: Environmental impact of meat production

The predictable increase in animal product proportions on the plates of people living in developing countries will bring new challenges to global agriculture.

Interior of a hog confinement barn or piggery

Industrial monoculture is harvesting large quantities of a single food species, such as maize, or cattle. Monoculture is commonly practiced in industrial agriculture, which is more environmentally damaging than sustainable farming practices such as organic farming, permaculture, arable, pastoral, and rain-fed agriculture . According to a 2006 Food and Agriculture Organization report, industrialized agriculture contributes on a “massive scale” to climate change, air pollution, land degradation, energy use, deforestation, and biodiversity decline .

Industrialized agriculture damages fresh air through greenhouse gas emissions and overuse of fossil fuels. According to Livestock’s Long Shadow, an FAO report, the meat industry contributes about 18 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions . Furthermore, Carbon Dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas. Methane has about 21 times more GWP (GWP) than Carbon Dioxide and Nitrous Oxide has 296 times the GWP of CO₂ .. The livestock industry is a major contributor of these gases through fossil fuel use. In America, more than one-third of the fossil fuels produced are used to raise animals for food . The result is higher temperatures (0.8 °C (33.4 °F) in the last century), and fuel poverty .

Another agricultural effect is on land degradation. More than half the world's crops are used to feed animals.. Further, perennial crops used to feed humans absorb five to seven times more runoff from storms than animal feed crops . With 30 percent of the earth's land devoted to raising livestock , a major cutback is needed to keep up with growing population. A 2010 UN report explained that Western dietary preferences for meat would be unsustainable as the world population rose to the forecasted 9.1 billion by 2050. Demand for meat is expected to double by this date; meat consumption is steadily rising in countries such as China that once followed more sustainable, vegetable-based diets.

Animals fed on grain need much more water than grain crops. In tracking food animal production from the feed through to the dinner table, the inefficiencies of meat, milk and egg production range from a 4:1 energy input to protein output ratio up to 54:1. The result is that producing animal-based food is typically much less efficient than the direct harvesting of grains, vegetables, legumes, seeds and fruits for human consumption. A person existing chiefly on animal protein requires 10 times more land to provide adequate food than someone living on vegetable sources of protein.^{[citation needed]} The environmental impacts of animal production vary with the method of production. A grazing-based production can limit soil erosion and also allow farmers to control pest problems with less pesticides through rotating crops with grass. In arid areas, however, it may catalyze a desertification process.^{[citation needed]}

The FAO initiative concluded that "the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global."

Related economic and social considerations

"The world must create five billion vegans in the next several decades, or triple its total farm output without using more land."
Dennis Avery, Director of the Centre for Global Food Issues

Environmental vegetarianism can be compared with economic vegetarianism. An economic vegetarian is someone who practices vegetarianism either out of necessity or because of a conscious simple living strategy. Such a person may base this belief on a philosophical viewpoint, such as the belief that the consumption of meat is economically unsound or that vegetarianism will help improve public health and curb starvation. According to the Worldwatch Institute, "massive reductions in meat consumption in industrial nations will ease the health care burden while improving public health; declining livestock herds will take pressure off rangelands and grainlands, allowing the agricultural resource base to rejuvenate. As populations grow, lowering meat consumption worldwide will allow more efficient use of declining per capita land and water resources, while at the same time making grain more affordable to the world's chronically hungry."

Environmental vegetarians call for a reduction of first world consumption of meat, especially in the US. According to the United Nations Population Fund "Each U.S. citizen consumes an average of 260 lbs. of meat per year, the world's highest rate. That is about 1.5 times the industrial world average, three times the East Asian average, and 40 times the average in Bangladesh." In addition, "the ecological footprint of an average person in a high-income country is about six times bigger than that of someone in a low-income country, and many more times bigger than in the least-developed countries."

The World Health Organization calls malnutrition "the silent emergency", and says it is a factor in at least half of the 10.4 million child deaths which occur every year. Cornell scientists have advised that the U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, although they distinguish "grain-fed meat production from pasture-raised livestock, calling cattle-grazing a more reasonable use of marginal land."

Some argue that the adoption of a lacto-ovo vegetarian or entirely plant-based vegan diet is best, but may not be totally necessary, because even modest reductions in meat consumption in industrialized societies would substantially reduce the burden on our natural resources. "One personal act that can have a profound impact on these issues is reducing meat consumption. To produce 1 pound of feedlot beef requires about 2,400 gallons of water and 7 pounds of grain (42). Considering that the average American consumes 97 pounds of beef (and 273 pounds of meat in all) each year, even modest reductions in meat consumption in such a culture would substantially reduce the burden on our natural resources."

A 2010 report from United Nations Environment Program's (UNEP) International Panel of Sustainable Resource Management, states that global shift towards a vegan diet is critical for mitigating global issues of hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change. The panel declared: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth and increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

Criticism

A widely adopted vegetarian diet, in and of itself, may not be enough to make the US food system sustainable, unless greener agricultural practices, such as the adoption of renewable energy, are also implemented. The support of alternative farming practices (e.g. well husbanded organic farming, permaculture, and rotational grazing) and the avoidance of certain plant commodities such as rice, also have a beneficial impact on environmental health and sustainable agriculture, though this would have little effect on animal welfare and rights. According to Cornell scientists, "the heavy dependence on fossil energy suggests that the US food system, whether meat-based or plant-based, is not sustainable." but they also mention that: "lactoovovegetarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet. "

Some environmental activists claim that adopting a vegetarian diet may be a way of focusing on personal actions and righteous gestures rather than systemic change. Dave Riley, an Australian environmentalist states that "being meatless and guiltless seems seductively simple while environmental destruction rages around us," noting that animals can contribute to the food chain. "For instance, yams, which keep poorly, are stored inside pigs, and today's rotting apples attracting fruit flies are tomorrow's bacon,".

Bill Mollison has inconsistently argued in his Permaculture Design Course that vegetarianism exacerbates soil erosion. This is because removing a plant from a field removes all the nutrients it obtained from the soil, while removing an animal leaves the field intact. However, as feeding cattle requires much more plants to be removed from a field than direct harvesting for human consumption, this argument holds no ground. Furthermore, cattle are a known cause for soil erosion through trampling of the ground and overgrazing. Robert Hart has also developed forest gardening, which has since been adopted as a common permaculture design element, as a sustainable plant-based food production system.

See also

• Economic vegetarianism
• Entomophagy (another environmental approach for obtaining food)
• Environmentalism
• Ethics of vegetarianism
• In vitro meat
• Livestock's Long Shadow
• Stock-free agriculture
• Sustainable agriculture
• Sustainable food system
• Vegan organic gardening

External links

• Eco-Eating: Eating as if the Earth Matters (it does!) Comprehensive source with many categories and links.
• Meat Eating and Global Warming a list of articles making the vital connection between meat and climate change
• Ecological footprint calculator Two fields are dietary considerations.
• Dr. Ruth Fairchild of the UWIC's report on veganism and CO₂-emissions
• The Vegetarian Society UK - information portal
• EarthSave
• Vegan Society - Environment