Can the world go Vegan?

[Piri]

This is a quite old article but I couldn't find threat about this, so maybe this haven't been discussed here. I think the author has some good arguments against veganism. https://gpfarmblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/can-the-world-go-vegan-a-studied-viewpoint-re/comment-page-1/#comment-320

About arable land:

Let us talk about the need for “less farmland”.

There is remarkably very little arable farmland in the world, and the number of arable farms that would be required to feed the population of earth is significant.

This is where I often am confronted with the argument that it is “not true, because a Vegan diet is more efficient you would only need about 1/1000th of the land”.

Which, unfortunately, is not a true statement of fact, but a belief.

Christian Peters informs us that “a person following a low-fat vegetarian diet, for example, will need less than half (0.44) an acre per person per year to produce their food”

“Surprisingly, however, a vegetarian diet is not necessarily the most efficient in terms of land use” he continues

The reason is simple – fruits, vegetables and grains must be grown on high-quality arable cropland. Livestock based foods (such as meat and dairy products from ruminant animals) are supported by lower quality, and far more widely available, lands that are only capable of supporting pastures.

About rotation of nutrients:

The symbiosis is a combination of soil, grasses, and animal rotation. Healthy topsoil provides for healthy plants whom feed healthy animals which in turn supply nutrients to the soil to remain in a healthy cycle. This cycle offers a natural and sustainable continuation.

So, what are vegan solutions to these issues? Most of the agricultural land in the world can't be used to grow crops which means that the most efficient way to use that land is to use it as pasture. Secondly, our agricultural system have been based traditionally to cattle's manure. That's the only sustainable way because we're going to deplete Earth's phosphorus reserves in a few decades.

[brimstoneSalad]

Hi Piri, welcome, you should post an intro.

About the arguments you posted:

There is remarkably very little arable farmland in the world,

This is untrue. There is plenty of farmland. Agricultural productivity increased in the green revolution, and as long as population stays on track to diminished growth in the next few decades, and global warming doesn't mess up our weather patterns, we'll be quite fine (particularly with the help of GMO technology, and if meat consumption doesn't keep increasing as it has been).

Global warming is a serious threat, though, to food security.

and the number of arable farms that would be required to feed the population of earth is significant.

What does that even mean? Yes, it requires a significant amount of land. So? We have enough land.

This is where I often am confronted with the argument that it is “not true, because a Vegan diet is more efficient you would only need about 1/1000th of the land”.

This is a terrible straw man, and demonstrates to me that the writer of the article is not taking the issue seriously, and has researched neither agriculture nor the arguments made for veganism.
Efficiency difference is around 10%, sometimes a bit less for protein per hectare. This can be easily shown through FCR and industry standards for feed.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_protein_per_unit_area_of_land

Which, unfortunately, is not a true statement of fact, but a belief.

No, it's a strawman argument. The argument that vegan diets (based on legumes and grains) are more efficient is an uncontroversial fact.
Vegan diets based on fruit and lettuce are not particularly sustainable. Most vegan diets are based on grains; raw foodists are abnormal, and they should be well advised to eat more sustainably.

Christian Peters informs us that “a person following a low-fat vegetarian diet, for example, will need less than half (0.44) an acre per person per year to produce their food”

There's no reason to follow a low-fat diet. Oil seeds which are rich in unsaturated fats are a healthy and environmentally sustainable food source. Particularly flax.

The reason is simple – fruits, vegetables and grains must be grown on high-quality arable cropland. Livestock based foods (such as meat and dairy products from ruminant animals) are supported by lower quality, and far more widely available, lands that are only capable of supporting pastures.

1. We have plenty of "high quality" arable cropland. We are not struggling to find land to grow food on, and as a general trend our use of land is decreasing to produce the same amount of food due to modern methods. Despite a growing population, we need less land every year. He's a chart of land use in the states: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/agricultural-land-sq-km-wb-data.html

landusechart.jpg

So, it's really not an issue that we have to carefully maximize our use of land. And even if it were:

2. A significant portion of that land is being used to grow food for animals. Chickens, pigs, AND cattle. Only ruminant animals are grazed as a meaningful source of food, but even they are finished with soy and corn based feeds, and often over wintered on them too. If you actually look up the amount of time they spend in feed lots to be finished and what they eat, you'll see it's still enormous (more than the nutrient value the dead cow yields). Switching from grazed then finished meats to legume proteins will reduce farmland use.
You can only make this argument for 100% grass-fed meat, but that's a rare kind of meat in the developed world, and it's a poor argument because we are not hurting for more farmland that we need to maximize these resources, and using these resources as we are is actually hurting us and the environment:

3. These lands would be better off without being grazed so intensively. Even grass fed beef is bad for the environment, both the ecosystem and the world as a whole through greenhouse gas production.
See this article, which tackles the absurd claims of beef advocates that it improves the environment: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2014/aug/04/eat-more-meat-and-save-the-world-the-latest-implausible-farming-miracle
These lands should be allowed to rest and grow back (shrubs and trees) and become carbon sinks again, instead of being managed and intensively grazed.

The symbiosis is a combination of soil, grasses, and animal rotation. Healthy topsoil provides for healthy plants whom feed healthy animals which in turn supply nutrients to the soil to remain in a healthy cycle. This cycle offers a natural and sustainable continuation.

That's nonsense. Pure pseudoscience. Plants do not need animals to grow and build the soil. As explained in the Guardian article I linked to above, they do it better without being trampled and eaten all of the time. Areas that can not be easily farmed for human food should be allowed to "overgrow" so they can capture carbon and help mitigate global warming; that's what's going to help ensure food security, not making the only serious threat worse by expanding animal agriculture.

So, what are vegan solutions to these issues?

You're asking us to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Not sure what to say. We aren't starving for lack of viable farmland.
There are people in the undeveloped world who have to herd goats because they don't have the knowledge to farm, or don't live in good areas for that. In no way are they benefiting the environment, though. City living is much more sustainable. We need to help these people modernize, is all.

Most of the agricultural land in the world can't be used to grow crops which means that the most efficient way to use that land is to use it as pasture.

That doesn't make it efficient, no. We do not need to use this land. We have plenty of land, and we already feed our animals more calories in food we grow from grains than they yield when slaughtered. The world going vegan would increase the availability of arable land even more (not that we need more), due to the end of feeds and finishing. More importantly it would mitigate global warming, which is actually a real threat to food security.

Secondly, our agricultural system have been based traditionally to cattle's manure.

There's no reason we need manure. Green manure (like clover) is perfectly viable for nitrogen, and for phosphorous we can start recovering resources from sewage better (this is already being done).
We should strive to move away from chemical fertilizers due to the carbon footprint, but otherwise they're fine, and they're better than using manure.

That's the only sustainable way because we're going to deplete Earth's phosphorus reserves in a few decades.

That's highly speculative at best (peak phosphorus), and the idea that manure will help is complete nonsense.

1. Peak phosphorus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus

In 2012, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that phosphorus reserves worldwide are 71 billion tons, while world mining production in 2011 was 0.19 billion tons[8] and this has been taken to mean that there were enough reserves to last for at least 370 years and possibly a lot longer.[9]

Most estimates predict several hundred years of supply. And you have to understand the concept of 'reserves' in this context is economic.

"Reserves" refer to the amount assumed recoverable at current market prices and "resources" mean total estimated amounts in the Earth's crust.[9] Phosphorus comprises 0.1% by mass of the average rock[13] (while, for perspective, its typical concentration in vegetation is 0.03% to 0.2%),[14] and consequently there are quadrillions of tons of phosphorus in Earth's 3 * 1019 ton crust,[15] albeit at predominantly lower concentration than the deposits counted as reserves from being inventoried and cheaper to extract.

The bottom line is that, in a couple hundred years, the price will probably increase because we will have to start using rock with a little lower concentration. The price will not rise above the cost of recovery from sewage, though; at worst it will stimulate a new industry.
The reason we don't recover more from sewage now is because it's a little more expensive than just using more rock. Phosphorus never gets used up, it's an element, we just need to control where it goes better to cycle it (but we only need to worry about this as we actually start to run out of reserves).

The same issue exists with claims of peak Uranium. The oceans are full of it; we will never run out (particularly with breeder reactors). The question is only the cost of production.

2. Cows do not magically produce phosphorus in their bodies. They only poop out what they eat. it's nonsense that raising more cows for manure helps this issue. It's better not to flush it in the ocean if the cows are being fed, but in no way is it better to have more cows. It does nothing to solve the issue. Phosphorus only moves from place to place; from fields, to plants, to (sometimes) cows, to humans, to the sewer. We need to catch it before its final destination, it doesn't help to insert more cows into the equation if the humans eating the cows are still flushing their own excrement into the ocean.

It might be smart to try to move toward veganic fertilizers in the next couple centuries, and develop new extraction and preservation technologies for phosphorus. This isn't really an issue for today, where our chief concern should be global warming (for that it's smart to move to veganic too due to energy use, but foremost we have to stop animal agriculture).

[Piri]

Thanks for your great answer!

I think you might have a little optimistic view about amount of potential arable land. Here's another citation from blog post I linked in my first post:

So, based on the last set of global census data (2008) we would require 3,068,444,911 acres of arable land. At that time, the global population was 6 billion and if a global one-child programme had been enacted, the ~3,212,369,959 of arable land that was globally available may very well have sufficed.

Not including the figures for degraded land, earth is currently losing, due to a range of factors, arable land at the conservative rate of 1% a year. Thus, a more accurate current figure is far closer to that of 3,024,382,549 acres.

However … we now have a global population that has already crossed the 7,000,000,000 mark, thus the number of arable acres required is far closer to 3,080,000,000 – or put another way, earth now has a shortfall of ~55,617,451 acres … and rising. In short, we have passed “peak land” and our growing population requires far more arable land than we currently have available to provide the nutrition required for all of those people in a vegan form.

As iterated, livestock are supported by lower quality (but far more widely available) land that can support pasture and hay. Thus, any claim that presumes we could simply remove the livestock and start growing vegetable or crop based foods on the existing farm land is flawed.

Current land use is an issue. Arable land must be saved – and not from livestock producers. A balance must be struck with conservation requirements as well. Further, mining and industrial expansion needs to be re-valued in light of the land availability.

Then there is urban expansion as well. Just as not all farmland is identical, urban developers prefer the arable lands that are easier to carve up and offer greener lawns than the arid, hilly or clay based lands that pastoralists utilise. But that is the topic of another debate.

Of course, your second point is still solid. But maybe specifically ruminant animals might have a significant role in future food production?

According to WWF arable land is widely destroyed (http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/impacts/soil_erosion/):

Land degradation stretches to about 30 % of the total global land area.6

The problem persists, with a reported loss rate of about 10 million hectares per year.

In reality, the situation may be much more worrying. Over the last 5 decades, increases in agricultural productivity have made it possible to produce more crops on the same amount of land.

But the problem is that because agricultural land is often degraded and almost useless, producers keep on moving to more productive land. Globally, the land used and abandoned in the last 50 years may be equal to the amount of land used today.3

So, what are your thoughts about that?

[brimstoneSalad]

I think you might have a little optimistic view about amount of potential arable land. Here's another citation from blog post I linked in my first post:

The blog post is complete bullshit; he obviously made no attempt at calculation or even looking at food production today. The claim that we can't support the population on vegan food is nonsense if you look at just our current production of wheat, soybeans, corn, and rapeseed (canola), then calculate out the calories.

Wheat: 752.69 million metric tons. 100g = 339 calories. Total: 339 * (752.69 million metric tons/ 100g) / 365 / 7 billion = 998 calories
http://www.globalwheatproduction.com/
Soybeans: 337.85 million metric tons. 100g = 446 calories. Total: 446 * (337.85 million metric tons/100g) / 365 / 7 billion = 589 calories
http://www.globalsoybeanproduction.com/
Corn: 1037.93 million metric tons. 100g = 106 calories (on the cob). Total: 106 * (1037.93 million metric tons/100g) / 365/ 7 billion = 430 calories
http://www.globalsoybeanproduction.com/
Rapeseed (canola): 67.85 million metric tons/ 100g = 884 calories. Total: 884 * (67.85 million metric tons/100g)/ 365 /7 billion = 234 calories
http://www.globalrapeseedproduction.com/

I had to estimate the calories (I guessed the measure was corn on cob for yield, but I'm not sure. Soybean may be in shell, not sure).
But that's well over 2k calories per person already. And that's not considering sunflower, rice, potatoes, and many many other crops.

We probably already produce plenty of food for the population of the Earth to eat vegan several times over.

Yes, we are "losing" arable land all of the time, but that's not a problem. It's like saying a bachelor is 'losing' clean dishes as they pile up in the sink dirty. It's just cheaper and easier to leave it fallow and move on to other land. When arable land starts to run out due to those practices in some regions, farmers will just manage their land better and the practice will stop, we know how to restore land... much as the bachelor starts to grudgingly wash the one bowl and fork he has left after everything else is dirty. His not having done it before doesn't mean he didn't know how, he was just too lazy while there were still clean ones to use.

Nothing in using livestock helps with that. It actually makes the problem worse, since clearing land for grazing is a major cause of desertification and deterioration of the land locally and regionally.

There are a few components that make land arable, and if you want to understand this better I think you need to do the research that blogger did not, and understand what soil is and what plants really need. They need sunlight, adequate temperature, they need water (but not too much), they need certain nutrients (fixed nitrogen, minerals), and they need a substrate their roots can attach to and that doesn't promote rot or suffocate the roots (inadequate drainage is an issue in some areas). They also need a decent electrolyte balance. If you want to farm on a larger scale, you also have to remove rocks, and sometimes level the land. It may also be helpful to learn about hydroponics, which has wonderful yields.

Anyway, it's really a technologically trivial issue to improve soil. It's a matter of better farming practices. Desertification less so (for that you have to let trees go back and hope your weather patterns return), but that's largely due to grazing and climate change (which is also due in a significant part to cows).

Of course, your second point is still solid. But maybe specifically ruminant animals might have a significant role in future food production?

Did you miss my point about global warming? That's the real threat here. In trying to solve one non-issue like that, you'd make the actual problem worse.

But let's imagine there is actually an issue with arable land that isn't caused by desertification and isn't exacerbated by grazing and ruminant methane emissions, and that can't be easily fixed (as is usually the case in reality through amending the soil with compost and rock dusts):

Cows aren't the only thing that can harvest grass or make use of straw.
These plants can not be digested on their own by humans, but when juiced the most important part can be (they yield a protein and nutrient rich liquid), and then the cellulose can be used to grow mushrooms or as feedstock for yeast or bacterial bioreactors to produce ethanol and more edible protein.

This isn't science fiction, all of these technologies exist and could be applied if it were for some reason necessary to utilize this land for food production. It's accessible to primitive people with medieval technology too; not so much the ethanol, but the straw mushrooms and grinding/pressing juice from grass with stone mills.

Over the last 5 decades, increases in agricultural productivity have made it possible to produce more crops on the same amount of land.

Which is my point. Which crops have improved? Plants. And they will continue to do so for a while yet. We have not yet reached maximum efficiency. We will continue to use less land, and we should really just let most farms and grazing land go wild so they can trap carbon.

But the problem is that because agricultural land is often degraded and almost useless, producers keep on moving to more productive land. Globally, the land used and abandoned in the last 50 years may be equal to the amount of land used today.3

This is not a problem for human food security. I suspect the WWF is primarily concerned with species preservation and habitat. They don't like it when farmers move into wild land instead of keeping up their own soil, and I don't blame them (I would rather farmers maintained land too), but if they're presenting this as a threat to human food security they are not being honest.

So, what are your thoughts about that?

That the WWF needs to be more transparent about its motivations and more honest about what the nature of the actual problem is. And that blogger is not worth reading or listening to, because he's clearly making stuff up to suit is agenda without an iota of objective research or attempt at fact checking.