Philosophical Vegan Forum

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WNtpjZsfBlQ

To what extent are her claims accurate? And if capitalism is responsible, how would the matter be resolved?

I have no time to watch the video, but yes, it's fallacious to assume that the food given to animals would still be produced if it was not needed and that if for some reason it was still being produced it would be redirected to the third world. There is no financial incentive to do so, thus the production of grain would simply decline.

Going vegan can only solve world hunger if the governments of the world collectively decide to buy the excess grain production and distribute it in the third world.

garrethdsouza wrote:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WNtpjZsfBlQ

To what extent are her claims accurate? And if capitalism is responsible, how would the matter be resolved?

Considering that she herself is a vegan, I see no reason why she would be dishonest. Assuming that this is the case, I'd say the case she made was very good. As of how to resolve this issue, I can't be certain. The capitalist, socialist, communist trichotomy presents us with three double edged swords. Capitalism tends to be slightly superior, especially if moderated by socialism, but I still see no solution to this problem which would not be idealistic and silly.

garrethdsouza wrote:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WNtpjZsfBlQ

To what extent are her claims accurate? And if capitalism is responsible, how would the matter be resolved?

Even if capitalism is the root cause of the problem, I dont see how global veganism wouldn't be hugely beneficial to the poor and starving people of the world. As I see it, meat consumption just exacerbates existing economic inequalities

In a vegan world
- grains would be cheaper
- more land would be available, and at a lower cost
- less deadly diseases would spread
- rich nations would waste less money on healthcare (maybe incentivising more foreign aid)
- fewer environmental problems would exist (these are hard to run away from when you have no money)

Would veganism end world hunger? Maybe not. Would it make things a lot better for the poorest people on Earth? Yes

Western nations like the U.S. subsidize grain production, and already give substantial foreign aid to poor countries (including grain). It's not capitalism, it's politics.

The grain would still be grown, due to the politics of subsidization. The government would just buy it (or the growing demand for biofuel would; probably the government would regulate to increase biofuel demand).

It's not as clear whether much if any of this grain would be sent to third world countries directly, or if it would be turned into ethanol, and then the high protein by products of production (the yeast and other insolubles) would be sent to the third world as a food source instead of being used to feed animals (as they currently are).

One thing is pretty clear; the surplus in grain would go a long way to ending dependency on foreign oil, and probably a long way to stabilizing the Middle East.

And with growing population, and pending disaster from climate change, the aid in terms of food required from rich Western countries will increase drastically.
If we don't need this land and food now, we will very soon need it very much.

Waste is a serious issue, and she's right that we already have enough food to feed them. This is a problem of consumers, infrastructure, and political will. But waste will not likely be enough to feed the world's populations as many of our world food supplies start to collapse and population continues to grow.

It's less of a *now* issue, and more of a pending issue.

I'm pretty positive about the video and certainly agree with her main thesis that veganism isn't going to end world hunger.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Western nations like the U.S. subsidize grain production, and already give substantial foreign aid to poor countries (including grain).

What exactly are you trying to say when stating that the U.S. is subsidizing grain production? How exactly is subsidizing helping poor countries? At least the possibility for poor countries being competitive with western agriculture and thereby making some profit can be excluded (if it wasn't already, since agriculture knowledge on farming more effectively is barely shared).

Foreign aid is by no means substantial, that's just delusional. If you actually calculate the amount of foreign aid through (avarage of $46 billion/year for the last 50 years), it's a real insignificant amount for the affluent nations. That's only 0.3% of total income.

Giving U.S. as an example is even worse, because not only are the percentages of foreign aid goverment spending very low (relative to other countries, and in terms of percentage), it's also the case that a big percentage of what they are calling 'foreign aid' consists out of military aid being politically motivated. Only a tiny percentage is targeted at the extreme poor. This is less so in some European countries, in which foreign aid is more targeted at those who need it the most.

brimstoneSalad wrote:It's not capitalism, it's politics.

I agree it's more complicated than just pointing to capitalism, but it is good to recognize that we do live under capitalism and the current political reality is that it's quite in favor of economic liberalization. Under these conditions, it's very unlikely that world honger will be resolved when everybody went vegan. Some alternatives to capitalism might resolve this issue without the need of politics, in which case she would be somewhat correct. But however you bend it, it's true that it's ultimately political change that can resolve world honger (I actually think she was arguing for that), even though I doubt that will happen any time soon.

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The whole idea of continuously sending over food packages that would otherwise go to livestock is of course ridiculous anyway. This is a highly ineffective way of fighting world hunger (or poverty in general). Supporting local farmers and sharing better farming methods (among lots of other things) is much more productive. But it's not like those people that are now in the animal agriculture business are the ones that are going to finance it.

Volenta wrote: What exactly are you trying to say when stating that the U.S. is subsidizing grain production? How exactly is subsidizing helping poor countries?

Due to political reasons, the US government subsidizes grain production. That's not about to stop due to falling demand.
Maybe it should stop, and just let the free market do its job and help the developing world by giving the people work, but unfortunately that doesn't look politically realistic. We're talking about another thing that is "too big to fail" here. And in this sense, we're also talking about HUGE voting blocks, in addition to political lobbying from companies with interest in grain.

Of course, as a consequence, meat is cheaper, and a lot of other countries are unable to match the US grain prices and suffer on the market. Mexico being a good example.

"Giving with one hand, and taking with the other". It's an issue, but it's not necessarily one that people going vegan would do anything about.

Volenta wrote: Foreign aid is by no means substantial, that's just delusional. If you actually calculate the amount of foreign aid through (avarage of $46 billion/year for the last 50 years), it's a real insignificant amount for the affluent nations. That's only 0.3% of total income.

It's less than one percent of the federal budget. Is it small? Yes. But it's not very expensive to feed people. If the world went vegan, it would be even cheaper due to the price drop in feed.

Do you think they're limited by money more, political will, or the receiving end (like African countries refusing GM corn because they think it will give them AIDS)?

In either case, all of that subsidized corn has to go somewhere.
The US is subsidizing enough in dollars (for local agriculture) to feed about two billion people. Only about a billion are actually malnourished, and it would cost even less to just top off their diets (since most are not eating literally nothing at all).

With meat production, the vast majority of that corn just disappears into burgers and land fills.
Without it, market prices might fall even more, and the government would be forced to increase subsidization to agriculture, and offload that corn into ethanol.

Ethanol production yields yeast protein in substantial amounts as a co-product, which is currently consumed as a feed additive. With no more meat and dairy, where does that stuff go?
Well, we might find a use for it other than feeding people. Maybe we'll figure out how to manufacture something out of it; that seems unlikely, though.

No matter how you slice it, unless you suspect it's politically possible for the government to just let farms shut down (and that farmers and agribiz won't strong arm the federal government to up subsidies instead), there's excess production that has to go somewhere. If it's not being wasted on meat, a very likely place for it to go is the developing world (basically, making the government buy it all).
The market price for ethanol co-product yeast protein would plummet, and it would be a very efficient food source.

Volenta wrote: This is less so in some European countries, in which foreign aid is more targeted at those who need it the most.

These countries might be able to make a bigger dent. Perhaps the U.S. would politely "ask" Europe to buy all of its surplus protein.

Volenta wrote: Under these conditions, it's very unlikely that world honger will be resolved when everybody went vegan.

There are other issues at hand, like warlords controlling food supplies, but that isn't relevant everywhere.
The co-products of U.S. biofuel production may be enough to feed the world. If we don't find a way to turn it into plastic junk instead. Protein is hard to convert into anything aside from animal biomass, as far as I understand.

Volenta wrote: The whole idea of continuously sending over food packages that would otherwise go to livestock is of course ridiculous anyway. This is a highly ineffective way of fighting world hunger (or poverty in general). Supporting local farmers and sharing better farming methods (among lots of other things) is much more productive.

This is true, but it may just end up being a less realistic prospect due to the idiocy of the political process.

But let's assume that when everybody went vegan, agricultural subsidies didn't take over, and big agribusiness lost its grip on government somehow; wouldn't that end world hunger too, by killing big agribusiness' subsidies and giving people in poor countries much needed agricultural jobs?
Seems like going vegan is a big part of solving world hunger either way it turns out.