bobdebouwer wrote:
-Some land can simply not be used for crops,
That's incorrect. Plants need water, sunlight, nutrients, and depending on the species, certain temperature ranges. That goes for plants that grazing animals eat, or those humans do. It's all about photosynthesis and sugar production.
You can ALWAYS feed more humans with the plants grown on land than with dead animals fed with the plants grown on that land. It's simple thermodynamics. It's just a question of the knowledge and will to grow crops on that land.
The only time this is remotely true is for primitive cultures who don't have the knowledge to engage in agriculture.
Today, we can build greenhouses and engage in highly efficient hydroponics on any soil, because it doesn't require soil.
And as to soil (if you insist on doing it the old fashioned way): Do you know why many areas lack good topsoil? It's because of intensive grazing which destroys the soil and causes desertification. Proper farming methods (without grazing) can restore topsoil, or build it up where there was none, and make once barren areas suitable for agriculture again.
In order to perform
mechanized agriculture, a field needs to be level and without too many large stones, but slopes can be terraced and large stones can be removed. Even dry areas can be irrigated if the groundwater is not salty, and if the groundwater is salty, drought tolerant plants can be grown instead.
You will never yield more calories from land by grazing and killing animals compared to plants. Worst case, you can even harvest grass for human consumption. The grass must be juiced (yielding high protein and nutrient liquid), and then the cellulose can be used as feed stock for microbes which are profoundly efficient at converting it into SCP (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-cell_protein ), or mycoculture.
The issue is a gap in knowledge, not ability.
You may not personally favor the plants that grow easily on a certain piece of land, but that doesn't mean it can't be farmed, or that the output is not sustainable and nutritious. Even minor infrastructure investment can yield massive dividends in terms of increased agricultural output.
bobdebouwer wrote:
but animals could roam freely.
And in doing so, destroy the topsoil and prevent that land from ever being farmed, while emitting massive amounts of greenhouse gases and destroying the rest of the planet in the process. And, of course, due to extensive animal-human contact and the wild environments, introduce new deadly diseases into the human population.
I don't fault primitive peoples for not having the knowledge to engage in legitimately sustainable agriculture, but animal agriculture is not that. You can't fight thermodynamics.
bobdebouwer wrote:
Iceland for example needs to use a lot of energy to produce crops, or they have to import it.
Ocean freight is incredibly efficient, particularly for staples, and it's getting better as we're starting to explore wind-power again. We need to get better at moving things from place to place, not be closed minded and shut down global commerce.
Freight is often more efficient than trying to grow things locally with non-ideal weather, and it's definitely more efficient than animal agriculture, which produces about as much or even more greenhouse gas than the entirety of transportation.
There's nothing inherently unsustainable about importing food by ocean. Trucks on roads are a bigger problem, air freight is the most problematic. Either way, "local" food is some kind of self congratulatory nonsense; it doesn't map to the reality of embodied energy and carbon footprint. Transport is a drop in the bucket. Animal agriculture is the bucket.
bobdebouwer wrote:
-A vegan-only agriculture system would probably run into problems with recycling nutrients and keeping animals for only that reason would be very expensive to the farmer.
That's nonsense. Look into veganic agriculture. Compost is a much more efficient way to recycle nutrients than using manure, and traditional systems like crop rotation and co-planting are perfectly viable solutions without industrial input. That doesn't mean industrial input is bad or wrong. It requires power, but that can be supplied by green power sources (unlike animals).
bobdebouwer wrote:
-Oysters are sustainable,
If rope grown. Correct, I covered this.
bobdebouwer wrote:
honey can be sustainable,
You need to do more research if you think bees are magical creatures that produce work from nothing.
Bees have to eat. When the beekeper harvests honey, he or she has to replace it with sugar syrup, which was farmed. And because the bees no longer have a store of food, they have to be fed on the off season too.
Bees, like cows, are being fed on agricultural output. It's not a magical source of energy.
If you want something sweet, stevia is probably the most sustainable; it's something you can grow in your back yard or at a window, and it only takes a tiny bit. Next to that, probably artificial sweeteners which are chemically more potent than sugar. Then sugar, Maple syrup, and other plant outputs. Then honey.
Let the bees keep their honey. They work hard pollinating our crops, and there's nothing sustainable about taking all of their honey only to replace it with sugar. This is not a source of novel calories.
bobdebouwer wrote:eating eggs from my backyard chickens is as far as I know better than eating a veggie burger that was imported from Brazil and eating lots of tropical fruit.
It depends on what you feed the chickens. If they walk around eating only insects from your garden (which is great as natural pest control), and you do not supplement them by feeding them grains or other foods, then probably yes.
Otherwise, no. The thermodynamics doesn't work out that way. Veggie burgers are made from beans and grains, and require very little energy input. Even if they came from Brazil (I know of no veggie burgers made in Brazil, though).
You're trying to exaggerate to make some kind of point, but the point is that your claims don't match up to the reality that we live in.
I don't know what tropical fruit has to do with anything. Eggs are a protein source, veggie burgers are a protein source, fine. Tropical fruit is not a protein source, and I do not recommend diets based on it (that's not even healthy). People probably aren't replacing eggs in their diets with tropical fruit, and if they are they're doing it wrong.
A more accurate replacement is eggs being replaced by Tofu in a tofu scramble.
bobdebouwer wrote:-Hunting evasive species that harm the environment seems OK to me (small scale hunting in general actually, but this can't be a solution for the world).
You mean "invasive", I think.
I've talked about this before elsewhere, it's called an invasivore. If you're going to kill an animal anyway to protect the environment, sure, you might as well eat it (although putting it in pet food would be better).
But it must be
unsustainably hunted -- the goal is to wipe out the invasive species, not just let it keep breeding. It's not even a solution for a single region, it's a short term food source.
bobdebouwer wrote:-Roadkill, while certainly not popular, is ethical.
Arguably, although it wouldn't really go to waste; scavengers will eat it, and it could be an important food source for the local environment.
bobdebouwer wrote:-Eating meat that would otherwise be thrown away is more sustainable than just letting the meat go to waste.
Sure. If you're dumpster-diving, you're in the clear. Freegans eating meat rescued from a dumpster are morally equivalent to vegans in many ways.
This isn't a world-wide solution, though. We need the world to go vegan, then there won't be dumpster meat for Freegans to eat. It's a temporary improvement.
bobdebouwer wrote:-Fishing could be possible by designing a mathematical system that calculates how many fish we can catch, without harming the population.
In an ideal world where you could actually ensure everybody followed the laws.
But this is not such a world. Oceans are connected, you'd have to rely on people actually following the laws, and laws and regulations on fishing just don't work. There's bycatch, people poach and over-fish. Oversight is virtually non-existent and not enforceable on the ocean.
bobdebouwer wrote:-Most of my proposals are based on local and small scale. We have to fight the current capitalist system that is built around profit, profit and profit.
You can't fight capitalism, and it does a lot of good things too (like innovation). You have to work with it, and be an ethical consumer to discourage practices that are harmful, and buy products that are best for the environment so companies will move in that direction.
You can start your own back yard garden, and that's great, but not everybody can grow all of their own food, and local production can't support cities with staples.
bobdebouwer wrote:Neither meat nor vegan is sustainable in this system. If we really want to help the animals and the environment, we'll have to abolish capitalism.
That's bullshit, and very damaging to suggest people give up on improvement. There are degrees of sustainability. Animal products are far more harmful to the environment than vegan food. The world is not all or nothing, it's about choosing less harmful options. When presented with a choice between the two, an ethical consumer chooses vegan.
We don't have the power to abolish capitalism. If you doubt this, look at how well communist revolutions of the past have worked out. There's not a viable alternative.
See this thread for an extensive discussion:
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2008
bobdebouwer wrote:We aren't helping the animals, nor the environment by letting priviliged people buy vegan products that are produced by underpaid workers in some far away country.
What's "underpaid"? I'm going to quote myself here because I've addressed this many times in the past and it's a persistent myth:
brimstoneSalad wrote:
"Exploited" workers are not bred into exploitation. They already exist, and it's a choice between a relatively less desirable job (compared to those we enjoy) and no job (or an even worse one). As long as there's a free market, they can choose for themselves the best option, so it's not really possible to do these people harm by offering them the choice to work for you. Obviously they're also not killed when they stop being useful.
Contrary to liberal propaganda, sweatshops are actually a good thing, since they bring money into poor economies (you can find interviews with the people in these areas: they are prized jobs that enable upward mobility and pay much better than anything else in town). Economy is actually better than charity since it draws industry in and results in a lot more money (larger volume) which is also properly managed and distributed rather than largely wasted.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/05/02/sweatshops-in-bangladesh-improve-the-lives-of-their-workers-and-boost-growth/
(
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2256&start=10#p23888)
People need jobs, in poor countries more than anywhere else. What is "underpaid" to you is a good salary to them.