It's hard to believe, but this blog is now over one year old. Being forgetful, I let the important date slip by with no fanfare, but now intend to remedy the situation by celebrating with a really good rant.
No doubt my loyal readers are asking themselves why a blog that ostensibly concerns itself with gardening techniques and gnomes features so many posts about the eat less meat (ELM) movement and its part in the debate on climate change mitigation. It's not just because I love bacon and eggs (specifcally bacon, feta, and cheddar omelets) that I am fixated on this contentious topic; it dominates my thoughts because it's what the left gets most wrong when it comes to climate change. Staggeringly, devastatingly, and completely wrong.
The left (a word used loosely in the U.S.) gets it wrong first and foremost by believing that moving the global population toward a vegan diet is a scientific imperative rather than an ideological stance. Numbers from a study recently published in the journal Science back up this assertion. (Write-up for laypeople is here: https://apnews.com/article/food-climate-problem-does-not-veganism-ed1ae1cd85cca04d1e4442909ef13fdc).
The study investigated five categories of actions that could be taken to reduce emissions in the agricultural sector. The researchers concluded that if most of the world adopted a vegan diet it would reduce GHG emissions by 720 billion tons over the next 80 years. To put that number in perspective, according to the same study, if people merely stuck to their recommended caloric intake (saves 450 billion tons) and stopped wasting food (saves 400 billion tons), emissions would be slashed by 850 billion tons. I interpret this to mean that if people in rich countries stopped pigging out and being generally wasteful, even as people in impoverished countries got their fair share of food, emissions would be lowered significantly more than if everyone merely went vegan.
The study also looked at farming more efficiently, and increasing yields through better genetics, etc. (cutting emissions by 600 and 210 billion tons respectively over the same time period.) I did the math, calculating that if we collectively undertook the non-vegan options, 1660 billion tons of GHGs would be cut, versus 720 by taking the vegan path alone. Granted, actions like using improved genetics and farming practices are steps that only those working in agriculture can take, and are not choices the average consumer can make. Wholesale and speedy adoption of such practices would require government intervention in the form of mandates, subsidies, or other incentives.
Even if we disregard actions that require government involvement there is still much we could do. But focusing on the ELM solution not only points us away from legislative action, it equally distracts us from other consumer choice/lifestyle change actions like wasting less food and eating sensibly. There's no movement advocating for these changes that comes near to rivaling the ELM movement.
Remember when we were told that if we all recycled our household plastic waste diligently, manufacturers could make as much of the stuff as they could sell without negative environmental impacts? That didn't turn out very well for the environment, but placing the onus to "save the environment " on individuals was a boon for corporate profits. Similarly, placing the responsibility for reducing GHG emissions on the individual takes the spotlight off Big Ag corporations, allowing them to continue with ecologically devastating practices with little public outcry save that directed lazerbeam-like at animal agriculture, primarily cattle.
Directing activists' attention to personal lifestyle change solutions hides corporate responsibility for environmental degradation, and de-emphasizes national level legislative solutions. Furthermore, the ELM solution redirects us from the individual choices of wasting less food and sensible consumption (together saving 850 billion tons of GHGs.) Frugality and sensible consumption in any realm are incompatible with corporate profits.
The ELM movement is a big win for large industrial agriculture interests far beyond promoting a purported climate solution that is largely based on individual choice and thus allowing them to continue business as usual. The genius of the plan lies in the fact that it requires a lifestyle modification that is exceedingly difficult for almost everyone but the most dedicated true believers who have access to a wide variety of consumer choices and the purchasing power to make those choices. Yes, most of us could give up meat for a day (let's say Monday!) and be fine even with no replacement; the implicit trajectory of the movement, however, is toward near total global veganism.
The difficulties inherent in most of us adopting a vegan diet are myriad and lie at the intersection of economics, culture, geography and health, but fundamentally rest upon the need for humans to eat enough protein each day to thrive. The FAO reports that a billion people are protein deficient, and predicts a worse global protein shortage due primarily to the covid 19 crisis. Billions more people, who are still able access adequate protein, do so by relying on locally-adapted, traditional agricultural methods that inevitably include livestock. Cattle, goats, sheep, yaks, llamas, etc, all do one amazing thing: they turn fibrous plant matter inedible to humans into high quality protein. Foregoing meat and dairy for these people would lead quickly to malnutrition. For those of us lucky enough to simply make a trip to the supermarket when the fridge is empty, protein is easily purchased, but there are many among us who would struggle if cheap eggs and milk disappeared from the coolers.
The living conditions and rights of these groups of people--the poor, the working class, the peasant, the indigenous--were traditionally the concern of the "Left." Apparently this is no longer the case, as privileged activists in wealthy nations call for a top-down, one-size-fits-all fix to agricultural emissions. "Sorry folks, you're going to have to give up a large chunk of nutrition, but thems the breaks. We're saving the planet here!"
And so the dilemma: ELM needs to convince the world to go vegan, but the world needs protein. The ELM movement has dealt with this dilemma in three major ways: By offering up existing and affordable protein alternatives such as beans, whole grains, etc; by putting forth the unsubstantiated claim that a vegan diet is truly the healthiest of all diets and easily meets protein requirements; and by promoting various fake meat products. Never mind that, opposed to meat, much more lentils and the like must be purchased and consumed to get the same protein per unit weight as meat or dairy. Never mind that these are the foods diabetics (34 million in the U.S. plus 88 million with pre-diabetes) and low-carb eaters must limit. Never mind that the raw materials to produce fake meat come from soil-destroying industrial monoculture. Never mind facts. ELM is an ideological position as I stated above.
Lacking any depth of understanding of how their food is actually produced, well-intentioned and idealistic citizens are ripe for persuasion. The vast, vertically integrated terrain of industrial food production, processing, and distribution is largely invisible to them. Posing the question of where the protein will come from if not from animal products might stymie them, but it's unlikely to come up. Everyone knows that once the livestock is gone, feed-producing land can become food-producing land, though the details of this transition remain fuzzy. Focusing on the "industrial" in industrial agriculture might bring them into focus, and help us to imagine a possible future.
Though they are open air operations, the monocrop systems that grow livestock feed are highly automated and controlled systems with seed, irrigation, fertilizer, and pesticide needs calculated to the nth degree. Like brick and mortar factories churning out gizmos and widgets, they are set up to efficiently produce the desired commodity, largely corn, soy, and wheat in the U.S. (68% of U.S. cropland is devoted to these three crops.) What will change on this land as consumers see the light and refuse to buy meat? In the absence of government interventions, why would these profitable enterprises change anything? Much of the land would continue to be kept in corn because subsidies encourage it and there exist significant markets unrelated to meat. Ethanol production uses up a whopping 40% of the U.S. corn crop. Corn is used to make beverage alcohol, high fructose corn syrup, cooking oil, and many foods consumed directly by humans. The loss of sales to livestock producers would be a small bump in the road as growers eased corn out of the rotation in favor of soybeans and yellow peas which, with higher protein content, would be in demand as meat substitute ingredients.
CAFOs would disappear from the landscape, a happy event in my otherwise bleak scenario. The land they occupied, and the now empty pastures where cattle spent the majority of their lives, would be freed up for growing even more soy and peas.
"Wait! That's not how it's supposed to go!" cry the true believers and the tag-along activists, as if while reading the fairytale I changed the ending and the woodsman doesn't appear to save Red Riding Hood. "Those lands are for rewilding and organic carrots and apple trees!" It would be nice if land was made available for such things, but we forsook legislative and collective action remember? We left it up to the free market to decide the course of action once we stopped buying animal products, and rewilding and organic carrots don't generate the revenue that industrial monoculture does. Removing livestock and their needs from the picture will actually be a boon for the system. Animals, with their constant pooping and peeing and needing to be fed and slaughtered at regular intervals aren't well suited for factories. Peas and beans are much less demanding, waiting patiently in fields for harvest, and in refrigeration units for processing, easy to control for market manipulation and maximizing of profits. The system has been preserved, corporate profits are protected, and no problems have actually been solved.
Several revelations await us if meat becomes generally less available, most prominent among them that a vegan diet is not healthy for the majority of the population. Also that much more food will necessarily need to be produced, purchased, and consumed to replace nutrient-dense meat and dairy products. We will discover quite viscerally the importance of protein in the human diet and will seek it out, wallets open. Fortunately, Big Ag will be on the scene, quick to provide for our needs, provided we've got the benjamins, almost as if they planned it that way. Imagine that.
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