this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
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But do take into consideration the enormous amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous based fertilizers used to produce the plants, especially by greenhouses and industrial explorations.
Not the person you are replying to, but it should be noted that synthetic fertilizer usage is lower on plant-based diets even compared to maximal usage of manure. This is due to the fact that you don't have to grow so much animal feed (which you lose most of the energy from by other creatures body functions using that energy themselves)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344922006528
While any food production is not going to be free of environmental effects, plant-based diets are substantially better on nearly all metrics
Wait till you learn about all the extra food we grow just to feed the animals we eat.
It takes up the majority of farmland in the US. more than we dedicate to growing for humans to consume directly.
If you actually want to use less farmland, and therefore fertilizer, I welcome you to veganism.
What I think is more likely though, is that you need to tell yourself this to feel better about eating animal products.
Ah, yes, that pillar of good practices, US, where corn is so heavily subsidized its by-products had to be force injected into the entire food chain to justify it, to the point all food is rendered sweet by default.
I know it’s popular but believe it or not, the US isn’t the cause of all the world’s problems.
Only 23% of ag land worldwide is used to grow crops for direct human consumption. That’s lower than the US number by the way.
The fact remains that if you actually care about reducing farmland and fertilizer use, you’d go vegan.
Or was I right and that was just a throwaway comment meant to make you feel better about your habits?
Let's go back to examples I have at hand (I'm in Portugal and live in a somewhat rural area).
50 to 60 sixty years back, there was a lot more cattle roaming the area, as this was wool country. Even then, through field rotation, the production/consumption of feed was close to zero (abundant rains, predictable sunny intervals) allowed for fields to produce using what was at hand for fertilizer.
Come the 90's, with the end of the wool industry, flocks reduce drastically but the production of feed crops and cereals remains the same, with marginal use of synthetic fertilizers.
Come the 2000's and the berry craze explodes, with large extensions of land converted into greenhouses or intensive growth fields, that divert and consume huge amounts of water and require tons of synthetic agrochemicals.
The problem with corn in the US we have it here with berry farms and common greenhouses, that actively refuse manures and composts, thus injecting amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous previously absent from the soil. I can widen the scope to include peach and plum orchards.
The only area we have identified has being satured with those elements is further south, again due to intensive tomato farming. And an area where cattle is also raised.
I'm not white washing my option: I want sustainable agricultural practices to become norm, not exception.
As opposed to the enormous amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous based fertilizers used to produce cattle feed.
Talking out of what I can see out of my window, hay and feed crops for cattle are sown in the same fields where animals are led to graze, with no added fertilizers besides the manure left behind that is tilled into the soil, in field rotation system.
The greenhouses and berry farms around here turn down the readily and locally available and cheap manures to instead consume huge amounts of synthetic fertilizers produced in far away factories that have to be trucked in.
That's a cute fairy tale.
In the real world, over 5.6 million tons of nitrogen are applied to corn (40% of which is feedcorn, on top of 40% for ethanol. barely any for us vegans!) each year through chemical fertilizers, compared to a mere million tons of nitrogen from manure. A good amount is coming from cattle, like you said, but the reality is that the clear majority is artificial.
And regardless of whether it's natural or artificial, nitrates then wash into the rivers and waterways causing algae blooms, fish die-offs in rivers and lakes, drinking water pollution, ocean dead zones, coral bleaching and other habitat destruction, that shit even gets into the groundwater. In the human body it causes cancers, thyroid disease, birth defects, and probably more we don't know about.
Poison isn't better for you just because it's "natural" 🙄
At no point this was made a witch hunt on vegans.
And are you trying to deny by default what I am stating as "fairy tale" or are you trying to build up on my immediate example.
Yes, corn is a cash crop, along with soy and a couple other cereals. An heavily subsidized cash crop, already identified as a depleter of soils and water sources. Let's cut back on that front and incentivize the planting of rapeseed, as an example. Fulfils more environmentally useful roles than corn and provides a good chunk of useful and very important by-products.
But all of this just to go back to my initial statement: cereals here get a fraction of fertilizers other crops receive and usually through the animals that graze on the left overs and fallow fields. These are practices done by small, family scale farmers.
And yes, the gross majority of nitrates are artificially added, often with no need. And let's also applaud the excelent marketing campaign create by fertilizer manufacturers, that objectively created a notion that it isn't factory made it isn't good.
The muds removed from waste water management plants are phosphorous and nitrogen rich, a fraction of the cost of the synthetic fertilizers yet nobody will use it. Many countries import huge amounts of fertilizers while wasting a readily available resource. That is another bad practice.
You say that, but then you turn around and present animals that graze on the left overs and fallow fields as somehow "better" than the artificial fertilizers used in greenhouses. The reality is that we could use much less artificial fertilizer and also use less animal fertilizer. It all needs to be reduced and it's not healthy or good for the environment just because the pollutants come from animals.
There's nothing wrong with greenhouses using artificial fertilizer, as long as they're using controlled amounts and aren't adding to nitrate pollution. And you know what? Greenhouses are usually way better about that, because they have very controlled growing operations!
Please tell that to Spain (I'll risk more countries suffer of the same problem) that has several valleys converted into glass bowls, as giant greenhouses, often for "deluxe" or exotic crops, covered the land.
And you're trying to dog whistle. I could not care any less aboit the choices other people make towards their life, even more when it comes to dietary and philosophical options.
What irks me is the often used resort to guilt/finger pointing by those who opt to choose for such different option.
Now that that is out of the way, yes, we can aim at less animal production. The abuse of meat is not an healthy diet nor a sustainable one, which is my main concern. We can demand from agricultural producers - and impose - better practices, which make use of circular flow of resources, less use of agrochemicals and the use of best practices.
You're just kinda presenting this like I'm supposed to think it's bad.
Shipping exotic crops from the equator is bad. I don't know if growing them in greenhouses is better, but that's basically the only alternative unless we stop people from eating this shit. Yes, all crops could be grown more efficiently (and locally!), but I have no idea why you think this means that meat has any place in the food system. You're just gesturing at greenhouses and using that as a justification.
The use of best practices means no meat. Full stop. Vegetable protein uses less water, energy, fertilizer, and produces fewer GHGs.
I'm not dog whistling (what the hell do you think I'm trying to secretly say? that meat is bad for the environment?), this is literally a thread about the lie of climate-friendly meat. That shit is impossible and we should just stop eating that shit. It's easy, it's cheap, it's healthy, do it.
Yes, I think you should find the idea of having hundreds of square kilometers of land covered in glass and plastic at least disturbing.
And having exotic products shipped from their origin country and have it be expensive is an efficient way to control demand. But we have no time for reasonable solutions, so let's instead introduce species with the potencial to become invasive or taxing to the foreign environment beyond what local cultures are.
The presence and use of animals in a farming setting, to the extent of my knowledge and understanding, is among the list of best practices available.
And yes, you are dog whisling, from the moment you insinuated I was making my argument a witch hunt on vegans. You are trying to elicit a prescribed response from by actively introducing a completely unrelated topic into the conversation.
We diverge on views and that is fine. I'm not waging a debate to move an audience nor you.
I stated greenhouses consume more resources, on all levels, due to poor practices.
You understand that, by default, raising animals, regardless of setting or purpose, is wrong.
Understood.