Decreasing meat and increasing plant consumption would *definitely* increase the use of chemicals. Note that includes organic plots with "organic chemicals" <brain explodes>. Nearly all vegetable plants attract insects. It doesn't matter how perfect the soil, the irrigation, the temperatures- insects arrive and you deal with them. Insects and disease are what make new small farmers quit. Especially new organic small farmers.
Diff topic- I like how you emphasized that soil can be changed. People not in ag often think that land is either suitable for agriculture or not. Well, if all small farmers went by that criteria you'd have no small farmers. I farm in a freaking bowl of clay. I bring in professionally cooked compost. I'm particularly fortunate that Athens-Clarke County (where UGA is located) has a municipal composting program that transforms solid waste into biosolids. $20/cubic yard. This is the best compost I've ever used because of the poop in it. I digress. Any successful small farmer is bringing in huge piles of soil amendments to begin their farm. Sure, you can make your own. But I've been farming since 2018 and I don't trust my compost like I do the municipal one. Also I don't have poop in mine, and poop makes the difference! <note any poop haters out there, I grow cut flowers. The biosolid amendments make some people go yuck for farming vegetables. It's a polarizing topic.>
Lastly, I was a strict vegetarian for 17 years. Yes milk and eggs, no fish, chicken, red meat, blah blah blah. So I was living in Costa Rica and I got sick. And a friend told me, "go up to the pharmacy and get a Vitamin B complex shot." This person had gotten this shot when they were sick and it helped them.
So I was mostly recovered by the time I got to the pharmacy. I mean when it takes 2 buses and a mile of walking to get anywhere, you wait to feel better. So I go to a pharmacy and they inject B vitamins in my butt.
WOAH. Woah! Within a few minutes I felt like a different person. My brain was working! No mental fog! No tiredness! Full of energy! Obviously I was deficient in B due to not eating any meat. And this was in 2011. I bet in 2024 there are vegetarians and vegans who eat even more unhealthy than I did, lol. There's a solid group and I was in it that doesn't work on getting a balanced diet. They just cut meat. So yeah, when you get an injection in your ass that feels like the best drug in the whole world ever, you start wondering if perhaps you're doing something wrong. Why isn't everybody lined up at this pharmacy???
i see this as a problem with imposing an enormous change of behavior in a top-down manner for the benefit of some nameless (and not-so nameless) technocrats. it’s like one day telling everyone “okay, from now on you’ll all wear brown polyester jumpsuits.” it appeals only to those who already wear brown jumpers—and those who own the means to produce said jumpers.
>"yet it would likely open a Pandora’s box of other challenges and implications, including the need for new industries, potential increases in other forms of environmental degradation, and profound changes in labor practices."
Changing the ownership dynamics of our economic production (which you advocate for) would require the same thing. Good faith vegans understand this as do non-utopian socialists.
>"Beating each other over the head with statistics that are cited in isolation, razor-focused on supporting an agenda, is not productive."
Plenty of discourse is not objectively productive. Your propensity to call people stupid on Twitter for example might be productive for your own creative process, but is not really productive for selling the idea that we need to resolve the contradictions of production and ownership.
I'm not proposing what things will look like based on singular statistics. But I do agree there's a very big difference between a good faith vegan and a bad faith one.
>I'm not proposing what things will look like based on singular statistics
Vegans aren't doing that either. They are simply refuting tired arguments. No vegan is claiming with any degree of specificity what society would look like without animal agriculture. Simply that fewer animals would be tortured and murdered. And in that vein, a conclusion implying our food system WOULDN'T be "better" without animal agriculture is ascribing unprovable idealistic claims to the future as well.
I'd be interested in examples. I follow mostly wfpb vegans. The only mainstream vegan I really pay attention to is Ed Winters and he frequently discusses the need for a transition period that sorts itself out.
Great article! Couple thoughts-
Decreasing meat and increasing plant consumption would *definitely* increase the use of chemicals. Note that includes organic plots with "organic chemicals" <brain explodes>. Nearly all vegetable plants attract insects. It doesn't matter how perfect the soil, the irrigation, the temperatures- insects arrive and you deal with them. Insects and disease are what make new small farmers quit. Especially new organic small farmers.
Diff topic- I like how you emphasized that soil can be changed. People not in ag often think that land is either suitable for agriculture or not. Well, if all small farmers went by that criteria you'd have no small farmers. I farm in a freaking bowl of clay. I bring in professionally cooked compost. I'm particularly fortunate that Athens-Clarke County (where UGA is located) has a municipal composting program that transforms solid waste into biosolids. $20/cubic yard. This is the best compost I've ever used because of the poop in it. I digress. Any successful small farmer is bringing in huge piles of soil amendments to begin their farm. Sure, you can make your own. But I've been farming since 2018 and I don't trust my compost like I do the municipal one. Also I don't have poop in mine, and poop makes the difference! <note any poop haters out there, I grow cut flowers. The biosolid amendments make some people go yuck for farming vegetables. It's a polarizing topic.>
Lastly, I was a strict vegetarian for 17 years. Yes milk and eggs, no fish, chicken, red meat, blah blah blah. So I was living in Costa Rica and I got sick. And a friend told me, "go up to the pharmacy and get a Vitamin B complex shot." This person had gotten this shot when they were sick and it helped them.
So I was mostly recovered by the time I got to the pharmacy. I mean when it takes 2 buses and a mile of walking to get anywhere, you wait to feel better. So I go to a pharmacy and they inject B vitamins in my butt.
WOAH. Woah! Within a few minutes I felt like a different person. My brain was working! No mental fog! No tiredness! Full of energy! Obviously I was deficient in B due to not eating any meat. And this was in 2011. I bet in 2024 there are vegetarians and vegans who eat even more unhealthy than I did, lol. There's a solid group and I was in it that doesn't work on getting a balanced diet. They just cut meat. So yeah, when you get an injection in your ass that feels like the best drug in the whole world ever, you start wondering if perhaps you're doing something wrong. Why isn't everybody lined up at this pharmacy???
I ate steak the next day.
i see this as a problem with imposing an enormous change of behavior in a top-down manner for the benefit of some nameless (and not-so nameless) technocrats. it’s like one day telling everyone “okay, from now on you’ll all wear brown polyester jumpsuits.” it appeals only to those who already wear brown jumpers—and those who own the means to produce said jumpers.
>"yet it would likely open a Pandora’s box of other challenges and implications, including the need for new industries, potential increases in other forms of environmental degradation, and profound changes in labor practices."
Changing the ownership dynamics of our economic production (which you advocate for) would require the same thing. Good faith vegans understand this as do non-utopian socialists.
>"Beating each other over the head with statistics that are cited in isolation, razor-focused on supporting an agenda, is not productive."
Plenty of discourse is not objectively productive. Your propensity to call people stupid on Twitter for example might be productive for your own creative process, but is not really productive for selling the idea that we need to resolve the contradictions of production and ownership.
Overall weak argument.
I'm not proposing what things will look like based on singular statistics. But I do agree there's a very big difference between a good faith vegan and a bad faith one.
>I'm not proposing what things will look like based on singular statistics
Vegans aren't doing that either. They are simply refuting tired arguments. No vegan is claiming with any degree of specificity what society would look like without animal agriculture. Simply that fewer animals would be tortured and murdered. And in that vein, a conclusion implying our food system WOULDN'T be "better" without animal agriculture is ascribing unprovable idealistic claims to the future as well.
See, you dropped your own distinction here. Tons of bad faith vegans absolutely are claiming that.
I'd be interested in examples. I follow mostly wfpb vegans. The only mainstream vegan I really pay attention to is Ed Winters and he frequently discusses the need for a transition period that sorts itself out.