The production of vegetables is often assumed to be the ethical alternative to animal-based agriculture. However, the reality is more complex, because not all vegetable growing is free from direct or…
And not everywhere is a good place to grow crops. 🙄
And before you say we don’t have enough good cropland, remember that we waste huge amounts of food feeding livestock. Does the amount of nutrient you get back from manure even make up for the nutrient loss from growing animal feed? We probably shouldn’t be growing alfalfa in the California desert.
Then there’s compost. If we composted everything we possibly can, rather than dumping food waste into landfills, we’d be able to reduce the amount of artificial fertilizer required to grow our crops.
Straw man argument nobody said anything about growing industrial agriculture farm animals or alfalfa.
But you are? You’re implying that there isn’t enough good land to grow our food, but I’m saying that there might be if we stopped both wasting good land and wasting fertilizer on growing animal feed in the desert.
But maybe there isn’t. Maybe we absolutely need fertilizer.
Okay, let’s work with that. I’m not saying that animals have zero place in agriculture. No vegan would be against having friendly bee hives to pollinate flowers, as long as no beekeepers come around to gas them and steal their honey. Why can’t we do this with other animals? Learn to live in harmony with our animal neighbors so that their manure can fertilize our fields without killing anybody.
There’s a lot of the world where we wouldn’t need to grow food if we didn’t waste so much land on growing animal feed. That’s why I brought up animal feed. We would need a hell of a lot less fertilizer if we stopped growing alfalfa in the desert etc. etc.
There are vegans who are against beekeeping. They don’t want bees living in artificial hives where they get gassed and their honey stolen and their limbs torn off etc. etc. No one is against bees just being allowed to live on a farm, side-by-side with us. That’s just nature! As long as beekeepers aren’t hurting the bees or stealing from them or invading their homes, it’s vegan.
Veganism is against animal exploitation. If bees just live in peace somewhere and pollinate the crops, no one is exploited.
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And not everywhere is a good place to grow crops. 🙄
And before you say we don’t have enough good cropland, remember that we waste huge amounts of food feeding livestock. Does the amount of nutrient you get back from manure even make up for the nutrient loss from growing animal feed? We probably shouldn’t be growing alfalfa in the California desert.
Then there’s compost. If we composted everything we possibly can, rather than dumping food waste into landfills, we’d be able to reduce the amount of artificial fertilizer required to grow our crops.
There are options.
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But you are? You’re implying that there isn’t enough good land to grow our food, but I’m saying that there might be if we stopped both wasting good land and wasting fertilizer on growing animal feed in the desert.
But maybe there isn’t. Maybe we absolutely need fertilizer.
Okay, let’s work with that. I’m not saying that animals have zero place in agriculture. No vegan would be against having friendly bee hives to pollinate flowers, as long as no beekeepers come around to gas them and steal their honey. Why can’t we do this with other animals? Learn to live in harmony with our animal neighbors so that their manure can fertilize our fields without killing anybody.
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There’s a lot of the world where we wouldn’t need to grow food if we didn’t waste so much land on growing animal feed. That’s why I brought up animal feed. We would need a hell of a lot less fertilizer if we stopped growing alfalfa in the desert etc. etc.
There are vegans who are against beekeeping. They don’t want bees living in artificial hives where they get gassed and their honey stolen and their limbs torn off etc. etc. No one is against bees just being allowed to live on a farm, side-by-side with us. That’s just nature! As long as beekeepers aren’t hurting the bees or stealing from them or invading their homes, it’s vegan.
Veganism is against animal exploitation. If bees just live in peace somewhere and pollinate the crops, no one is exploited.
Just fyi: about 50% of crops use synthetic fertilizer. Animal waste is not a requirement. This article discusses the chemical discoveries that lead to the ability to synthesize fertilizer: https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-people-does-synthetic-fertilizer-feed
Spoiler alert: it doesn’t come from dinosaurs**
tl;dr - Haber-Bosch process
You might want to look into how much obtainable phosphorous is left because it’s running low. We might not have other options
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