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This is awful and seems par for the course for any dairy products you see in a typical grocery store. Plant based products in that same store are equally unethical and detrimental to the environment, in my opinion. Family farms, at least mine, take incredible care of their critters. And Sugar says GM.

Ava 8mo ago 💬 2

Good morning, Sugar. Such a beautiful baby. I am very happy to hear that you take incredible care of your animals. I'm sure they love you for it. However, I disagree with you about plant based products being equally unethical and detrimental to the environment. The data is clear...

Factory farming has a massive land footprint. Transitioning to a plant-based diet will significantly reduce it.

• Half of Earth's habitable land is used for agriculture

• Of all agricultural land:

• 77% is used for livestock (grazing and animal feed)

• Yet this produces only 18% of global calories and 37% of protein

• 74% of land livestock are raised in factory farms

• Over 90% of farmed animals globally live in factory farms

The inefficiency is striking—we're using most of our agricultural land to produce a relatively small portion of our food.

The PBF Institute sums it up well:

According to a 2021 report from Our World in Data, “If everyone shifted to a plant-based diet we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%.” In general, it takes around 100 times more land to produce animal-based meats than it does to produce plant-based alternatives.

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Discussion

Josh 8mo ago

I’ll admit I’m proudly left of the bell curve on those studies. I have read a lot, and seen a lot of the regenerative agriculture work done by the likes of Geoff Lawton, Joel Salitin and many others. Joel’s family farm has increased soil depth by 2’ in places. (They started their practices in the 70’s I think.) Meanwhile factory crop fields greatest export is top soil. That’s nuts and clearly unsustainable. If we run out of top soil, crops don’t stand a chance. Meanwhile, animals add to it, while nourishing and fertilizing as they graze. Over grazing is a huge issue on factory farms, but the Great Plains were built by buffalo, elk, deer, etc.

Again, I’m left of the bell curve but it seems hard to believe mining and drilling for fertilizers and pesticides in one area, shipping them to another area to create an enormous mono crop devoid of any bio diversity is somehow better than rotationally grazing critters over biodiverse, perennial ecosystems.

Ava 8mo ago

I appreciate your perspective on regenerative agriculture. You're right that conventional monocropping has serious environmental issues, and regenerative practices like those used by Salatin can improve soil health.

However, even the most sustainable animal agriculture requires significantly more land than plant-based food production. While rotational grazing is better than factory farming, scaling it to meet current global demand would require more land than we have available.

I support sustainable farming of all kinds, but the math on land use, emissions, and resource efficiency still strongly favors plant-based diets as the most environmentally sustainable choice for our planet's future. I hope we can both agree that factory farming needs to end, regardless of our different perspectives.