Comment by belorn
17 hours ago
If it was a competition in who did more harm the distinction may be relevant but in terms of saving the environment and turning back the ecosystem back to a sustainable one, the distinction between animal based or non-animal based is mostly irrelevant. Modern agriculture are not sustainable for the environment. The fossil fuels that are pulled from the earth and put on fields are not sustainable, and the amount of run off that goes into the water are destroying ecosystems with no time table if they ever can recover. When different species goes extinct they stay extinct, and the distinction that "well, its not as harmful as animal-based agriculture" will not bring them back. The Baltic Sea an loud warning signal of what happens if we continue to go down this path of modern agriculture.
One of the few areas of sustainable farming is aquaculture like shellfish and seaweed, which could actually be used to reduce the negative effects caused by modern farming. If there were a competition in least amount of harm, those would likely be the winners.
Fields of corn or soybeans will still exist without animal-based agriculture, especially with current demand for biofuels. As long as the land can be farmed to generate revenue, people will farm it. Artificial fertilizers is the primary enabler of this.
No one is saying fields of corn and soybean wouldn't exist, but we would have far less of them without animal agriculture. You are creating a false dichotomy of "sustainable"/"not sustainable" the reality is human societies would be much more sustainable without animal agriculture. More sustainable does in fact result in less extinctions/ecosystem impact and reduced climate change.
Maybe I'm wrong but reading your comment it feels like you are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and you use your conclusion that we will never be sustainable as your excuse to continue to eat animals.
> No one is saying fields of corn and soybean wouldn't exist, but we would have far less of them without animal agriculture
There is no evidence that there would be far less farm fields without that. Farm fields exists if there is profit to be had. Right now the demand for biofuels are directly competing with the demand for animal feed. Farmers will primary grow and sell crops based on what pay the most, and can easily switch if one pays more than the other.
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/360637/?v=pdf The Impact of Market Prices on Farmers' Crop Choices in Ghana https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373480516_Farmers'_... Farmers’ risk rating and crop portfolio choice in Kewot Woreda, North Ethiopia https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X2... Understanding factors influencing farmers’ crop choice and agricultural transformation in the Upper Vietnamese Mekong Delta
Notice that none of those says that farmers would not use the fields if the current most price worthy crop would go away. Farmers choose what to farm based, among other things, the market. If you remove animal agriculture, you don't get far less fields. You get fields with a different crop in them.
The only thing that will stop farming is either if the external cost of farming is applied, such as pollution, or if climate change makes farming the land unprofitable. Currently that pollution is not applied as a cost. A carbon and water pollution tax could be a strategy that addressed this, and would impact all farming regardless of crop. If that is "perfection" and "enemy of the good", then the definition of perfection is not shared.
> in terms of saving the environment and turning back the ecosystem back to a sustainable one, the distinction between animal based or non-animal based is mostly irrelevant
this is simply false - did you follow any of the citations? you’re welcome to find something to support your position but as they say: if it can be asserted without evidence, it can be dismissed without evidence.