Many of the environmental arguments surrounding veganism rely on half-truths, statistical deception or outdated information from cherry-picked sources and environmental scientists who lack a fundamental understanding of agriculture. This becomes even more apparent when one realizes that the majority of environmental veganism is supported by vested interests, for example:
The core tenet of environmental veganism is the idea that that most of the world's crops are grown for animals, and that we could therefore reduce the amount of crops grown by eating more plants. This originates from a flawed paper which was paid for by grain industries like General Mills and Kellogg. The formula they used determined the allocations of crops by weight and extrapolated that, since most of crop weight is used as animal feed, that most crops are separately grown as animal feed.
The flaw in this formula is the fact that crops are never grown for a single purpose. This disregards that most parts of a plant are inedible to humans and that even the edible portions are often processed with milling or pressing and that produces additional byproducts. When we grow wheat for example, humans are only able to eat the smallest part of the plant, the fruit body. The rest of the plant (leaves, stems, husks, pods, etc.) are then fed to animals, some parts right away (the hay and leaves) and some parts later during the milling process (the husk and various forms of starches or sorghums, even gluten, which is hard for many humans to digest). In fact, 86% of animal feed worldwide is inedible by humans. The overwhelming majority of it consists of forage, crop residues and by-products that have to be fed to animals because they would otherwise become environmental waste.
In the US, the largest crop commodities by millions of tons sold are:
| Millions of T | 2003 | 2013 |
|---|---|---|
| Corn | 256.0 | 354.0 |
| Cattle meat | 12.0 | 11.7 |
| Cow's milk | 77.0 | 91.0 |
| Chicken meat | 14.7 | 17.4 |
| Soybeans | 67.0 | 89.0 |
| Pig meat | 9.1 | 10.5 |
| Wheat | 64.0 | 58.0 |
| Cotton lint | 4.0 | 2.8 |
| Hen eggs | 5.2 | 5.6 |
| Turkey meat | 2.5 | 2.6 |
| Tomatoes | 11.4 | 12.6 |
| Potatoes | 20.8 | 19.8 |
| Grapes | 5.9 | 7.7 |
| Oranges | 10.4 | 7.6 |
| Rice, paddy | 9.1 | 8.6 |
| Apples | 3.9 | 4.1 |
| Sorghum | 10.4 | 9.9 |
| Lettuce | 4.7 | 3.6 |
| Cottonseed | 6.0 | 5.6 |
| Sugar beets | 30.7 | 29.8 |
As you can see, corn is by far the largest in gross sales for the USA, with more than three times larger the MT produced than the next largest, which is soy. Note that this data includes both animal and human food. Corn is a plant native to the US, it is tough and grows with less pesticide use than many other crops. It also works symbiotically in rotation with soy.
Corn by weight sold is about half animal feed and half-human food. That is 50% of the harvest is inedible to humans. The animal feed portion is called corn stover.
As a result, out of total gross production of 256 million metric tons of corn in the US per year, half of that production is an inedible byproduct (corn stover and silage) or 126 million metric tons. Even that figure alone is more than all of the meat, dairy, and poultry produced in the US combined (see above.)
One can make lots of arguments as to why it should not be right that only a few companies produce massive amounts of GMO corn, however, this argument can be 100% independent of whether or not the inedible portions are used for animal feed.
A common example vegans use is the USDA soybean factsheet that states that 70% of the soybeans grown in the US are used for animal feed. However a few sentences later, it specifies that it does not refer to whole soybeans, but the parts of the crop.
Quote:
A distant third market for soybeans is biodiesel, using only about 5 percent of the U.S. soybean crop.
100% of soybean oil is for human use and is the main product of human consumption of the soy plant both in the United States and Globally. This is where the demand lies. What animals eat is the meal that remains after the oil is pressed out. To be specific:
Soy meal is the byproduct of soy oil extraction, where full-fat soybean meal (a complete soybean) is crushed, and approximately 19 percent is extracted into oil.
In total, an average bushel of soy is about 60lbs (27.22 kg) and produces about 11 lbs of oil, and 48 lbs of soy meal.
So, once again, vegans have distorted data to present plant harvest and agriculture as completely different from how it is. In fact, food sustainability charities are already urging vegans to replace soy milk with cow milk to reduce livestock's reliance on soybean meal.
The only major edible foods that are given to animals are grains, usually as an additional supplementation to the main ingredients of soy meal or corn stover. These animal feed directed grain products make up a third of global cereal production (not total crop production, like vegans often state). Dairy cows are still fed 40% corn stover and other ruminants are fed majority corn products. Glutens, sorghums, dextrose, and other starches and sugars which are all produced in grain milling together when processing from whole wheat seed, are often supplemented to the diets of livestock to balance out digestibility and specific nutritional needs. [citation needed.]
Gluten specifically, which is nowadays added back in tiny amounts to most flours to produce different types of baking, is a byproduct of milling starches (flours). So, the main use for gluten for humans is for chemical purposes in baking, but for animals, it is a good source of protein, specifically for ruminants as their stomachs are well-adjusted to digest it.
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And even when cattle are corn fed (which is prevalent in the US and Western Canada, in the EU 77% of cattle are 100% grass-fed), the FAO has determined that they still upcycle 0.6kg of edible plant protein into 1kg of animal protein, which is of higher nutritional quality. This is because they spend the overwhelming majority of their life on pastures and are only sent to feedlots to be fattened up (finished) before slaughter.
Commonly cited studies by vegans put the consumption of grain needed to raise 1 kg of beef between 6 kg and 20 kg. This is because they falsely assume that cattle are kept in a feedlot for their entire life. The actual ratio is 3kg of grain for 1kg of beef.
The most frequently cited source on livestock greenhouse emissions is the 18% number from a 2006 FAO report. However, despite the fact that this number was retracted and lowered to 14.5% by its own authors in a 2013 report, it generally doesn't stop vegans from using it.
Another claim that originated from this report is that the livestock sector has higher emissions than the transport sector. This comparison, too, was retracted by the authors because it used a lifecycle approach that included every single factor in food production (e.g. processing, shipping), but didn't do the same for transportation.
Of note is that none of these reports advocated for veganism, but for more intensive livestock farming.
When greenhouse emissions are analyzed at a comparable metric, animal agriculture is a minor factor in the vast majority of developed countries - usually less than 5%:
Most importantly, traditional livestock carbon footprint estimates are inflated by 4 times because they use faulty calculations for short-lived greenhouse gases like methane.
Water use is the the single most ridiculous example of how vegans deceive. For example, this propaganda infographic claims that cow milk needs twice as much water as almond milk, but a lifecycle analysis by professionals shows that almond milk actually requires 17 times more water withdrawals.
Vegans arrive at those inflated numbers because they present the total water footprint, which is divided into blue (sourced from surface or groundwater) or green (sourced from precipitation). Because 96% of beef's average water usage is green, they conveniently include the rainwater that fell on the pasture in their numbers.
When looking at the crops that lead to the most groundwater depletion, it is evident that animal agriculture is not the driving force:
Livestock itself accounts for about 1% of total freshwater withdrawals in the US.
A commonly cited figure is that animal agriculture takes up produces 18% of calories while taking up 77% of cropland. While the former falls into the category of statistical deception, the latter requires a bit of explanation.
When vegans misleadingly use the term "cropland" in the context of animal agriculture, what they actually refer to is arable land that includes pastures. 60% of the world's arable land is considered marginal meaning it is too rocky, steep or arid to support crop production - yet it can be utilized for animal grazing. This also means that the land used for human food crops is typically in more productive conditions.
What no eco-vegan ever talks about is how their approach is supposed to deal with the fact that we have only 60 years of topsoil left because land used for human food has a 4 times higher rate of soil depletion than land used for animal feed. While most human food crops are generally grown in lifeless deserts, ruminant animals have evolved in grasslands for millions of years and can support soil quality and biodiversity. It is therefore no surprise that there has recently been a massive investment in regenerative agriculture, while nobody seems to care about veganic farming. There is no agricultural model without ruminants that has been demonstrated to work on a large scale.
Is our gluttony for beef responsible for the decline of the Amazon rainforest? As it turns out, the majority of Brazilian beef is actually exported to China and Hong Kong. Soybean demand, which is the actual cause of Amazon deforestation, is driven by oil that is used for processed food and plant protein - and even the meal is not used to feed cattle but monogastric animals like pigs and poultry which again, are mostly located in China.
Lastly, Brazil is actually a great example of vegan cherry-picking because it is an atypical industry. The US for example, which produces enough beef for itself, use about half as much forestland for grazing than 70 years ago. On a global scale, cattle ranching is actually a smaller deforestation factor than commercial cropping (12% vs 20% ). The bulk of it stems from subsistence farming (48%).
As stated above, most cows are fed on grasses or the byproducts of crops already grown. Most spend their lives on pastures, which can be in forests, grasslands, or deserts.
Most vegans do not consider that their food requires the destruction of native habitats because they have been duped to think cows require "more." Yet we proved this is not the case....Image Data Source From UN FAO
Cows will graze just fine in all manner of pine or deciduous forest and all animal habitat there is preserved.
Their ideal form of pasture: grasslands (which include many native flower and animals), can also be preserved without any rodents, snakes, lizards, bugs, birds, or fungi displaced or made extinct. ex 1 ex 2
And in drier climates, cows are ideal for scrubland, high altitude desert or chapparal. The low water use of pasture raised cattle preserves the water tables of such areas. According to the Water Footprint Calculator
Cattle rely primarily on rainfed grasses and forage that is grown or cultivated on pasture and rangeland. This more natural diet lengthens the time it takes to get cattle to market weight. The green water footprint is larger but there are significantly less impacts on local water resources.
Besides that pasture-raised cattle preserves the native environments, it preserves the water table, unlike cash crops such as avocado, almonds, pecans and cashews, strawberries, citrus and etc that often steal water from aquifers hundreds of miles away.
The concept is called Conservation Grazing.
Generally speaking, vegans will never make a fair comparisons between foods and instead use oversimplified metrics that tend to favour empty calorie crops like sugar cane or corn. For example, the Vegan Society compares tomatoes and beef on a weight basis, even though beef contains around 10x more calories and 30x more protein per kilogram.
Likewise, the paper that claims that most crops are grown for animals also says that the world could feed an additional 4 billion people just by producing more calories, but the leading causes of malnutrition are actually deficiencies of Iron, Zinc, Folate, Iodine and Vitamin A. All of these happen to be nutrients that are common and most bioavailable in animal products, which is why vegans are also often deficient in them. Malnutrition in developing countries is directly linked to lack of animal products. If the entire US went vegan, it would only increase the incidence of nutrient deficiencies and further support the obesity epidemic by producing excess calories.
Among Canadian adults, red meat alone accounts for approximately 27-41% of their RDA for protein, 51-70% of their RDA for zinc, 24-44% of their RDA for selenium, and 33-61% of their RDA for vitamin B12.
Many of the superfoods which vegans recommend to replace animal nutrition - like quinoa, nuts and avocados - tend to be mono-crops that are mainly able to be grown in historically colonized equatorial regions. This is overlooked in isocaloric analyses.
Even in the rare occasion of vegans using metrics that actually cover the purpose of animal products, like protein, they tend to ignore the vast differences in bioavailability and amino acid profiles. When comparisons are based on the actual nutritional requirements of humans, animal products are among the most efficient foods.
Unlike the plant by-products that vegans use to blame crop production on animals, food comparisons rarely consider that animals also yield by-products which, in contrast to crop residues, are actually useful and would need to be replaced by growing additional crops such as cotton.
The emerging uses are so numerous that even a vegan will never be able to completely abstain from them:
That vegan peanut butter couldn't exist without animal technology involved in the public safety of making the product that's found at Whole Foods. As a matter of fact, even our water supply would fall apart without animal agriculture.
Most peer-reviewed papers on environmental nutrition only look at the food derived from the carcass and ignore the consequences of losing and replacing by-products, making the analysis pointless.
