vegetarian diet make more food available to more people while conservin out natural resources?!

According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report of 2004, animal products make up 10% of the global human diet. This includes not only agriculture and aquaculture but also fisheries, hunting etc ( http://www.maweb.org/en/index.aspx ). Of the proportion of this 10% which comes from livestock, 50% of the world's crops are used to produce them. While at first glance this appears to be obscenely wasteful, it is true that not all of this 50% is suitable for human consumption. In any case, these inedible materials could be used for other purposes such as producing biofuels, fertilisers etc.

Another interesting proposal for the future is the use of cities as centres for agricultural production through vertical farming. This utilises space in buildings to produce plant foods through hydroponics using renewable energies. This is the smartest thing we could do since presently foods are produced in rural locations where the majority of the population does not live, so it must be transported to the cities and as Daisy pointed out this is one of the largest contributors to global CO2 emissions. The technologies to produce farms in city buildings exist right now, but no large scale experiments have yet been undertaken to assess the benefits (primarily for political reasons).

Basically the problem is that all living organisms require energy and it comes from one of two sources- the sun or from hot water released deep in the ocean. We don't consume anything from these deep ocean ecosystems so we can ignore this for the purposes of this argument. Anyway, the energy from the sun is converted to usable forms through photosynthesis by plants and algae. Some of this is used up as the organism lives it's life through the required metabolic processes, and the rest goes into the ecosystem when the organism is eaten by predators or decomposes.

So when a predator eats a plant, the energy is used to drive it's metabolic processes. The predators at this lowest level of a food chain are called primary consumers, and they are fed upon by secondary and tertiary consumers which may be insectivores, omnivores or carnivores. In each organism, energy from their food is used for metabolism so it is lost as it moves up the food chain. Hence animals at the top require an extremely large number of plants or algae as a foundation for their diet: http://ejad.best.vwh.net/java/population…

So there are almost 7 billion humans alive right now and this is projected to increase to 9 billion by 2050. Hence it makes no sense to consume animals when we can consume plants and algae as the total biomass required to sustain us will be significantly lower. It is even more insane for us to be consuming megafauna (species with an average adult mass above 44kg) as they have higher energy requirements. To do so as our population increases at such an incredibly rapid rate would only be sustainable if resources were infinite, which of course they are not. Hence the only way we will be able to feed everyone is by using the current load of resources more logically by reducing the amount of non plant foods consumed. This is the position of the UN Environment Program, who last year released a report describing what we need to change in order to reduce the catastrophic effects on biodiversity our species is currently responsible for. I've posted this here frequently but I'll post it again for Daisy who likes quotes:

"Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which hosts the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, said: "Decoupling growth from environmental degradation is the number one challenge facing governments in a world of rising numbers of people, rising incomes, rising consumption demands and the persistent challenge of poverty alleviation-thus setting priorities would seem prudent and sensible in order to fast track a low carbon, resource efficient Green Economy."

"The Panel have reviewed all the available science and conclude that two broad areas are currently having a disproportionately high impact on people and the planet's life support systems-these are energy in the form of fossil fuels and agriculture, especially the raising of livestock for meat and dairy products," he said." ( http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingu… )

vegan biologist

I don't know what your 10% law is, but no, the vegetarian diet is not earth friendly.

Do some research and look up the calories in veggies compared to meat. Meat is a nutrient, calorie rich food. Take out the meat calories, and you'll have a huge increase in demand for veggies and grains. Virtually all the land that can be farmed in the US is in production. If we need more, and we would, trees would have to be cut down and fragile land not suitable for farming would have to be plowed up.

Veggies and grains are mono cultured. The farmers plow up land, kill anything else that grows on it (including small animals), cover it with petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides.

Cattle can graze on land that is not suitable for farming, so you're not taking any land out of production for human food by growing cattle on grass. They may spend the last 90-100 days in the feedlot, but, in spite of what veg*ns will tell you, they don't live on a diet of grain. In the feedlot they eat a diet that includes some grain, but many byproducts of human food consumption that would otherwise go to the landfill: corn cobs, soybean meal made from hulls of the beans, rice hulls, cottonseed hulls, etc. A cow's unique stomach makes them able to eat about anything except glass, metal or plastic. It just costs too much to raise a cow on grain.

"Every time forest or shrub land is cleared for farming, the carbon that was tied up in the biomass is released and rapidly makes its way into the atmosphere—usually by being burned," she said. "Yield intensification has lessened the pressure to clear land and reduced emissions by up to 13 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year."

http://www.rdmag.com/News/2010/06/Enviro…

And, of course, veg*ns like to throw out the old UN report "livestock's long shadow" as proof that meat is bad for the environment. They never tell you that the UN has admitted the report is wrong.

"UN admits flaw in report on meat and climate change"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environ…

Just go on Google and type soy vs meat. There are many sites to visit.

google