this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
107 points (90.2% liked)

Vegan

2970 readers
2 users here now

An online space for the vegans of Lemmy.

Rules and miscellaneous:

  1. We take for granted that if you engage in this community, you understand that veganism is about the animals. You either are vegan for the animals, or you are not (this is not to say that discussions about climate/environment/health are not allowed, of course)
  2. No omni/carnist apologists. This is not a place where to ask to be hand-holded into veganims. Omnis coddling/backpatting is not tolerated, nor are /r/DebateAVegan-like threads
  3. Use content warnings and NSFW tags for triggering content
  4. Circlejerking belongs to /c/vegancirclejerk
  5. All posts should abide by Lemmy's Code of Conduct

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
vitaminka@lemmy.ml
riccardo@lemmy.ml
tensor@lemmy.ml
k_o_t@lemmy.ml
107
If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares (ourworldindata.org)
submitted 1 year ago by Rokil@sh.itjust.works to c/vegan@lemmy.ml
35 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Summary

Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture, with most of this used to raise livestock for dairy and meat. Livestock are fed from two sources – lands on which the animals graze and land on which feeding crops, such as soy and cereals, are grown. How much would our agricultural land use decline if the world adopted a plant-based diet?

Research suggests that if everyone shifted to a plant-based diet we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%. This large reduction of agricultural land use would be possible thanks to a reduction in land used for grazing and a smaller need for land to grow crops. The research also shows that cutting out beef and dairy (by substituting chicken, eggs, fish or plant-based food) has a much larger impact than eliminating chicken or fish.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] axsyse@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

They aren't useless. It can often be useful to know what the extremes are, as a middle-ground approach would lie somewhere in between. Like, if switching wholly away from animals would free up 3 billion hectares, would switching about halfway free up about 1.5 billion hectares?

Obviously it's not necessarily that simple but still, knowing the statistics at various extremes allows you to weigh your options, so you can compromise by combining various approaches at varying degrees and hopefully get a "good enough" outcome. The researchers here aren't necessarily saying "all you meat lovers need to just give up meat already, look at how much land we can free up!", rather they're saying "hey policymakers, if we reduce our reliance on animals by around a third, we can free up a billion hectares of valuable agricultural land."