I understand your perspective. I eat vegetarian, but to my meat eating friends who are not ready or are not interested in stopping meat consumption, I totally encourage they buy and eat local, organic, pasture-fed animals if they choose to eat meat.
You are mistaken though to encourage people that if they stop eating non-local soybeans then this will have have any impact on the rainforest. A friend once sent me a mass email implying that vegetarians are partly responsible for the decimation of the rainforest because they eat tofu. Au contraire. Meat consumption is the driving factor behind rainforest deforestation, not tofu and soymilk lovin’ veg heads! (For the record, I don’t eat tofu or drink soymilk but that’s another story).
Please read this this quote below from an Autumn 2007 article published by The Nature Conservancy:
bq.“Fast-food outlets throughout Europe, including McDonald’s, rely heavily on Brazilian soybeans, which are increasingly harvested from fields that used to be Amazon rainforest. The European Union bought 10 million tons of soy from Brazil in 2006 — about 40 percent of Brazil’s soy export crop — soy that is used as animal feed to fatten the cows and chickens that become Big Macs and McNuggets. (Nearly 80 percent of the global soybean harvest is milled into animal feed, according to the Worldwatch Institute.)”
So almost 80% of the soy grown on deforested rainforest land goes to feed animals, many of whom I presume are later killed for human consumption.
More from the Nature Conservancy article:
bq.“While more than 70 percent of deforested area in the Amazon has been cleared to make way for cattle pasture, Brazil’s soy farms are increasingly culpable — from 2001 to 2004, satellites documented that 1.3 million acres of the southern forest were cleared for farmland.”
—link text
Your other point besides the soybean thing said that “local, grass-fed animal production is GOOD for the environment.” This is a complex issue that to be accurate would need to be judged on a case-by-case basis as far as each farmer’s/rancher’s practices. For example, if they chopped down rainforest to pasture local, organic-fed, humanely treated cows, this would be an issue.
In the BIGGER picture, I personally see that even local, organic, pasture animal farming is ultimately NOT sustainable. Small scale, organic animal farming is much better than industrial factory farms, in terms of the environment, compassion and rights of the animals, and the health of the workers & the surrounding community & the consumers who eat the meat.
But, a plant-based diet will always consume FAR less water, land acreage, resources, and energy than a meat-based one, even a local, organic, pasture-fed meat-based diet.
I know that not everyone is going to go vegan overnight or ever in this life time. I myself am not vegan though I totally admire this choice. Likewise, not everyone will stop eating meat, but everyone can be more aware of the impact their choices make and strive to make better choices more and more. It’s up to each individual to figure out what that means to oneself.
I haven’t read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma yet, but I’ve heard the perspective that Pollan’s model of sustainable, small scale meat production is ultimately not sustainable. It’s a numbers thing that could be crunched in many different scenarios.
I LOVE Pollan’s response on Disc 2 of the highly recommended documentary The Future of Food, where he amazingly addresses the myth that organic food is too expensive. But even organic meat may be too expensive for the planet.
There simply isn’t enough land and water to feed the world all local, organic meat instead of industrial meat, especially if we’re factoring cows, which consume more food, land, water, etc. than smaller animals. A couple backyard chickens for eggs and meat have less impact than a couple cows for milk and meat.
So IF the world is to keep eating meat , but ONLY local, organic, pastured meat, THEN the world is going to have to have A LOT more vegetarians and vegans to match meat demand with available supply.
Some people even intelligently predict that in the near future, even a large-scale, industrial farmed vegetarian or vegan diet will not be sustainable or possible. This perspective takes into consideration the effects of climate change (drought, food shortages, transportation, cost, etc.) as well as the realities of agriculture on topsoil.
The only real solution to environment-related issues is much more than locally produced organic foods. It’s a total shift in how society is structured and how we eat food. Industrial, large scale, tractor farming is not sustainable. Even “small” organic farms are industrial in that they use fossil fuels to power their tractors, use row cropping, disturb soil with tractor tilling, and are addicted to these and other practices that deplete topsoil and compromise the ecosystem.
I see the solution as returning to a personal connection to one’s own food by growing one’s own garden. International best-selling Russian author Vladimir Megre of link text has proposed a scientifically sound and visionary model of a truly sustainable food system. In his books, The Ringing Cedars Series, you can read about this simple and brilliant solution. I’ll summarize it:
Each family is granted ownership of 2.5 acres, to build one’s home and grow a garden of truly sustainable food, that will be passed down for all future generations in one’s family. In this space of love surrounded by a community of other families’ 2.5 acres, each family could grow all that is needed in addition to exchanging goods and services with other community members.
It’s not necessary or sustainable or healthiest to grow food with tractors and transport it to the consumer, even a consumer within 100 miles of the farm. Check out books on home-scale permaculture, natural and no-till farming, indigenous food production, and biointensive mini-farming. I also encourage people to explore vegetarian, vegan, and raw plant-based diets more!
And please check out the 2.5 acre model in the Ringing Cedars books. link text
These books, translated into English from Russian, are a MUST READ for your health and the planet. Thanks!
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