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> Animal meat, which has an enormous ecological footprint, is on its way out. I'm not a vegetarian, so I'm not saying this on top of some moral high horse, but

> Animal meat, which has an enormous ecological footprint, is on its way out. I'm not a vegetarian, so I'm not saying this on top of some moral high horse, but it's inefficient and the way animals are raised and slaughtered now is insanely cruel. Actually there are places where plants are worse. How do you grow cereals in hot or cold areas or in the mountains? You'll need irrigation for the hot one and harvesting is going to suck in the mountains. There's also the issue of deforestation. Instead it's better to raise animals like chicken, sheep or goats and let them feed with the grass that's available. Regarding efficiency of plants I've heard that hemp (which is much better than soy) is easy to grow, but I'm not sure about this. Maybe someone else has more information about it.

seanmcdirmid 14y ago
This is a very good reason why Tibetan Buddhists aren't vegetarians; they couldn't survive on plant matter in the high Himalayas, where barely any plant growing agriculture is possible. Animals are incredibly effective in converting widely dispersed plant matter into something we can actually use for energy. Pigs are even probably the world's best recyclers, able to eat anything (garbage, but hopefully just organic left overs), which we can then benefit from indirectly (there is a good reason why many cultures don't eat pork though, its kind of gross when you think too much about it).
- pm90 14y ago
  Good point! But we're now talking about growing food industrial style i.e one region produces most of the food for everyone else. In that scenario, plants/vegetarianism might be the better choice. As far as Tibetan Buddhists go, nearly every culture that lives in cold conditions consumes meat in one form or another; I used to think this might be because the calorific content of meat is higher? But your reason seems better
  - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    Going in the other direction, you have a country full of vegetarians, India, which is probably the best place for growing things on Earth (at least, India is filled with arable land), and meat probably looks less appealing in that context (less grazing land). Globalization is still not an answer in most of the third world, where they don't have much to trade for food from, for example, the Ukraine or USA bread basket regions; they have to eat local! There is another interesting story about Coptic Christians in Egypt, pigs, and organic waste collection. The Copts were collecting trash to feed their pigs, but Egypt being mostly Muslim and all told them to kill all their pigs (they were also worried about disease, which could be a valid reason). Anyways, they stopped collecting garbage because no pigs to feed, and the government couldn't supply the garbage collection capacity to fill in the gaps so Cario started smelling very bad. Ah, ecosystems are so fragile and interesting!

seanmcdirmid 14y ago

This is a very good reason why Tibetan Buddhists aren't vegetarians; they couldn't survive on plant matter in the high Himalayas, where barely any plant growing agriculture is possible. Animals are incredibly effective in converting widely dispersed plant matter into something we can actually use for energy. Pigs are even probably the world's best recyclers, able to eat anything (garbage, but hopefully just organic left overs), which we can then benefit from indirectly (there is a good reason why many cultures don't eat pork though, its kind of gross when you think too much about it).

pm90 14y ago
Good point! But we're now talking about growing food industrial style i.e one region produces most of the food for everyone else. In that scenario, plants/vegetarianism might be the better choice. As far as Tibetan Buddhists go, nearly every culture that lives in cold conditions consumes meat in one form or another; I used to think this might be because the calorific content of meat is higher? But your reason seems better
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  Going in the other direction, you have a country full of vegetarians, India, which is probably the best place for growing things on Earth (at least, India is filled with arable land), and meat probably looks less appealing in that context (less grazing land). Globalization is still not an answer in most of the third world, where they don't have much to trade for food from, for example, the Ukraine or USA bread basket regions; they have to eat local! There is another interesting story about Coptic Christians in Egypt, pigs, and organic waste collection. The Copts were collecting trash to feed their pigs, but Egypt being mostly Muslim and all told them to kill all their pigs (they were also worried about disease, which could be a valid reason). Anyways, they stopped collecting garbage because no pigs to feed, and the government couldn't supply the garbage collection capacity to fill in the gaps so Cario started smelling very bad. Ah, ecosystems are so fragile and interesting!