Ah, I see. One of the reasons for reducing use of fossil fuels. is to reduce carbon emissions. Using land to produce plant food for humans produces less carbon emissions than using the same land for livestock farming. If livestock numbers decreased, increased need for petrochemical fertilisers to produce crops for human would be offset by the decreased need for fertilisers to produce feed for livestock. This article makes some interesting comparisons:- https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/660S/4690010
Funding: This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust, Our Planet Our Health (Livestock, Environment and People - LEAP), award number 205212/Z/16/Z to MS, HCJG; the CGIAR Research Programs on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) and on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) to KW, SR, DMD; a BHF Intermediate Basic Science Research Fellowship FS/15/34/31656 to PS; the British Heart Foundation, grant number 006/PSS/CORE/2016/OXFORD to MR. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
There would be no need for expansion of agricultural land (at least in the near future), as this article says:-
Does the 4 billion extra mouths stated include all those meat eaters who have been forced to go vegetarian? I doubt it is extra mouths, and anyway, this will only provide for about 10 years at current population growth. What then?
Or we could discourage people from having the extra 3 billion people in the first place? Thus reducing greatly carbon emissions and carry on eating the steaks?
I don't know the figures, but it sounds plausible that using marginal land in this way could increase the food available.
I do not know how it works for monoculture agribusiness, but in previous days the natural husbandry employed by farmers used crop rotation to rejuvenate the land and as a bi product produce borage crops for silage such as clover and rape. Now rape is grown as a cash crop for Canola oil and biofuels, which is gobbling the land at an alarming rate. I suspect that this latter use is going to dominate the land clearance we see happening already, as well as contributing adversly in the smog clouds seen in Malaysia and India. Carbon emissions par extroadinaire.
They are already using these sources in schools as reported recently in the media. Ant burger anyone? Dung Beetle muffin? It used to be the occasional spider or cockroach or caterpillar that maybe joined the meal, and of course flies and wasps were 'added protein' but usually not in any significant quantity and often not intentional. Now I am even more suspicious of Garibaldi biscuits (squashed fly bics may be exactly that)
The (theoretical) argument was whether converting everyone to veganism would increase deforestation. I am saying that it shouldn't because we could feed 4 billion more people than we are at present by just using the agricultural land that is already in use. If there is population growth, as expected, this would require extra calories to be produced regardless of whether people are meat-eaters or not.
I have eaten Witchetty grubs with my aboriginal friends, they have a very nice flavour especially raw.
Question: what milk does a lactovegetarian use? Is animal (for example a dairy cow) source allowed? In other words will cattle still be needed to feed this group of consumers. As for pescatorians, we would not be able to support any significant increase in ex-meat eaters since our fish stocks are already depleted and rationed into quotas.
Its a twisted logic , I did a search for vegan cat food and yep there it is.
