Surviving Modernity; A users guide

textbookhippieman asked: You talk about the farmland that's being used up, but animal feed is actually used for A LOT of that land. So much of the world's farm fields and grain fields are used for food for animals; if we all stopped eating meat, the land would actually clear up.

I did not actually mention land in relation to food production which makes this a bit weird, though I’ll address the point because I’ve heard it before and it’s a opportunity to discuss it. 

1. People eat too much of certain foods anyway, be it meat or processed grain. I totally agree that people eat way too much meat and this obviously has an environmental impact, however the exact same can be same of grain. I would advocate for a reduction in the production of both.

2.  I personally eat grass-fed organic meat, and wild game when I can, therefore no grain is used to feed it and the same land used to cultivate the meat provides its food. 

3. If we stopped eating meat the land would not “clear up” Big Agriculture, be it soy, grains or meat, is an industry that relies on excess, eliminating meat would only create a deficit that the industry would fill, their production does not meet our needs, the industry sets the needs of its consumers in line with what it produces. Take for example corn syrup and oil in the states, they are used not because they are environmentally sound or even better or cost effective, they are used because the industry creates the need for its product regardless of the environmental or health costs to its consumers.

In short, though I accept the premise that vegetarianism/veganism does have environmental benefits over a standard big industry based western diet, that is in no way what I practice, and regardless of its basis, big industry is bad for the land, the environment and people. 

(Source: )

This article is sheer awesomeness. Often we hear about people becoming vegetarian/vegan and greatly improving their health/karma, though rarely the other side is shown, as a once vegetarian I now consider myself an ethical meat eater, and an happy, healthier and more ethically conscious then I ever was as a vegetarian. 

This is my favorite bit:

  “I became a vegetarian at 20, after reflecting on the compassionate words of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Soon I went vegan. Almost a decade later, having moved back to a rural community from New York City, I realized that all food has its costs. From habitat destruction to combines that inadvertently mince rabbits to the shooting of deer in farm fields, crop production is far from harmless. Even in our own organic garden, my wife and I were battling ravenous insects and fence-defying woodchucks. I began to see that the question wasn’t what we ate but how that food came to our plates. A few years later, my wife — who was studying holistic health and nutrition — suggested that we shift our diet, and my health improved when we started eating dairy and eggs. It improved still more when we started eating chicken and fish. Two years later, I took up a deer rifle.”

Vegetarianism has benefits, this is undeniable, but these benefits can also be seen as resulting from vegetarianism an alternative to the western diet, which is low on plants and high in processed foods. Simply put, the benefits of vegetarianism could simply be a result of an increase in plant matter in the diet, rather than a result of eliminating meat, which we have eaten for hundreds of thousands of years.