By: Nick Pinsker
Environmental Vegetarianism is the practice of vegetarianism or veganism, based on the indications that animal production, particularly by intensive agriculture is environmentally unstable. The primary environmental concerns with animal products are pollution and the use of resources such as fossil fuels, water, and land to raise the animals. Vegetarians practice a ritual usually of eliminating meat from their diet, while occasionally allowing fish and poultry for necessary protein. While the more extreme Vegan takes on the practice of eating nothing that is or comes from an animal or any animal product. The use of large industrial monoculture that is common in industrialized agriculture, typically for feed crops such as corn and soy is more damaging to ecosystems than more sustainable farming methods such as organic farming, permaculture, arable, pastoral, and rain-fed agriculture.
According to a 2006 United Nations initiative, the livestock industry is one of the largest contributors to environmental degradation worldwide. Modern practices for raising animals for food contributes on a “massive scale” to deforestation, air and water pollution, land degradation, loss of topsoil, climate change, the overuse of resources including oil and water, and loss of biodiversity. The program concluded that “the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”In 2006 FAO estimated that the meat industry contributes 18% of all emissions of greenhouse gases. This figure was revised in 2009 by two World Bank scientists and estimated at 51% minimum. A 2010 report from United Nations Environment Program’s (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management suggests that a global shift towards a vegan diet is critical for mitigating global issues of hunger.
The environmental impacts of animal production vary with the method of production. A Grazing-based production can limit soil erosion and also allow farmers to control pest problems with fewer pesticides through rotating crops with grass. In arid areas, however, it may as well catalyze a desertification process. In a world that utilizes around 30 percent of its surface to raise livestock, it is important to recognize the effects grazing has on the soil. With relation to global warming the Carbon Dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas. Methane has about 21 times more Global Warming Potential (GWP) than Carbon Dioxide and Nitrous Oxide has 296 times the GWP of CO2. The livestock industry is a major contributor of these gases.
Environmental vegetarians call for a reduction of first world consumption of meat, especially in the US. According to the United Nations Population Fund “Each U.S. citizen consumes an average of 260 lbs. of meat per year”, the world’s highest rate. That is about 1.5 times the industrial world average, three times the East Asian average, and 40 times the average in Bangladesh.” In addition, “the ecological footprint of an average person in a high-income country is about six times bigger than that of someone in a low-income country and many more times bigger than in the least-developed countries”.
A widely adopted vegetarian diet, in and of itself, may not be enough to make the US food system sustainable, unless greener agricultural practices, such as the adoption of renewable energy, are also put into practice. The support of alternative farming practices (e.g. well husbanded organic farming, permaculture, and rotational grazing) and the avoidance of certain plant commodities such as wheat, also have a beneficial impact on environmental health and sustainable agriculture, though this would have little effect on animal welfare and rights. However, environmental vegetarians do not ignore other environmental degradation, but seek to integrate green living into their daily and dietary lives, which does not exclude them from engaging in a range of other activities to protect, repair, sustain, or enhance the environment.
