Is Plant Agriculture Really That Innocent?
No Modern Diet Comes Served Free of Death.
Read this with an open mind and slate. It is a powerful concept to realize that there is a biological cost to EVERY single food produced, whether that’s direct death or by an indirect secondary means - it is still death. Just because eating meat has a more associated vilifying conceptual view with bloody hands. It has served human evolution in powerful ways. Our anatomy and physiology are designed to operate this way in a delicate ecosystem. We can still be grateful and respect the sacrifice of an animal. Additionally, either way, by investing in either biodynamic farming or a “regenerative practicing farm” we are adding back to our planet as opposed to the traditional mass scaled operation of our industrial farming system, which clearly needs to raise its standards.
How You Can Make Your Diet as Ethical as Possible
For decades, animal rights activists have been shouting from the rooftops to cease the consumption of animal foods for ethics. This is nothing new, but it seems in the past few years this topic alongside the vegan/vegetarian movement has gained significant momentum. That is most likely due to the mainstream media hopping on the bandwagon to vilify animal foods such as beef as simultaneously “bad for the environment”. In a climate crisis-driven media narrative, this has resulted in more people trying out an animal-free lifestyle.
However, I am not here to discuss the environmental impact of eating animal foods in your diet, but instead, I want to bring back the discussion to the foundation of why plant-based diets were created in the first place: to save more animal lives.
The theory behind plant-based diets is brilliant: consume zero animals in your diet and you are responsible for the death of zero animals. However, this could not be further from the truth, as we know many deaths can also be attributed to plant agriculture as well.
One highly controversial study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics stated an estimated 7.3 billion animals are killed annually from plant agriculture in the U.S. (Fischer and Lamey, 2018)
This study sent the plant-based community into a frenzy when Functional Medicine expert Chris Kresser cited it on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast as a means to defend eating a diet that includes properly raised animal foods.
The vegan community lashed back saying 8-9 billion broiler chickens are slaughtered each year in the U.S. alone, which is higher than the estimate of total animals killed due to plant agriculture in the study mentioned above. They also pointed out that many plants such as corn and soy are grown in mass quantities to feed animals such as pigs, chickens, and cattle. These are valid concerns and in addition to the use of antibiotics.
The vegans are not wrong of course, but I think they are missing the main point here, and that is that no matter what diet you eat you will be responsible for the death of some animals.
The best part of this study is that it is really at its core a “best guess”. The authors of the study were extremely open about this and the authors call the 7.3 billion deaths a “first pass” and go into many reasons why this number could be far off from the truth due to many factors that complicate the calculation of such a figure such as minimal research to date on this topic, varying results reported in the studies that are available to reference, calculation errors, direct vs indirect animal deaths, variance in crop growing cycles/seasons, variance in rodent behavior dependent on geographical location, and crop species irregularities.
The authors also highlighted an important discussion point on the initial “first pass number”: how possibly could a guess on the number of deaths due to plant agriculture quantify the “badness” of it with multitudes of different animal species being a part of the equation. Is there a moral rank for the death of a field mouse compared to a frog compared to a larger bird? How about insects, are they “sentient”? The questions posed ultimately boil down to this: are all animal lives (and thus deaths) created equal?
In the United States, almost 10 billion land animals were slaughtered in 2020. (Knight, 2022) Astoundingly, over 96% of the animals slaughtered were chickens. Chickens were killed at a rate over 275x compared to cattle, and over 70x compared to pigs. If each life is equivalent, regardless of the size or “sentience” of the animal, then would it not be most ethical to consume more animals that yield the highest quantity of meat per life?
The average broiler (chicken raised for consumption) weighs 6.5 pounds (~3kg) at slaughter. An average steer will yield ~750 lbs (341kg) of meat (Holland et al., 2014). This means in order to obtain the same amount of meat from chicken for the life of one average steer, over 115 chickens need to be slaughtered. How about the duration of each life or the quality of the life lived?
The average broiler chicken gets slaughtered at the mere age of 47 days reported by the National Chicken Council, 2022.
This is almost 60% younger compared to the average broiler raised 100 years ago, whilst cattle are typically raised for 16-24 months.
As for living conditions, nearly all cattle spend at least two-thirds of their lives on pasture (even the industrial grain finished ones), while the average broiler chicken is given only a few square feet or one square meter of space.
If life is equivalent to any life, then eating large ruminant animals would be the most ethical, and if we consumed even 20% less chicken and in place more beef/bison/lamb, we could save billions of animal lives.
Vegans may still be caught up on the fact that their diet is responsible for any death at all. Of course, it is, but just how much is clearly still unknown. I personally do not think that pinning an exact number of deaths per diet is the right approach either. How about applying some simple logic for once, and with that I would ask everyone the same question about their diet:
Was the food you are consuming raised in an environment that promotes life and biodiversity or in one that destroys it?
Are you consuming a plant that was grown in an industrial-sized mono-crop operation that needs to kill thousands of rodents and spray tons of chemical inputs to maintain its annual yield?
Are you consuming an animal that is fed predominantly GMO corn or soy diets such as industrial raised chicken or pork?
These types of operations have decimated the ecosystems in which they operate, and thus the biodiversity that came along with it.
Biodiversity is synonymous with a high variety of life in an ecosystem. How do we achieve increased biodiversity or increased life in our food system? Enter regenerative farming. A nicely phrased term for a style of farming that has existed for millennia but was replaced in the 20th century by a highly industrialized system that follows the motto of high input, high output, at any cost.
Vegans may argue that animals don’t need to be involved in such a system, but that would not be truly emulating nature, which always contains both plants and animals in a healthy ecosystem. The Rodale Institute has proved that regenerative farming with both plants and animals outperforms a system with just plants.
As shown in the above image, the Rodale Institute has run multi-decade farming trials that have shown a system with both livestock and crops outperforms one with just crops, even if both are implementing organic rotational practices. When considering the nutritional output of the land as well, a system with both plants and animals will far outperform one with just plants. As in nature, there will always be a diverse mix of plants AND animals if you wish to achieve the highest amount of biodiversity, which is measured predominantly by the health of the soil in microbial life.
Biodiversity and organic matter concentration sound great, but how about actual crop yield? Do the below-ground improvements really translate into higher crop output? Absolutely.
In the image above you can see again the three different farming systems (Conventional, Organic Legume, and Organic Manure) with an added differentiator of no-till/tilled for a corn yield comparison as well as a dollar per acre comparison. The organic manure system which featured livestock, annual feed grain crops, and perennial forage crops significantly outperformed the conventional and the plant only organic legume systems. The no-till plant + livestock system yielded 25% more corn/acre compared to the plant-only system and 82% more than the conventional system, even setting a COUNTY RECORD for corn yield that year. The conclusion is clear, and although any regenerative system will outperform conventional industrial practices, a regenerative system with both plants AND animals will perform the best in terms of soil health and crop yield.
In contrast, regenerative farming emulates nature as best as possible to promote life, instead of fighting against it. The result: higher crop yields in the long run due to improved health of the soil, and the ability to diversify a farming operation for added security.
Zero or minimal soil tillage, rotational ruminant grazing, diverse crop species, cover cropping, and seasonal seeding variations are just a few tactics or strategies that make up a regenerative farming system.
Raising a diverse set of animals and plants results in an increase in life across all kingdoms, most notably in the microorganisms below the surface.
So where does that leave the morality of one’s diet? How could you possibly know where or how all your produce was grown?
The issue with our extremely disconnected food system, is that you typically can’t. That is UNLESS you are extremely diligent in sourcing your foods as locally as possible, and not just talking to the local farmer you buy your carrots from or local rancher you buy your beef from, but perhaps even visiting the operation.
Logic can be your most powerful weapon, once again. If you buy produce from a large grocery chain, you can best guess that the plant is being grown in an extremely industrialised setting, with hundreds of acres of just one crop planted, in turn resulting in a fair amount of death in relation to perhaps a local produce grower who grows 10 different crop species on a mere 20 acres of land. The same goes for animal foods, and one of the benefits of the age of the internet is that it is easier than ever for your local farmer/rancher to prove the quality of their operation. In all likelihood, the less hands touched for your food to get to your plate, the more ethical your diet will become.
There is a reason the authors of the initial study cited in this article also stated that they believe a diet rich in pasture raised animal foods can be extremely ethical. That is because the discussion should not be centered around meat-based vs plant-based, but instead industrial vs regenerative farming if we wish to do right by ethics AND the environment. Plant based diets do not come served without a side of death, but we should not be fueled by diet wars. We should be fueled by fighting the industrial food system, which is treating our animals unethically, destroying our environment, and compromising public health all in the name of higher profits. This is a battle worth fighting.
This article was written by Tristan Scott. The author of Bitcoin and Beef.
REFERENCES:
Economic Research Service U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 2022. Livestock and Meat Domestic Data.
Fischer, B. and Lamey, A., 2018. Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 31(4), pp.409-428.
Holland, R., Loveday, D. and Ferguson, K., 2014. HOW MUCH MEAT TO EXPECT FROM A BEEF CARCASS. Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, pp.1-9.
Justagric. 2022. Standard Floor Space Requirement For Broilers For 6-8 Weeks - Justagric.
National Chicken Council. 2022. National Chicken Council | U.S. Broiler Performance.
Rodale Institute. Farming Systems Trial - Rodale Institute.