Vegetarian diet sustainability Videos

+C0nc0rdance People are raising bison because there's a bit of profit, not out of any altruistic desire to increase biodiversity.  :PAnd I don't remember where I read it, but the effects that plains bison had on the environment were very different from the effects that domesticated cattle have now; bison travelled in gigantic herds that tore up the ground like a plow when they passed, which would have prevented tree growth and kept the prairie open.  Cattle don't chew up the ground; they pack it flat because while they travel in herds they do so with far less hoof action.  This keeps nearly everything from growing over their (limited) travel routes but since they stick to paths, trees and thickets have a chance to take root and spread.Not sure if that's entirely related to your original question, but the effects of free-range cattle in a fenced in area are just so very different from the effects of large herds that can migrate that the loss of the plains bison actually lead to a slight increase in forest area... until a bunch of it got cut down for pasture or farmland, that is; but even then, some areas in the extreme northern reaches of the bison's range (like here in Alberta or next-door in Saskatchewan) went so long before any appreciable number of people settled there that the northern boreal forest got a fair bit of time to expand onto the plains.

+Y2KNWYou, unlike nature, are probably unwilling to let large portions of the herd starve to death.

+C0nc0rdance We're raising free-range bison in a few places on the Canadian prairies; once winter hits, they're fed rather typical cattle feed because they're still fenced in.

+C0nc0rdance About the suffering, I kinda feel the same. I'm not a sociopath but seriously; life feeds on life. To quote George Carlin, if life is sacred then why don't people fight for the rights of cancer or "crabs" or some other detrimental to us life form?PS: Vegetarian here.

+TechnocraticBushmanI think it might be more precise to say we replaced all the predators ("Look at me.  Look at me.  I'm the predator now"), for good or ill.Grazing is something that occurs roughly the same in the absence of human intervention as with.  Buffalo, gazelle, deer... it's non-interventionist harvesting of food.  I'm not even terribly persuaded by the "suffering" angle.  Lions killing gazelles produce at least as much suffering as humans killing gazelles.  Mountain lions hunting deer vs. humans hunting deer: we're actually reducing the suffering of the deer in almost all cases.I, for one, would welcome massive herds of American mastodons roaming Illinois, and Texas glyptodonts digging up our gardens.  It's a curious question of whether we might have domesticated these megafauna... how different would life have been if the Spanish Conquistadors had faced mammoth-mounted Plains Indians?

+C0nc0rdance The only serious impact it has from what I can think of straight off the top of my head is that removing the predators is a no no. Food chains are seriously affected by it. There are so many cases. Like the wolf population in Yellowstone. //www.cof.orst.edu/leopold/papers/RippleBeschtaYellowstone_BioConserv.pdfBut the more I think about it, it is the least invasive method of farming I can think of.On a side note, too bad we've exterminated most if not all of the mega fauna. How would say Europe, North America or New Zealand look today if humans had had less impact? I mean NZ is the closest thing to Jurassic Park we have.

+Chris Pie AllNot an expert on this topic, but it would appear that grazing animals are a pretty normal part of every prairie or savannah biome (gazelles, buffalo/bison, giraffes).  I'm sure they impact the local environment, but so would their absence,

+C0nc0rdance I thought something about cows and grazing animals was bad for the enviroment?

+Inorganic VeganSorry, I jumped past Biology 101 here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_pyramidThe mass of primary consumers is a fixed factor for a given mass of primary producer.  This is the biology equivalent of "no free lunch".  For every 1 kg of plant matter, you support 0.1 kg of primary consumer, regardless of species mix.  You can't have 1 kg of plant matter that just falls to the floor and rots and feeds no animals (at least, not for long).  Similarly, you will find no large groups of primary consumers who are not subject to predation.  What we've done is substitute our favorite primary consumer (cows, pigs, chickens) for the ones that were already there (llamas, bugs, monkeys), but the biomass is roughly a 1:1.

+C0nc0rdanceI don't know the ecological impact of massive depopulation exactly.

+C0nc0rdance"Same rough mass sustained by them". Not at all. Energy systems aren't perfectly efficient in living beings. What you are arguing violates basic thermodynamics.Also, cattle and other livestock are clearly massive problems given the amazon rainforest being destroyed at record rates. Hence, we are pushing past carrying capacity.

+Inorganic Vegan Just a curious bit of trivia: At the time of European exploration of South America (call it 1500), the human population is estimated to be between 10 and 50 million. In 1800, it had shrunk to 9 million, 1850 it was 20 million. 1900, it was 38 million. Today, it's 387 million. I wonder what impact the sudden and catastrophic depopulation of the South American continent in the 16th century had on the ecology there, and particularly the Amazon basin. Remember, they didn't reach pre-colonization numbers again until the modern era.

+Inorganic VeganPrior to the introduction of humans, South America had an incredible diversity of large mammals (58 sub-classes).  After humans migrated to South America, only 12 of 58 remained extant.I agree that the carrying capacity of any ecosystem is limited, but South America has had many grazing animals in high numbers: the camelid (llama, alpacas, guanaco and vicuna), the glyptodonts, and toxodonts.  I don't know the pre-colonization numbers, but even today, there are an estimated 6 million camelids in South America.I think it's a mistake to think ecological under-utilization can exist.  If grazing or foraging resource exists, the rough energy equation in the food pyramid will remain constant.  A fixed amount of primary producers will produce roughly the same mass of primary consumers.  That is, if grass or leaves or lichens exist (producers), there will be the same rough mass of cows, llamas, glyptodont, deer or wooly mammoth sustained by them.

+C0nc0rdance It's not just the US, man. Cattle are especially huge problems in South America. There are far more cattle now than ever existed back then.

+The League of NerdsI'm pretty sure most bison didn't die of old age.  They were hunted and eaten by large predators.  In the early days, it was the Smilodon or mountain lion, then later, humans. Native American hunts would kill huge numbers of animals by driving them over cliffs, far more than could be harvested and eaten.

+C0nc0rdance I wonder how the life expectance shift has changed resource management. I'd assume, maybe naively, that it takes more resources to raise cattle from infants to adult then slaughter then having a reasonable love lived stable population. So even if we had equal amounts of cattle as the wild population the effective number of individuals is much larger and are been killed at a much higher rate. I'd have to look into numbers etc but I think this could be a counter to the argument. - James

+Gonzalo Ayala IbarreWell, cool.

+Inorganic Vegan Oh, damn, that was quick, I have the bad habit of editing my comments right after posting.You can add the amateurness of food producers like me to the list of inefficiencies, that's a huge one, people often expect too much from guys that just inherited a land. ps: There are many many Ñandús (Rhea americana) in my land, Ñandús are wicked cool, let's say my land is a semi-natural reserve. It sounds better.

+Gonzalo Ayala IbarreWell, okay. Still, we talk about all sorts of food waste. Including throwing stuff out. Still, livestock is a massive contributor.

+Inorganic VeganThanks for answering. I'm afraid I haven't seen the podcast yet, but I guess you did the efficiency argument then xDI'm noy saying it's false, It does use too much land, specially if the cattle gets almost all of their nutrients from grass and the land they are in can be cultivated (without very expensive preparation, of course).It's just that I see other HUGE inefficiencies in food production and distribution (at least in my country), I automatically roll my eyes when people do that argument. I really don't know a lot about the topic though.ps: Your avatar+name seem familiar, I'm sorry if you were a victim of one of my drunken youtube rampages (It's what I do instead of clubbing). 

+Gonzalo Ayala Ibarre I know that some land is bad to farm crops on, but we can't deny the fact that livestock use too much land, and this amount will only increase with more people demanding meat.

yea for sure that would be awesome! Would love that if we could arrange it.  I'm headed to Krabi in the next couple days to do a coconut water fast. Not teaching here anymore.  

+Eric J Hi Eric, I might go somewhere else next year if I find something, maybe you can take my position then?

+High Carb Vegan Adventurer can you imagine eatin 10 coconuts? i havnt ecen managed to eat 1 whole one by myself yet hahaa :p yeah cool cool :)

+tazydevil93 yeah still better than Europe for sure when it comes to fruit, but Ted Carr has to eat up to 10 coconuts to make up the calories. From May to August I would say with heavy mango and durian season, it' s possible to stay raw.

Ope is a DDS- click this link goo.gl/eYYJ1a for a breakdown of Ope's "expertise"

Great. Jan, God's Creatures Ministry

Brilliant video, thank you :)

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