Why we frame the diet question wrong, and why a vegan diet is only second-best.
Michael Pollan offers the shortest summary of the ingredients we should eat: “Eat [real] food, not too much, mostly plants.” I fully support this summary – move away from hyper processed [unreal] food and focus on seasonal from-scratch cooking. Some dogmatic vegans still argue that is not enough – and call for a zero-animal-diet for everyone. This blog analyzes some assumptions of this call that denies any role of animals in farming systems. My critique is not directed toward those who chose to eat plant-based themselves, but rather toward those who want to impose their belief in zero-animal farming on others.
Wendell Berry says “eating is an agricultural act,” and agriculture shapes the skin of our Earth – the food we chose to eat can disrupt the natural balance of ecosystems, or restore it. It’s not just what ingredients we eat – it’s about how farmers produce ingredients, how the retail revenue is shared with farmers, and what power structures our food dollars build.
Today’s system of cheap meat production is one of the most destructive industries of the world. Basically, animal production facilities are managed like other industrial goods, in highly specialized facilities that maximize the yield of an output – animal carcasses. The production process has been optimized for those aspects that we measure monetarily – feed costs, labour costs, fuel costs, feed intake per animal, animal losses. Other aspects that are not measured in monetary value are externalized (speak: ignored): animal welfare (beyond regulatory requirements and loss minimization), quality of employment (meat plants mostly rely on temporary foreign workers for jobs like “walking through large barns and picking up dead chicken carcasses, all day every day”). As animal production is done in huge facilities and often far from the areas where feed plants are grown, manure accumulates around barns and mostly becomes a waste product that is polluting our water ways and stink to high heaven. Animals live in boxes, where their movement can be constrained (in the animal farming world, “moving” just means wasting calories without growing). Animals cannot express natural behaviour or instincts. Is it unethical if an animals’ life is reduced to a feedlot where they chew their unnatural corn-soy-diet? Difficult to tell, in a society where an ever-increasing human population lives between a computer screen and a couch, snacking on bags of highly processed corn-soy substances that the regulator permitted as human food!
The environmental costs of this industrial meat production system are taking a toll on the planet: large marginal areas are overgrazed and 40% of the planet’s land surface are desertifying. The last forests are logged for more land for feed production, but soils quickly degrade and require perpetuated logging. Agriculture disrupts the terrestrial water cycle globally, nutrients from manure kill our waterways and poison our groundwater. Oceans have toxic algal blooms from nutrient overload, and biodiversity is collapsing as we speak, because monocultures dominate our landscapes. Not to forget greenhouse gas emissions – methane from burping and manure lagoons, and soil carbon emissions during feed production.
Simple logic tells us: if animal production takes too much from our planet, then we have to produce less animals. By reducing meat in our diet, we harm less. By totally eliminating meat and other animal products, we harm least. Right? So why not tell everyone to stop eating animal products?
On average, the logic that “less meat means less damage” is supported by data. However, this path does not regenerate our landscapes – it just leads to less meat in our diet. In the next paragraphs I will clarify why this is so.
Will reduced meat demand in North America curb meat production?
We live in a free-market economy. When some people demand less meat, prices will drop until others will demand more. The global demand for meat is still rising – if 300 million North Americans stop meat, then almost 7 billion other people can eat more.
The main meat inputs – corn and soy for feed – are also used for other products. Most animal feed just “up-cycle” remains from the plant-based food processing industry: Humans extract the most valuable components of plants for highly processed foods (including plant-based meat-like substances), and add value to the leftover plant parts as animal feed. Smaller producers may not do that, which gives them a a cost disadvantage compared to the mega-farms. Furthermore, corn can be converted into bioethanol – an almost infinite market because combustion engines will stay with us for a while. And policies support these biofuels as climate mitigation option, despite contrary science. So there’s no indication that the land we “save” by producing less animals would actually be ecologically regenerated.
A true solution to the landuse crisis would not focus on consumption patterns: the emerging global middle class is sufficiently meat-hungry to eat whatever meat we produce. Rather, we need to create alternative land uses that are regenerative. And we need to foster markets for regenerative products that provide economic incentives for farmers.
Should we produce plant food without animals?
Natural systems work in cycles – nutrients move from soils through fungi to plants, from plants to animals, through the animal food chain, and eventually become manure or a carcass. In natural systems, manure and carcasses are decomposed on soil, and nutrients return into the ground where microbes wait and the cycle continues. Water equally cycles, and so does carbon.
But not only the cycling of matter connects animals and plants – ecological checks and balances also maintain healthy ecosystems. Through their interaction and reciprocity, hunters and the hunted form a new unit – the ecosystem that always re-establishes balance. Ecosystems self-regulate such that balance persists – populations evolve while individuals perish. Connections between organisms define all living systems; hunters without the hunted cannot survive – but neither can the hunted without the hunters, because they keep populations in check. Ecology does not judge hunters as good or evil – ecology only knows balance and mutual dependency.
To sustain this balance, natural systems of reciprocity may rely on the interactions of a number of players. Without grazers, grasslands would turn into desert: as grasses age, soil capping prevents new germination that drives renewal. Grazing herds ensure that grassland plants rejuvenate and invigorate – by disturbing the soil with their hoofs, by trampling plants that turn into soil, by digesting plant materials that otherwise accumulate at the surface, and by spreading seeds in their manure. Grasslands need grazers. But grasslands will also collapse without pack hunters: grazing herds would disperse and overgraze and deplete their own source of feed. Only because grazers bunch into dense herds to escape predation, crowded animals “prune” all plant species indiscriminately and trample the rest, and then move on and give the plants sufficient time to recuperate their strength. This way, a triangle of mutual dependence is maintained between grassland plants, grazing herds, and pack hunters. Each needs the other, the survival of one depends on maintaining the interactions with the other.
Modern farming uses linear industrial process design for monetary efficiency. Ecological farming aims at closed-loop systems that minimizes external inputs and externalities.
Modern animal production has disrupted these cycles and relationship networks where all outputs are used by others for good. Modern animal production works in a linear cost-profit relationship where wastes are “externalities’ that our market does not attribute negative or positive monetary value: feed is often produced far from animal feedlots in plant-only systems, while animals are fattened elsewhere in animal-only systems. Where animals eat without growing plants, nutrients become an environmental burden. Where plants are harvested without animal manure, they become dependent on chemical substitutes and soils erode. Where beef is independent from chicken. The relationships between place, plants, and animals are disrupted. Such a system may seem effective by human short-term metrics, but in the metrics of ecosystems – the reciprocity of relationships and the circularity of matter flows – these artificial production systems are very wasteful.
If animals and plants are regarded as one reciprocal unit, if systems are assessed in their relationships and interactions, then the question “Is plant-based diet preferable to an animal-based diet?” becomes a flawed way to look at nature. A more natural way to frame the question of diet would be: “How does my diet foster systems of reciprocity where matter flows in cycles, in ways that foster resilient food production systems?” In a farm that is a system, poultry invigorates pastures for beef, while beef creates manure for vegetables – we cannot create beef without poultry. The question whether “beef is better than chicken” or “chicken is better than vegetables” is ill-framed: nutrient cycles are closed, systems work as wholes. A healthy ecosystem offers a balanced harvest of animals as well as plants. In some seasons of the annual cycle, ecological food systems offer more plants – in other seasons, they offer more animal products. An ecological diet responds to this seasonal fluctuation of productivity – humans would adjust their food preferences. Interestingly, the ecological diet reflects human’s nutritional needs throughout the seasons well: during the warmth of summer when our bodies need less, fresh vegetables and greens are abundant. During cold winters, hardy meals – meat and potatoes – have higher availability while fresh vegetables are scarce.
Animal production – a complicated technology or a complex living system?
Our minds are used to understand our world through the “metaphor of the machine”. This metaphor is the basis to reductionist thinking: we can study parts separate from the whole; we expect that the whole acts like the sum of its parts. If one part – for example an animal product – is problematic, we exchange it with another part – for example, a plant-based food.
From the ecological viewpoint, farms are complex living systems of mutual dependency. Animals support plants support animals. Rudolph Steiner, founder of biodynamic agriculture and early thinker of the organic movement, has already realized that no farm can established closed nutrient cycles without animals. This sentiment is reflected in modern regenerative agriculture, which identified “animal integration” as a central principles for soil health. By removing animals from the farm, we also remove the plants that are part of a system of interdependence. Animals become tools for spreading microbial diversity, nutrients, compost, seeds. Animals are used to renew vegetation, overcome certain weeds, and disturb capped soils. And plants become tools for supporting animals – in vegetable gardens, animals up-cycle “waste” and turn it into valuable products (e.g., bacon & eggs) and valuable fertilizer (composted manure).
According to scientific assessments, industrially produced beef has worse environmental impacts than pork or chicken. In the ecological world, “beef” is no more good or bad than “chicken”. Rather, regenerative chickens play certain roles – they pick parasites from a pasture, disturb soil capping, and convert grain into fertilizer. Regenerative beef prune and rejuvenate pastures, up-cycle feed of very low value to humans (cellulose), build soil, and create the compost that we need to grow plants. In a technological world, a moral person asks: “Which product is grown by taking less from nature”? In a regenerative world, we ask: “Does this food product fulfill its multiple functions in a reciprocal, circular farming system?”
Within the “metaphor of the machine”, one technology may be replaced with another – solar power replaces coal, electric engines replace combustion engines, plant-based meat replaces animal meat. Within a complex living system, one relationship replaces the other – or a system collapses. This is what happened when industrial farming separated animal production from plant agriculture: two leaky production systems have tremendous environmental costs.
Reciprocity from an indigenous perspective
When reading some indigenous writers, I sense that the ecological lens is already realized in many indigenous cultures. Humans take the role of stewards who give to nature, and nature offers to humans in return. Indigenous cultures around the world have molded ecosystems to their needs – planted fruit trees and berries, disturbed forests for herding, and created diverse landscapes that feed animals and humans alike. This way, indigenous cultures fostered abundance in wild animals, which again created hunting opportunities for humans.
Modern Westerners have lost memories how to nurture nature. Prof. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of “Braiding Sweetgrass”, asked environmental science students about the harms and the good that humans can do to nature – she was astounded that the vast majority of Western-educated students could recite the harms but not give a single example how humans steward the Earth! We seem to have forgotten the contract of mutual reciprocity between humans and nature; we cannot imagine that we can give to nature. We only know how to take – and that’s the only system intervention that our minds can imagine.
If we forgot how to give, than all of our attention goes toward taking. And yes, animal production systems take from nature – because we designed them this way. A morally alert human will try to take less – because taking less means being less bad. Prof Kimmerer reminds us that “taking less” is only one way to lower our impacts on the biosphere – we can also give more, if we just remember how to! We can ensure that the cycles of life is re-invigorated, the reciprocity of animals and plants are rebalanced. Every taking, in this mindset, brings with it a responsibility for giving. Taking more means giving more. Taking less means we have less responsibility to give.
In this mindset of balancing taking and giving, veganism makes little sense By shifting our “taking from animals” to “taking from plants”, we still focus our minds on taking. We still miss the reciprocity of living complex systems. We still disrupt relationships and reciprocity – just less so. However, as long as we focus on taking, we won’t regenerate cycles of matter, or re-establish reciprocity of ecological relationships.
What does that mean for out dietary choices?
In short, it means that “Meat vs. plants” is a flawed framing – just like gender equality cannot be achieved with a “man vs. woman” mindset or by abolishing men from our lives. Regenerative food systems reconnect plant and animals, just as gender equality focuses on a reciprocal and balanced relationship between man and woman.
Certainly, a vegan diet has “less bad” impacts than a meat diet from linear production system, designed within the metaphor of the machine. I myself ate vegetarian for several years, because it was a pragmatic way to avoid industrially grown animal products as a cash-poor student with limited mobility. I felt a moral obligation to minimize the bad, to take less. But my behavior did not support regenerative food production and closed-loop farming – I just avoided industrial animal products. From an ecological perspective, “less bad” is not good enough – to regenerate, we need to rebuild complex living systems and their reciprocal relationships.
An ecological diet re-establishes ecological cycles and reciprocity – regardless if a product is from an animal or from a plant. Does my plant deplete or regenerate? And does the animal? How do these support the farming system and our local community – from an ecological, economical, and spiritual perspective?
Can we feed the world regeneratively?
Ultimately, few people can imagine the abundance of regenerative food systems. Big Ag frequently reminds us that farmers now need to feed 7 billion people – aren’t we forced to use degenerative but efficient technological food production systems? Well, we are loosing soil more rapidly than we can convert forests into agricultural land. We are desertifying the world at unprecedented speed – a UN expert estimated that our soils have less than 60 harvests left. Our oceans are over-exploited, grasslands turn into dust. Meadow’s “Limits of Growth” established that our consumerist addiction will deplete the world, even without climate change – global warming just accelerates when humankind will hit its wall. I would argue: We can ONLY live by growing regeneratively. The industrial production system would be our demise – whether we grow plants as animal feed or for food and biomass. Business as usual is not an option, as the World Agricultural Assessment has summarized. Agroecology is the only system that experts from the UN’s Food & Agricultural Organization could identify as a “sustainable” food production system.
How much meat can we produce regeneratively? The answer to this question poses an ecological constrain to our diets – while the seasonality of alternative foods should determine when we eat our share of meat throughout the seasons. I don’t think anyone knows the answer how much meat we can produce regeneratively. For once, our culture has lost its knowledge how to steward animals in an ecological manner – though there are many innovators who are developing holistically efficient, ecologically sound production systems that heal our planet by growing food. Without widespread ecological farming knowledge especially in the Western world, it is unclear how the findings of innovators translate to other production contexts. Second, our landbase is in a pathetic state – driven by centuries of upheaval of traditional knowledge systems through colonization, two centuries of reductionist mindset, and a century of intensively degrading chemical production. As a result, we have lost large fertile regions and desertified 40% of our planet’s land surface. How much of that can we succeed to regenerate? The answer is not a natural science question, but rather a socio-political and cultural one. We could regenerate most of it if humankind really wanted to – but capitalism is driven by scarcity, and abundance is not good for business. My expert judgement is that we could produce much more than most people can imagine – two or three meat meals per week for everyone on earth, maybe? But we can eat far less meat than most Westerners feel entitled to – we have to create a culture that celebrates plants – plants that are seasonal, locally produced in ecologically embedded farm systems.
So vegan alone – a diet that eats only plant-based foods, from any production system – is better for the planet than a diet based on industrial meat products. No question – within the logic of industrial food production, it is more efficient to eat one unit of plant proteins directly, rather than feeding ten units of plant-based feed to animals and harvest one unit of animal foods. However, eating plants that are grown with degenerative methods still depletes soils, still relies on chemicals for managing fertility and pests. And there is no guarantee that the land that is not used for animal feed will be returned to nature – more likely, this land will remain a monoculture and produce export commodities or a biofuel.
Breaking the spiral of degradation
Only by breaking the spiral of degradation, and healing the reciprocal relationships of circular agroecosystems, can we regenerate our Earth. This is why regenerative, ecological farming is so incompatible with a vision of vegan agriculture. We don’t want to destroy a bit less – we want to re-establish abundant natural ecosystems that produce for humans and nature alike. This requires system thinking, closed-loop farming, a balance of animals and plants on our farms and on our plates. I deeply respect people who live in urban settings and chose a vegan diet, because it is their most practical ethical option. Even though ecological farming remains a niche, we are rediscovering and refining our knowledge base. And we are demonstrating that we produce a full diet regeneratively that includes both meat and plants. This is why we ecological farmers are losing patience with dogmatic vegans, who want to impose a linear, second-best solution on eaters and on us as producers.
Data exists that the energy sector is the main source of fossil fuels. Yet, we don’t attack the solar industry (also part of the energy sector!) for the average energy emissions. We know: The innovative technologies need to be assessed differently. In the same way, we should not attack ecological/regenerative agriculture for the deeds of “linear” industrial animal agriculture. Those are doing it anyway are, in my eyes, dogmatists who elevate their dietary concern to an ecosystem management principle. The science equally stresses that not all animals are raised equally – context matters.
So please consider that everyone’s diet is the expression of an agricultural act – agriculture literally shapes the skin of our Earth, and the future for our children and grand children. Please support local farmers, especially those who are rebuilding reciprocity in their landscapes and use whole system farm design & management. Don’t put them into the same bag with large-scale feedlots – the same way you would not blame solar panels for the ills of coal power plants, just because they produce energy too. When you buy a car, you know that the price difference between a Fiat and a Toyota is justified in different qualities – the same is true for local fresh strawberries compared to taste-depleted California imports. Enjoy food during the season – flavor and nutrient content are not worth with out-of-season imports. If you cannot access regenerative meat then eat less of it… and yes, you may make yourself a “list of the lesser evil” and chose industrial plants over industrial meat, feedlot chicken over feedlot beef. But please remember: it’s not the fault of animals that we lock them into feedlots, that we design farm systems linearly. Let’s change how we integrate animals with nature’s systems, by managing differently – holistically, regeneratively, in whole-system design. For seven generations in the future and with respect to seven generations in the past.
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