Does Veganism have an Environmental Problem?
It appears that increasing numbers of people are looking at the environmental cost of industrial agriculture and deciding to become vegan. I’ve just had to think about it recently and at the moment I can see a sustainable vegetarian future for me specifically and for humankind generally, but I am struggling to see a sustainable vegan future. This isn’t all about where we get our protein from, whether growing soya causes deforestation, global equity or the cost of transporting food. Above all, it is about manure.
I and my partner are largely vegetarian and try to make good environmental choices wherever we can. This spring, we had a relative staying with us who has recently become vegan, largely motivated by climate concerns about meat and dairy production. As we prepared for a couple of weeks’ vegan eating, I became concerned that the food we were buying might be having a greater environmental impact than the food we usually eat. Air-freighted avocados, almonds, products containing coconut, soya and other exotic ingredients our largely vegetarian diet does not normally need. We grow quite a lot of our own vegetables, which I thought might offset some of this until I looked out of my kitchen window at the pile of composted farm animal manure I was about to put on my vegetable beds and realised that our vegetables wouldn’t be vegan either.
Growing food takes a lot out of the soil and its fertility needs to be restored somehow. I use a crop rotation system and I have been composting for 15 years, but even considering that the compost I produce is a net input to the system (much of it is kitchen waste from shop-bought vegetables, coffee grounds, tea bags and so on which I mix with plant matter from our acre or so of gardens), it is not nearly enough for the small plot of vegetables that, if I’m honest, only provides something like 10% of our food at best. The only realistic alternatives are animal manure or chemical fertiliser. I’m now starting to question whether food production at any scale can really be sustainable if animals are not involved at all.
To put it another way, I’m sure we’re all familiar with the assertion that there is probably more cruelty involved in a glass of milk than a plate of steak. The question that is now in my mind is whether more environmental damage comes from producing and using a bag of ammonium nitrate fertiliser or a ton of composted manure.
This is not a meat-eating agenda. I’m also not looking at this from a moral or ethical point of view; there are good arguments not to eat meat and I have a feeling that ours is the last generation where eating meat will be socially acceptable in a developed society. I also understand the arguments about the efficiency of growing vegetable protein against meat protein. The case for vegetarianism is strong but a holistic perspective of climate impacts makes it difficult for me to accept veganism as a better alternative. I do accept that current food production and agricultural practices are not sustainable but I fear the changes we need to make are more nuanced than simply going to an entirely plant-based solution.
What I’m working towards is to reduce my own environmental footprint as much as possible, and I see the way to do this as to grow as much of my own food as I can, and aim to source the rest sustainably and locally. There is already some evidence that locally-sourced meat has a lower carbon footprint than air-freighted or deep frozen vegetables, and most vegetables grown industrially will use chemical fertilisers and pesticides; organic farming mostly uses manure as a fertiliser which can only happen if animals are involved. John Seymour, the classic writer on self-sufficiency, was scornful of people who planned to have goats rather than a cow on their smallholdings as they do not produce enough manure.
Sure, intensive meat production is hugely environmentally damaging and an inefficient way to produce food, but I don’t think is as simple as a binary choice. We do need to eat much less meat but surely having a small flock of chickens to provide eggs and manure is better for the environment than buying imported tofu and using chemical fertilisers? I know there are always better food choices we can make but I want to choose local, organically produced food for the sake of the planet, and that doesn’t seem practical if animals are removed from food production altogether. If your priority is to stop animal cruelty, then I respect your choice to be vegan, but I don’t think it is a simple answer to the environmental problems involved with agriculture.
