Human omnivore myth

Cassie3 is for the most part right. Although the Earth is 70% water, the vast majority of that is not suitable for crops and farming (with most of it obviously being saltwater).

Growing crops in Australia is particularly hard as it is the driest inhabited continent on Earth and very little of it is naturally suitable for farming. She's right in saying that most cattle in Australia is grass fed rather than grain fed compared to many other places in the world. However admittedly I'm not completely up to speed with the ins and outs of cattle farming in Australia and whether the farmers rely on rain for the grass to grow or require irrigation to grow the grass and, if the latter, whether this uses more water than growing grain to feed cattle. Either way, for both sides to make claims without supporting facts is speculative and pointless.

Anyway, she's probably right in saying that we couldn't feed everyone in Australia by growing crops alone (without importing produce) - that is, without depleting the Murray Darling Basin more so than it already has been.

Of course that whole discussion ignores the elephant in the room, that being the size of the population. Obviously the smaller the population, the smaller the demand on the environment...

As a vegan, you've also got a personal interest in Cassie3 being wrong. Let's try and be a bit objective about this shall we.

why will no one listen to my idea of sewage water -_-'
recycle the water, the plants use it, we eat them and so forth

maybe it's because i live in south australia, and it's REALLY green here
in fact it's been raining most of the day today! i know we have alot of usable land here, the majority of it is used for wine grapes.
i used to live on a main road where all the trucks would go past with the animals boxed in to go to slaughter (the smell of them going past was disgusting, i couldn't even bare to look at the trucks)
now i don't know what type of farms they came from, but they did live and needed to be fed and watered.. this was everyday multiple times a day there trucks would go past

cattle are not the only animals that are factory farmed, so you have to account the chickens, pigs, sheep ect that are fed grain.

i agree that overpopulation is the real problem, but it's inhumane to cull people... so what do you suggest as a solution?

people will convince themselves of anything when money is their motive..
we don't get paid for being vegan.

Bugger me, leave a thread for a few hours and look what we have here... the slippery slope gets more slippery.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but do you think that eating dead animals makes someone more 'evolved' than someone else who chooses not to, and that veganism is actually a detriment to society, the population, and the world as a whole?

Facepaw.

Thanks for the measured response.

Hmm I think recycling sewerage water seems reasonable - I vaguely recall reading something about success in Mexico or maybe somewhere else in South America. Whether this is enough to provide for crops I'm not sure. Of course it would be good if we could do it! Although it could be an issue that people aren't comfortable with using grey water for anything that is later consumed. That obviously prevents people from wanting to drinking it despite it being technically safe to do so.

I can't say I know a lot about South Australia's industry, but I do know that the industry in general it relies heavily on pumping water from rivers such as the Murray Darling, which also goes into SA. In fact a lot of producers have moved towards less water demanding crops from what I've read. You'd probably know better than me on this point I guess.

As for reducing population, well I wish I had the answer (Dick Smith is offering $1million to anyone who does). What I will say though is that a strong economy requires a large population and political policy is geared towards that end e.g. the baby bonus. So effectively it's an uphill battle unfortunately...

That doesn't change the fact that you have an interest in them being wrong.

I have a personal interest in Cassie3 being wrong just as he/she has a personal interest in me being wrong. Every meat eater has a personal interest in every vegan being wrong, every vegan has a personal interest in meat eaters being wrong.
But the facts are still there. It is our bodies and our environment that matter in the end. Not how much money a business makes in a life time or how "yummy" the food we ate today was.