Hi all, I found an article ( http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct07/diets.ag.footprint.sl.html) that discusses diet and land-area requirements for the state of New York. Yes, it would require a much smaller area of land to feed the people of NY if they were all vegetarian. Interestingly, eating a very small amount of animal products actually increased the amount of people NY could feed and represented max efficiency of people fed by the state of NY. This was because of crop rotation strategies and "marginal" lands that could not be used for crop production, but were good forage. The amount of animal products in the diet that represented the "maximum efficiency" was very small. The average New Yorker would need to consumer 1/3 of their normal average consumption of animal products to reach this goal. So, the most land efficient diet for NY would be a mostly vegetarian diet with a small amount of animal products.
Of course, this is only land area, not emissions, water use, N, P, pesticides, etc, and ignores other ecosystem services of these lands were they not used for crops or livestock. But, at least there's some data on this aspect. Best, Kevin On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 4:15 AM, James J. Roper <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello Benjamin, > > You neglected to note how much reduced land would be needed to feed the > people already in existance. That is, the inefficiency of feeding animals > that then are fed to people would be eliminated, therefore, much LESS land > would be used for crop production than it is today. And, the huge areas > devoted to soy beans in Brazil could be eliminated, not augmented. > > Cheers, > > Jim > > Benjamin Lee wrote on 12-Sep-09 21:13: > > "Habitat loss is one of the driving forces of extinctions world wide." >> This is especially true in places like Brazil. Where the rainforest is >> being cut down and the water system is polluted by greedy land owners & >> squatters. A big driver in this destruction is soybeans, used to feed >> domestic animals and PEOPLE (ESP. VEGETARIANS). >> > -- Kevin E. McCluney Graduate Student School of Life Sciences Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-4601 "I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do something I can do." --Helen Keller
