Environmental Vegetarianism - Criticisms

Criticisms

A widely adopted vegetarian diet, in and of itself, may not be enough to make the US food system sustainable, unless greener agricultural practices, such as the adoption of renewable energy, are also implemented. The support of alternative farming practices (e.g. well husbanded organic farming, permaculture, and rotational grazing) and the avoidance of certain plant commodities such as rice, also have a beneficial impact on environmental health and sustainable agriculture, though this would have little effect on animal welfare and rights. According to Cornell scientists, "the heavy dependence on fossil energy suggests that the US food system, whether meat-based or plant-based, is not sustainable." but they also mention that: "lactoovovegetarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet. "

Some environmental activists claim that adopting a vegetarian diet may be a way of focusing on personal actions and righteous gestures rather than systemic change. Dave Riley, an Australian environmentalist states that "being meatless and guiltless seems seductively simple while environmental destruction rages around us," noting that animals can contribute to the food chain. "For instance, yams, which keep poorly, are stored inside pigs, and today's rotting apples attracting fruit flies are tomorrow's bacon,".

Bill Mollison has inconsistently argued in his Permaculture Design Course that vegetarianism exacerbates soil erosion. This is because removing a plant from a field removes all the nutrients it obtained from the soil, while removing an animal leaves the field intact. On US farmland, much less soil erosion is associated with pastureland used for livestock grazing than with land used for production of crops. Robert Hart has also developed forest gardening, which has since been adopted as a common permaculture design element, as a sustainable plant-based food production system.