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I was a vegetarian for 10 years for health and environmental reasons. After all those years, I switched to a low carb paleo style of eating 18 years ago (meat, seafood and vegetables) and I am much healthier. I still don't eat dairy.
You may be able to stay a vegan your whole life, maybe not. You have to use common sense and balance your health requirements with your green goals. A vegan diet is really not optimal for most people.
I was looking into Veganism and came across this : https://www.quora.com/Is-hunting-moral, its the third answer given on that thread.
One of the things mentioned "what do you think of destroying entire ecosystems of wildlife to take the land for growing 'vegan' produce"
Sorry, we seem to have strayed from the question in the original post.
The OP was looking into Veganism and was concerned about the question above.
Most monoculture farms in North America are owned by big corporate agribiz to grow corn, soy and other grains for feeding cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, etc... who in turn will be slaughtered for humans to eat. So "destroying entire ecosystems of wildlife to take the land for growing ...." is really caused by the demand for animal protein and dairy products. Supply and Demand.
Vegetarians and Vegans a very small slice of society. Growing, but probably less than 5% of the US population. You can easily search for that. Here are a couple of estimates but I don't know how current or accurate they are:
A simple search for sustainable organic farming methods will show results like permaculture, Hugelkultur, ... All caitlindwarf was pointing out was that there are better and sustainable alternatives. Feedlots and mono-culture farming are wasteful of resources, highly polluting, full of drugs and pesticides and dangerous to the people consuming their products. The biggest beneficiaries from that system are the big agribiz.
I am really amazed at google driven do goodders, some of whom become real victims of the charlattans, crooks and cooks that define "permaculture" movement today. "Permaculture" buzz distilled from verbose "philosophic" bs is just a tiny number of mostly impractical ideas, so to speak, the rest is old fashioned peasantry. The only "perma" about "permaculture" is excruciating quantity of manual labor, and as a result impossibility to make any sort of reasonable living. The only way to earn something in "permaculture" while feeling good about oneself is to run a "permaculture" pyramid scheme on the backs of gullible suckers eager to shed some a few thousands bucks for a "permaculture course" or to provide free labor. Probably there is nothing more damning and hopeless to green cause than "permaculture" pyramid. It shows that a) there are no vialable alternatives b) much of practicing "alternative" seekers are dupes, slackers and crooks whose permanent irrelevance should be clear to every semi intelligent google vegan and environmentalist, but it is not for a simple reason - you have no clue what to do, have no practical skills or street smarts to call your own, so naturally this much of enthusiastic prey attract plenty of charlattans. For as long you guys will keep your environmentally unfriendly jobs, there will be plenty of them.
I am really amazed at google driven do goodders, some of whom become real victims of the charlattans, crooks and cooks that define "permaculture" movement today. "Permaculture" buzz distilled from verbose "philosophic" bs is just a tiny number of mostly impractical ideas, so to speak, the rest is old fashioned peasantry. The only "perma" about "permaculture" is excruciating quantity of manual labor, and as a result impossibility to make any sort of reasonable living. The only way to earn something in "permaculture" while feeling good about oneself is to run a "permaculture" pyramid scheme on the backs of gullible suckers eager to shed some a few thousands bucks for a "permaculture course" or to provide free labor. Probably there is nothing more damning and hopeless to green cause than "permaculture" pyramid. It shows that a) there are no vialable alternatives b) much of practicing "alternative" seekers are dupes, slackers and crooks whose permanent irrelevance should be clear to every semi intelligent google vegan and environmentalist, but it is not for a simple reason - you have no clue what to do, have no practical skills or street smarts to call your own, so naturally this much of enthusiastic prey attract plenty of charlattans. For as long you guys will keep your environmentally unfriendly jobs, there will be plenty of them.
So you don't know anything about permaculture. Thanks for playing.
OP, if you're still following your poor innocent thread, as I said above, all agriculture is destructive.
But we're stuck with it now, there's way too many of us to go back to our original hunter-gatherer life.
Do you know about the food chain? We all have to eat something. Just eat as low on the food chain as you can. I eat fish/meat once in a while, and make no apologies for it. I eat veggies and a few grains the rest of the time. Works for me.
(I minimize grains because I have inherited the family propensity for metabolic syndrome, including diabetes.)
So you don't know anything about permaculture. Thanks for playing.
it takes some time to figure what permaculture buzz is all about because of all those layers of the redundant verbose bs it is wrapped with, whatever tiny grains of the applicable are there - they take quite a bit of perma labor. Entire "philosophy" of "permaculture system design" is little more than wishful bs, which compells the gurus and "consultants" to abuse the word "system" and othere pseudo scientific lingo quite a bit to cover up rock bottom primitivism and abysmal lack of original practical substance. Practically speaking, permaculture "training" pyramids and "teacher certification" schemes, where ignorant and crooky get certified to teach permaculture design courses to the gullible, inexperienced and naive so they could become certified teachers themselves , is pretty much the only way to make little bit of money in "permaculture". The number of perma feudals benefitting of free naive labor in lieu of "education" is rather small. The bulk of the guys who make a few pennies on permaculture are strategically removed from the land or doing anything. I know environmentalist and progressive crowd have trouble admitting that two Australian crooks took green movement for a long shameful ride.
it takes some time to figure what permaculture buzz is all about because of all those layers of the redundant verbose bs it is wrapped with, whatever tiny grains of the applicable are there - they take quite a bit of perma labor. Entire "philosophy" of "permaculture system design" is little more than wishful bs, which compells the gurus and "consultants" to abuse the word "system" and othere pseudo scientific lingo quite a bit to cover up rock bottom primitivism and abysmal lack of original practical substance. Practically speaking, permaculture "training" pyramids and "teacher certification" schemes, where ignorant and crooky get certified to teach permaculture design courses to the gullible, inexperienced and naive so they could become certified teachers themselves , is pretty much the only way to make little bit of money in "permaculture". The number of perma feudals benefitting of free naive labor in lieu of "education" is rather small. The bulk of the guys who make a few pennies on permaculture are strategically removed from the land or doing anything. I know environmentalist and progressive crowd have trouble admitting that two Australian crooks took green movement for a long shameful ride.
Has nothing to do with permaculture as it is actually done on the ground.
Most permaculturists are meat-eaters, and raise their own meat.
Maybe you should start your own thread instead of highjacking this one?
"Permaculture" was mentioned as a way out of the agribiz food system towards vegan nirvana. One cannot do "permaculture" for one reason -'there is no darn permaculture to be done, it is mostly very general vague all encompassing bs two australian crooks stirred up to make their small fortune. It is just a hip meaningless term some originally non rural people prefer to use while doing gardening and farming the way it was always done. It sounds much better than a hick, hippie or white trash scrapping by, and it means everything you want it to mean. It is not just my opinion, see the links.
It's like talking to a brick wall with this one. ^ Continued insults and ignorance of facts. Ridiculous.
You show your short vegan fuse again. Face it - you have no arguments, especially arguments rooted in your experience, thus
you need to make a bland generic argument from "authority" which supposedly saw the light. I am not convinced you did. The fact is that permaculture is a vague bs blanket term. It doesnt work other than ripping suckers off on permaculture designer courses. 35+ years of permaculture buzz produced nothing tangible. It hurts, because permaculture hype sucks in well intentioned enthusiastic people who spend a small fortune to discover that the amount of labor it takes make this sort of fancy peasantry non viable even as a hobby, forget about feeding fancy vegans like yourself. Here is a permaculture enthusiast I followed http://www.foodproduction101.com My grandmother would have called much of his work " gardening" or waste of time, very lousy unproductive gardening to be exact, and then his enthusiasm and desire to gardent dwindled to almost zero, he is an anarchist author now. But in his mind he is a "permaculture consultant", I didnt know it takes special permaculture knowledge to plant trees and weeds, I have that sort of permaculture going at $0/acre. Dont count on the folks like him to feed you, you'll starve.
It amuses me how you continue to grasp at straws. I never said anything about permaculture and eating vegan isn't fancy. I'm not sure how you fail to understand the concept. It really concerns me, actually, that you believe eating fruits, vegetables, grains, etc is so fancy and difficult. Do you eat corn? Potatoes? Rice? Pasta? Bread? Tomatoes? Squash? Peppers? Do you solely exist on meat and dairy? Strange how you talk about how "fancy" vegan food is, however I can grow an awful lot of it on the balcony of my apartment. Can you raise, feed and slaughter a cow on a balcony?
What is your direct response to the UN and environmental organizations urging people to reduce their meat and dairy consumption? You don't agree with that concept so do you just think they're making it up? What documentaries on food production have you watched? What books have you read?
Seriously I want to know, because your level of cognitive dissonance is absolutely fascinating.
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