This is an amazing read

A Vegan No More

by Tasha on November 19, 2010 in A Vegan No More

 

As a vegan I didn’t like to think about the fact that without animals’ waste products, bones, and blood, farming is literally a zero sum game.

It broke my vegan heart to learn how unavoidably essential it is for humans to stop the use of fossil fuel fertilizers and reintegrate animals back into farm life. As a vegan I didn’t like to think about the fact that without animals’ waste products, bones, and blood, farming is literally a zero sum game. Without organic matter to feed the plants and the hungry soil, the precious topsoil will die and nothing can grow, a fact of life we are seeing play out around the globe as the millions of fossil fuel dependent farms collapse. When we expend resources like water and food on animals we are repaid tenfold. Not only does the water and food get used again in the form of manure that nourishes the soil in a way simple water never can, but the animals are eaten by us, and the remnants of their bodies used to feed the hungry earth. It was shocking to realize I had been expounding on the need to transform agriculture and farming without even knowing the bare minimum of what it takes to keep an ecosystem healthy. I now realize that the statistics I used to quote about environmental devastation, grain and water consumption, pollution, and ill health, were all based on numbers from factory farms, not from the realities of traditional land base specific farming, which is the only kind of farming that can heal our planet and us.