Considering that most of the Earth’s surface isn’t suitable for growing produce this statement isn’t true. I live in a high altitude (for the US) where the land is rocky and the dirt is poor. The land is great for raising cattle but is bad for raising broccoli! The cows fertilize the land to help the grass that they eat grow. Ranchers here don’t have to haul off manure. Some of the big ranches are over 100,000 acres of grass. We have a very short growing season for gardens.

In defense of some vegans, they don’t all put animals above man. Some eat that way because they’ve been led to believe misinformation about what is a healthy diet.

The problems that we have with greenhouse gases, immigration, bee colony collapse and toxic food are a direct result of factory farming.

I wanted to say: Just yesterday I read a blogpost by a vegan environmentalist about how she’d finally found a great coffee shop that “even has vegan cream cheese!” but was disappointed that they use paper java jackets on their glass cups. I wondered if she’d ever thought about the resources used to convert soybeans into fake cream cheese and how that compares to the resources used to make a paper java jacket! Fake foods are really not the answer to anything.

But it is my personal compromise to send my son to preschool with some organic soy nuggets to be served to him instead of the school’s low-grade CAFO chicken nuggets breaded with GMO soy and HFCS. I do worry about processed soy, but of those two choices I think it’s the better one. For other lunches we send beans or other whole foods, but since the school has a total ban on nuts our choices are pretty limited.

One more thing about CAFOs vs. cornfields that I meant to say above: If there were no more CAFOs, Amy’s problems would be significantly diminished by the drop in demand for cheap corn and soy. Perhaps after many years of hard work, Iowa could be restored to health and become a land of diverse, sustainable farms that grow both plants and animals. I traveled all the way across Iowa for the first time last spring, and I was appalled; rather than the wholesome breadbasket I expected, it’s a wasteland, a forced-labor camp for corn! I can’t understand how people get into vegan diets to prevent the deaths of animals without ever thinking about the horrors inflicted on plants. Amy, I am praying for you and your family and neighbors and the bees.

But don’t you realize that a large portion of that corn, soy, and hay is going to CAFOs to be fed to livestock?? That’s what makes CAFO meat even more unhealthy and environmentally damaging than factory-farmed corn or soy: It’s not just sick plants but sick animals fed all their lives with sick plants; it’s not just the chemicals sprayed on the plants but those chemicals accumulated in the tissues of the animals PLUS the chemicals (hormones, antibiotics) they are fed; it’s not just the fossil fuels used to grow, harvest, and transport the grain but those PLUS the fossil fuels used to manage the animals and transport the meat.

So when the comparison is factory-farmed plant foods vs. factory-farmed meat, the plants are healthier and less environmentally damaging, but still bad. And if you compare local, organic plant foods vs. local, organic meat, the meat does take more resources to produce and does contain a higher concentration of unavoidable toxins from the air and water.

But Kelly’s comparison is any old plant foods (which, if a person is unaware of these issues, would tend to include a lot of factory-farmed plants because they’re usually cheaper and more available) vs. sustainably raised meat. In THAT comparison, the meat does come out as better, and I agree that the artist should have mentioned sustainable farming. But to talk about it as something only meat-eaters need to consider would be irresponsible, too.

Lightest on the Earth’s resources is an all-plant diet raised locally and organically with sustainable farming practices. Well, not only is that very difficult to find unless you grow it all yourself, but it IS hard to get correct nutrition on an all-plant diet and especially if you won’t give up the styles of food you used to eat–imitation meats and dairy products can’t be produced from plants without heavy processing that uses a lot of energy even if (and it’s a big if) it retains good nutrients.

I just watched Food.Inc. and it amazes me what people eat and the affects that factory farms are having on our country. There is so much mis-information about healthy food. I have not bought food at a grocery store for a long time, thank goodness!