So this is something I am very passionate about, so I hope you don't mind if I soapbox from this comment.
A lot of vegetarian and vegan food options use palm oil, and while I will not entertain comments like "that's why being vegan is stooopid" bc I don't fuckig care about opinions like that, I will acknowledge that being vegan or vegetarian is not necessarily synonymous with being friendly to all animals or their habitats. Be mindful of the products you buy for this reason. I'd rather buy actual dairy products from farmers and cows I know (bc I have that privilege) than destroy the homes of an endangered species.
Capitalism makes compassion hard, but not impossible.
Unless you're in charge of all your direct food sources through farming things yourself, there really is no winning.
We buy a quarter cow once or twice a year from a local hobby farmer who only processes a few head each year. Best beef I've ever had. Local pork and chicken are a bit harder to come by around here because they go so fast.
You also have to clear a lot of land to farm corn, soy, palm, etc. and soy processing takes a ton of water, as well as almonds and lots of other water-hungry crops.
There is no environmental winner in a capitalist society.
You have to clear vastly more land to feed animals. Like it's not even close. Do you think the amazon is being cleared for soy beans that humans eat? No, it's all going towards beef.
Saying that you have to clear land to grow the bare minimum food to feed humans is a comically bad argument.
Ideally only local goods they can grow themselves or barter for. I used to intentionally grow stuff that my old neighbor didn't (he did a lot of tomatoes and different peppers, I did a lot of lettuce, kale, broccoli, and herbs) so that we could always trade each other. Even just a few plants of things like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, and stuff like that usually gives you a tonnnn of fruit. Unless you can and preserve it yourself, you'll find yourself just looking for people to give it to, lol.
Not everyone has the privilege of space or time to do stuff like that, though.
Socialism doesn't mean primitive utopia. You still need industrial scale farming to support the population, it can just be less harmful without the financial incentive affecting politics as much, or possibly at all, so you don't get things like cash crops or subsidizing the meat industry to hell and back.
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u/Tofutits_Macgee Mar 03 '25
So this is something I am very passionate about, so I hope you don't mind if I soapbox from this comment.
A lot of vegetarian and vegan food options use palm oil, and while I will not entertain comments like "that's why being vegan is stooopid" bc I don't fuckig care about opinions like that, I will acknowledge that being vegan or vegetarian is not necessarily synonymous with being friendly to all animals or their habitats. Be mindful of the products you buy for this reason. I'd rather buy actual dairy products from farmers and cows I know (bc I have that privilege) than destroy the homes of an endangered species.
Capitalism makes compassion hard, but not impossible.