Many women and children in developing countries raise a few backyard chickens for eggs and meat on small scraps of land that are completely unsuitable for farming, either due to their small size, or poor condition.

This veggies vs carnivores debate often overlooks the issue of what kind of land is being discussed. For instance in my native Scotland there is a lot of land from which human food can only be extracted by eating venison from the Red Deer that roam across it. Nice to see that point given prominence.

As for grass-fed beef, definitely healthier, and tastier, though my late aunt Barbara used to claim the Aberdeen-Angus beef had not tasted as good since farmers gave up feeding cattle Swedes (rutabagas) in the winter.

> The mixed message pleases How the World Works, where we tend to look askance at totalizing discourses that anathematize lifestyle choices as categorically verboten.

I look forward to your defense of cannibalism. Surely you've noticed how many people we could feed if we just started devouring the poor!

No one ever mentions this, but if everyone ate only veg then all the farm-raised animals on the planet would soon perish. They couldn't survive in the wild, even if there were enough wild out there for them to run around in. I figure if you eat humanely raised meat, you're doing your part in preserving the species as well as making sure more animals are raised and slaughtered in a humane fashion by boosting demand. Therefore, you're actually doing more to help animals than by being a vegetarian.

Also, I like what the buddhist character in Jack Kerouac's "Dharma Bums"said who claimed not to be a vegetarian because he believed that "all sentient beings should eat what they can get."

There are also water issues - amount of clean water livestock need to drink, and what happens to the surrounding ecosystems when their supermedicated shit runs off into the groundwater.

There are reasonable solutions to these issues besides being vegan. I am a vegetarian, but I am not, in principle, against meat consumption. I gave up meat years ago for environmental and ethical reasons, and even though I could afford organic, free range, humanely slaughtered meat now if I wanted it, I have lost my taste for it. To me, it is just. not. food. We all have to make our own choices. Personally, I think factory farming and chemical processing and packaging of our food could easily kill off our society the way lead pipes are sometimes blamed for ending the Roman Empire. So for me, being vegetarian isn't enough anymore. We grow some of our own food, eat seasonally, support our electric company's "Cow Power" program, and try very hard to make our food from scratch instead of buying it plasticized by processing and packaging. While I appreciate how far the heatlh food industry has come, all that gloriously packaged organic junk food means that wise food choices are no longer as simple as being vegetarian, or even vegan, anymore.

The headline says 'plant' instead of 'planet'.

Is the "small plant" in the title a Venus flytrap?

On a more serious note, my response to the "meat-eaters can't be environmentalists" people is that I am already doing something for the Earth that far overwhelms any lifestyle choices I might make. That would be _not reproducing_. I can never personally consume as many resources as the exponentially increasing descendants of a reproducing vegetarian.

We Are In A Bad Fix

By Mathew Maavak

http://www.countercurrents.org/maavak091007.htm

Let's take this to its obvious logical, moral conclusion, and do as my family and I have done:

We are Extreme Compassionate Vegans (tm). We never eat meat, and we only eat nasty, offensive plants such as Poison Ivy and Skunk Cabbage. Sometimes, for a treat, we eat acorns, but only after they have fallen off their oaks.

If you want a truly "Green" salad, try the dried-out brown pine needles from the forest floor. So yummy, and so incredibly moral!

After The Revolution, everybody will eat this way.

I live in a very rugged, stream-cut area of southeastern Minnesota. Reducing tillage to a minimum is important--so I raise only forage, grass and legumes, on my farm to reduce erosion, to increase soil health and tilth, to improve water retention. And I harvest that forage primarily with sheep and cattle--which are eaten. They also contribute to the tilth and health of the soil, to an obvious reduction in water run-off and soil erosion, and to an increase in the organic matter in the soil.

The meat from those animals is excellent--and wholesome. They live well and they die well--I'm fussy about that. I hope I die as simply and unafraid as they do. Yes, I've watched and I've participated in their deaths: it is, as I understand it, part of my responsibility to them.

again do the math and read your pioneer history. assume 2 acres of land per person to produce a minimal food supply for a year. MA has 43520 acres of land including all non productive land. that land could support 21760 people which falls a bit short of the current population of 6 mil. if you think 2 acres is too large, remember early settlers had 10 acres or more so they would have food when crops were not so good.

local food mean limited monotonous diets most of the year unless you spend a boat load of energy on hydroponic gardens to grow food out of season.

When I started working out (about 12 years ago) I hired a certified personal trainer. The man had to pass nutrition courses for his certification. He told me (and I have since confirmed with journal articles) that an adult needs only one and a half onces of protein a day for a healthy diet. We do not have to eat a pound of beast in order to live. A sensible mix of animal and vegetable protein and fats is good for the body and good use of resources too.

There's also the case of the USDA food pyramid which the agency tried to revise in 1991. Every senator and representative who sat on a committee that funded the USDA received a call from the agribusiness lobby objecting to the new pyramid. The USDA stopped printing the new pyramid (which specified much less meat and dairy that the one it revised or the the one that replaced it). We need more studies like the ones Mr. Leonard brought to our attention, as we can not rely on the government to give us information contrary to agribusiness' bottom line.