A switch from meat to vegan diet gives no land-use gain
06/09/2018
The study, which comes from academics at institutions such as Tufts University in Boston and Syracuse University in New York State, analysed ‘carrying capacity’, a measure of how many hectares of cultivated cropland are required to provide food for people. It made comparisons depending on diet.
It concluded that the diet with the lowest use of cultivated cropland, at 1,200 square-metres per person per year, is one in which people eat eggs and dairy products as well as plant-based foods. Eating only plant-based foods, as vegans do, takes cultivated cropland usage up to 1,300 square-metres per person per year.
This is the same area of cultivated cropland required to produce all food, including meat, for people who eat meat and fish 60% or 40% of the time and vegetables, eggs and dairy the rest of the time. A diet that involves eating meat at more than 60% of meals requires slightly more cultivated cropland.
However, the study shows that a diet that involves eating meat 20% of the time and vegetables, eggs and dairy the rest of the time requires less cultivated cropland than a vegan diet, 1,200 square-metres, the same as the top-scoring ‘ovo-vegetarian’ diet. The meat-eating diet scores a little lower because, naturally, it also requires some grazing land and perennial cropland.
Authors of the study pointed out that a failure to recognise that not all agricultural land is suitable for cultivating crops has made earlier studies inaccurate. Campaign groups promoting a vegan diet and lifestyle have frequently quoted studies of this kind.
“While agricultural land is often discussed in the aggregate,” the authors of this report say, “our analysis shows that accounting for the partitioning of land between grazing land, cultivated cropland and perennial cropland has a strong influence on estimates of carrying capacity. We demonstrate that, under a range of land use conditions, diets with low-to-modest amounts of meat outperform a vegan diet.”
The authors published an article on their study in scientific journal Elementa.
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