Correct, but the vast majority of corn subsidies are to grow corn not meant for humans to eat. They are to grow animal feed, or ethanol.
So the first category I count as subsidizing the meat industry, since it exists purely to make raising live stock cheaper. The second category doesn’t really impact food.
I actually ran into someone with big conspiracy energy at a food expo the other day, and he like started ranting about how the government has proven that it’s more interested in promoting what food pays the most in lobbying over actually caring about our health and it’s like… bro you are channeling some major conspiracy theory vibes but I can’t at all argue with your point. Between the food pyramid being drawn up by farmer lobbyists, corn syrup being put into everything despite it poisoning the lower class, and corps only getting a slap on the wrist when they make false food claims… it’s pretty obvious the government isn’t super concerned with our actual well being with our diets and we should all make sure to look inward.
Literally every single thing you said is just factually wrong.
Choline is bountiful and not a concern www.pcrm.org/news/…/clearing-choline-confusion. “Micronutrients” I’d love to know which ones. B12 also is in some vegetables, but vegetarians/vegans like to take the supplements just because it’s the only one they “might” not get enough of.
Most of that 60% is used for growing corn and soy used to feed live stock, because letting them graze is inefficient. The vast majority of animals butchered for meat are from factory farms, which are powered by corn and soy. Which could have just been human grown soy and sweetcorn, but instead it makes more money to grow cattle grade. sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estimat…
Also they don’t just keep fully grown beef cattle sitting around my friend. They slaughter them on a tight schedule to maximize profit. They don’t function as batteries, they are treated as crops in factories where they are born and die on an optimal schedule. Keeping around a full grown cow marked for beef is a GIANT waste of money, because it needs food, water, and housing despite not going to grow much bigger.
And if meat is the food storage of the world how is it a measly 2% of calories consumed? It feeds next to no one. If it vanished, people would moan and grown, but basically no one would go hungry because it feeds just SO few people on the grand scheme of thing. In fact, if all cows vanished, we’d have vastly more food as the vast amounts of corn, grain, and soy that were going to be fed to cows at a 10:1 return would be sold to people, and instead of growing feed corn the next harvest would be food humans actually like.
I just can not stress enough that they eat 20X as many calories, most of which was grown in fields that could have been from humans, as they provide when eaten. The idea that they are grazing, just simply isn’t true. Letting them graze is an inefficient use of land. cbey.yale.edu/our-stories/disrupting-meat
You’re right, it is class warfare, rich countries should stop eating meat and instead focus fields on crops that are 20X more efficient until everyone has more food than they can possibly eat. www.arktide.org/how-much-food-can-we-grow/#:~:tex….
I’d be down for pescatarians though if we actually got around to taking care of the oceans and doing sustainable farming.
If you can’t provide sources in a response I will just have to ignore as a troll though. Because every point you made was just… factually incorrect. I’m hoping you just heard those things somewhere else and repeated them without checking and didn’t make them up to be a bother.
B12 is the only thing, and we can buy food that reinforced with it so no big deal. Many cereals have it added, and this can not be overstated, it’s the only thing that is problematic for vegans naturally. I’m not even a vegan, but B12 is added to all sorts of foods these days.
Also if that’s the case, then eating meat is class warfare. While people are starving, we are growing food to feed to live stock, to get a food people think tastes better. For every 1000 calories of food fed to cattle, you’ll get less than 100 calories of meat. There is not enough land on the planet for every person to eat meat the way folks in the US do.
globalagriculture.org/…/meat-and-animal-feed.html…. "Nearly 60% of the world’s agricultural land is used for beef production, yet beef accounts for less than 2% of the calories that are consumed throughout the world. "
That 60% is counting all the corn and soy agriculture that is fed straight to beef. The world is not big enough for humans to eat as much as meat as people do. As a delicacy? Sure. But eating it every day? Multiple meals? Part of the world will always starve if we do. There is nothing in meat that we can’t get in other ways, not a single thing. So in all honesty if we want a stable world, we will need to figure out our addiction to meat.
I don’t think you understand what class warfare is.
The fact that it’s co-opted by rich people as trying to convince you that environmental disasters they cause is your problem doesn’t change any points made by actual vegans, or the fact that it’s far far cheaper. Even with all the subsidies given out, a pound of black beans/lentils has more calories/protein than a pound of beef, and will cost 1/5 the price. Sure if I want to splurge and buy a premade veggie burger it’s more expensive, but generally it’s just way more affordable.
You are correct, because barely any actually goes to corn we eat. Those subsidies exist just to make it cheaper to raise live stock. So while direct subsidies are higher for corn, it’s so high purely to help raise live stock. Just because we “can” eat corn doesn’t really impact the fact that we aren’t, it’s mostly live stock eating the corn the subsidies are paying for (And biofuel)