are vegetarians more ethical by not eating meat?

[The Grand Nudger]

Look into it and you will find that funneling our grains and soy through animals before consuming it is a vastly less efficient use of the limited ressources (land, water) that we have to grow crops than if we consumed the crops directly, not to mention the by-products of animal agriculture like methane.

No, it isn't. But we could explore the issue. Perhaps if those crops were fit for human consumption - or were grown with a method other than rain-fed ag, or were grown on land suitable for crops that -were- fit for human consumption, or were grown for a market in which there was room for mixed vegetable producers, or were sustained by a crop in high demand and low supply - it would be. They aren't. Meanwhile, what livestock does represent is the act of taking resources that do not yield a crop that is available to us and turning it into one that is.

But just as I mentioned, what you've done here is begin an argument against battery farming - not for a vegetarian diet - or against an omnivorous one.

If every person on the planet would want to eat even half the amount of meat that we consume in the industrialized countries (and with a steak in your mouth its hard to convince them otherwise) then this would indeed be impossible without extremely intensive animal farming, and if such enormeous stress is put on any system it will most certainly have little concern for the well being of its "product" or the environment.

Less meat is fine by me. I already eat "less meat".

This is an invalid all-or-nothing argument. Just because our very presence on this earth is damaging the environment it does not follow that we can't or shouldn't minimize this impact. Some of worst mono-cultures on the planet are the soy fields in South America, and this soy is produced to a significant percentage (85% is one number floating around) for animal feed (because soy contains more protein than grass/corn which makes animals grow faster which yields bigger profits).

It's not an all or nothing -argument-, it's a dry statement of fact. I'm not telling you here that you shouldn't be a vegetarian, or arguing against vegetarianism, I;m reminding you that the grounds you've offered apply equally to yourself and your dietary choices. That there is no moral or ethical high ground available. You don't like battery farms or monocultures. Neither do I - and so, I assume, neither of us supports either except in cases where we have little to no choice (laying aside those moments we break for something really tasty - despite knowing all that shit that goes into it's production).