are vegetarians more ethical by not eating meat?

[The Grand Nudger]

This is just an assertion without evidence. I don't have a reason to assume that where soy grows other things like corn would not grow as well, plus soy itself is already perfectly suitable for human consumption.

Perhaps if you'd taken the time to look into agricultural practices I wouldn't have to explain this to you. Eh? Soy is not "perfectly suitable for human consumption" by simple virtue of it's being soy. Specific soy cultivars, combined with specific agricultural practices and post harvest procedure - yield soy that is "perfectly suitable for human consumption". The vast majority of soy grown does not satisfy either of these two requirements. The situation is identical in the case of corn. There is a range of environmental and economic "territory" where one could intercrop corn and soy (thanks in large part to hybridization and GM) and where this is applicable - it's done on a massive scale. However, being able to grow corn or soy in an area does not translate to being able to grow corn or soy for human consumption in that area - nor does it qualify the same area as a candidate for, say, mixed vegetable production. That none of this has any bearing on the relative status of our dietary decisions, at this point, bears repeating.

Our food production methods are a function of our food consumption behaviour, wouldn't you agree? But I admit you're right that eating significantly less meat would already put significantly less pressure on this system. The problem is that it is quite subjective and can't be quantified what "less" means, for some people that might mean having a "meatless monday", which would have close to no effect except on their conscience. With vegetarianism there's a clear line.

No, I wouldn't, because they aren't. Our food production methods - specific to grain and livestock - arose as a consequence of our trying to accomplish something else entirely. We endeavored to put grain on everyone's plate (because grain is one of the easiest crops to grow) and by and large we were successful - with impressive yield increases over the last 100 years. Now, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending) as part of that project, a consequence of hybridization if you will, it just so happened that alot of the traits selected for (to increase yield) decreased the value of the crop as a source of available nutrition for human beings. This was further exacerbated by production methodologies, also to increase yields - but more recently to decrease costs- that had the same effect. What we ended up with was a glut of grain - with a large portion of it being unsuitable for human consumption. Now, it was difficult to conceive of growing something else in those areas - and largely because those areas aren't really suitable for much else - and it would seem like a waste, to be able to grow so much on so little......and we started to look for ways to use what had become and agricultural byproduct.

That's why there's corn syrup in everything, for example. You wouldn't wrap your mouth around the cob that syrup came from - and there would be little reason for you to do so, but processed into a sweetener it becomes ever more available to you. This is the same situation that we have in livestock production (not that the livestock are much more suitable to being fed this shit than human beings). We feed the glut of grain we have to the cattle, the cattle process that (horribly, but they process it) and then the beef becomes a product which is more available and more nutritious -to you- than the grain that it was fed.

If you look back at dietary trend data what you'll find is that we ate far less meat before it essentially became a byproduct of grain production (and before grain production became the single most dramatic success story in agriculture-since the dawn of agriculture). Our dietary habits are now - as they have always been- an issue of availability (the very hallmark of what it means to be an omnivore in the first place).