Childhood indoctrination

[littleendian]

Much of the world depends on heavily ag'd crops and animals, either as food or to sell for money to buy food.

Is there a better way but to remove my personal demand for these products by buying local, organic veggies? You can only change your own behaviour and then hope that others see it as a good thing and change theirs too.

Unless you have a very specific system ready to go in which you IMMEDIATELY replace all current sources of money and food with something better, and have the FULL AND UTTER cooperation of all leaders involved, you will have to settle for very gradual - VERY GRADUAL - change...if it happens at all.

I completely agree, except for the defeatist sentiment. I would also argue that most positive changes in history, except for a few like the French Revolution, were gradual processes, not immediate, but driven by very many individuals in their own very limited range of influence. I'm quite optimistic that I will still be around to see the entire veganism thing taking off full-scale, but of course nobody knows.

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However there is reason to believe that at least where I live there is an abundance of fertile land that could certainly be used to feed the local population comfortably.

Ah, the inequitable distribution of natural resources, wonderful isn't it?

I can only change myself and therefore must operate within my immediate environment. Once the problem is solved for central Europe, we can then start asking questions about how we could assist others who might not live on such fertile ground.

Perhaps I haven't said enough to make this clear, the notion that it would be unworkable -from a technical point of view- is not at issue, we can do this. However, in order to do this, we would require an increase in related industries that offer no controls, no rights, no nothing - either to humans or to animals- in order to accomplish it. Industries, mind you, which already have track records that read like a demon's resume. What we'd be choosing, in effect, is what point we would like to shuffle all of this misery away at (and the exact status of said misery). Now, personally, I'd rather coddle some livestock for a few years then hit them with the captive bolt - as opposed to cutting a deal with the next warlord or multinational that finds a source of crude in a malleable location. You?

I don't understand why you keep pondering the petrochem thing, I am not advertising conventional ag and I haven't bought conventionally grown crops for years, what I eat is all organic and more and more local. Here in Germany any social-welfare receiver can afford to live off organic if (s)he chooses to go the extra mile and maybe buy from a farmers market or similar. It's really not that much more expensive, it's simply a question of priorities. Veganism doesn't in-and-off-itself increase anyones dependence on petrochem.

I'll limit my discussion to Europe, since that's where in my view veganism does make sense today, I'm not talking about Africa or Australia where things might look very different, as was described by Kichi etc.

While organic might be a less efficient way when it comes to yield, that would hardly be a significant problem, seeing how much food we waste here because of over-production or to keep prices stable. Also how much we eat is not only governed by its caloric content but also by nutrients found in the food (or not), and here organic produce just simply delivers more bang per pound. So basically I don't buy the notion that we can't feed everyone with organic, local produce. It might be a utopian view, but it's good to aim at the impossible to achieve the best results.