Comment on If fossil fuels aren't vegan that would mean almost nobody is actually vegan.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 2 days agoThe ones I always come back to are pollinator-dependent crops such as fruits and tree nuts. Wild and feral pollinators are not abundant enough to sustain the level of production we presently demand in these crops. Presumably, if more people were to become vegan then we would demand them even more.
From what I know, vegans oppose the transportation of pollinators for pollinating these crops. Yet it seems most vegans eat plenty of them (apples, peaches, plums, almonds, avocados, etc).
Do those crops depend on transportation of pollinators? To me it seems like they don’t.
By your own admission, there are natural pollinators. We can also manually pollinate them, which reinforces my point that systems that *contain* exploitation should be improved.
Manually pollinating thousands of almond trees is definitely possible. But then you should expect almonds to be in the same price range as vanilla pods, another manually pollinated crop.
Thanks for conceding. Now to your new point: once the majority of people are vegan, we can focus on those systems that can be improved. Currently the majority does not even care about animal exploitation, so there’s very little value in trying to change systems that don’t depend on animal exploitation.
Those two counter examples that I provided aren’t all possibilities to replace open pollination. Surely experts in the field can come up with better solutions once this problem actually becomes a worry in the minds of the majority.
The question is: can you turn it into a product? Would people be willing to pay $100/lb for hand-pollinated almonds? It’s potentially something to explore on a small scale.
I would love to know how many vegans would pay that much for an ethical product.
mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
and why might that bee???
lalo@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
Oh honey, I have no idea
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 2 days ago
You definitely could bring the wild pollinators back. I do that with my own garden in my backyard. But that means you’d have to remove parts of the orchard to provide a habitat for the pollinators, lowering the density of the trees. Lower density => lower production => smaller crop => more expensive almonds (or peaches etc).
If we want everyone to be vegan that’s gonna mean mostly giving up the luxury products that many vegans currently enjoy and switching to staples (beans, squash, corn, root veggies).
lalo@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
Lower density only means lower production of the usable land remains the same. Which would not be the case if the world became vegan: ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
that relies on poore-nemecek 2018, which is problematic. you might be right but your link isn’t good evidence.
mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
If we eliminate animal ag we will have more than enough space for lower density production, here Seppoland as an (albeit extreme) example:
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And since we won’t be eliminating animal ag under capitalism the profit motive is gonna be moot point anyway.