YOUR TEXAS AGRICULTURE MINUTE

Can the planet go vegan?

By Gene Hall

Conversations with vegans can be frustrating. Evidence and talking points clash. I’m sure they are frustrated with me, too. However, I cheer their right to choose a diet. Me, they expect to change.

This argument takes place about an inch deep, comparing total land use and assuming that human food crops can be grown most anywhere. They can’t. 

All cows eat grass. Even the most intense grain fed models are less than 50 percent grain. There are vast acres where virtually nothing can be grown on a large scale except native grass. It’s too arid and the soils don’t work for anything else. We harvest that grass, otherwise useless, with livestock.

Some land where we grow livestock feed will support vegetable production. But those are high risk crops, requiring uninterrupted sources of water, high input costs and hopefully high returns. Disease can rob the profit overnight.

Someday, it may be possible to go all vegan. If we want to. I don’t. But we’re not there yet.

The preceding commentary is brought to you by Texas Farm Bureau, the “Voice of Texas Agriculture.” Called “Your Texas Agriculture Minute,” TFB will issue thought-provoking editorials each week—via print and audio—to spark understanding of agriculture in the Lone Star State and its impact on each and every Texan.

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