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Plant Milk Is Better For Us and the Climate. So Why Do We Subsidize Dairy?
(www.motherjones.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Except almonds. Almonds are terrible water wasters, and mostly grown in California where they can least afford the water.
Still more efficient on resource utilization than animal agriculture. If you hate almond milk for that reason, you should want the dairy industry completely abolished.
Shit, you should want all animal agriculture banned.
Based and correct.
Eh, there are plenty of use cases where certain land types aren't really arable. Ruminants fill that niche easily.
The catch is that like 80% of the land used for livestock currently could also use crops instead.
https://freefromharm.org/agriculture-environment/saving-the-world-with-livestock-the-allan-savory-approach-examined/
Fwiw US dairy plans to be carbon neutral by 2050.
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/27/1095100351/the-dairy-industry-aims-to-be-carbon-neutral-by-2050-heres-what-it-means-for-far
But we don't need to use all that land. Plant-based diets use 70% less land, including 22% less crop land.
The bigger catch is that 70% of all crops we grow go to our livestock.
We wouldn't need to use those lands if we just ate less meat.
this isn't true
Livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land, while supplying only 18% of calories and 37% of protein.
Source
much of that is grazing land, not crops.
Added to what the other guy said (that it's grazing land that HAS to fallow whether used or not), that 77% number ALSO counts the waste from crops we're growing for humans, waste that would be going to an incinerator if they weren't going to a cow or pig.
Very few (if any, depending how you define the breakdown) crops are grown with animals as their focus. It just so happens that's how much of those crops we cannot digest.
I don’t want it gone but I don’t want it subsidized. I’m not planning on being vegan but I’m cutting out a ton of animal protein from my life. I make it a special thing.
So you're saying almond milk drinkers could end up going to hell someday?
/s -The Good Place reference
I feel like trying to compare a water intensive crop grown in a place known for drought to crops that can be grown in many places where water is far more readily available is being a bit disingenuous. You're not comparing apples to apples.
I mean, you could say that we shouldn't be wasting resources on animal agriculture anywhere, but especially in the same places that don't have enough water for crops.
Feeding food and giving water to other "food" will always be far less efficient than just providing a fraction of that water to plant-based foods. Animal agriculture is a waste.
Almond is the worst of the nut milks, but it's STILL way better for the environment than dairy.
What you get in stores is not even really almond milk. Real almond milk would be way too expensive to be competitive.
Exactly... Ughh I still fail to understand why almond milk is popular among vegans. It's very expensive and doesn't even taste that nice...
True. Soy and oat milk can be very good, depending on the brand.
oat milk is the jammy out of all the alt milks imo
Reccomendation on brands?
My favorite oat milk is Oatly Barista, the best soy milk I've tried is from Joya, but I haven't seen it outside of Austria yet. Alpro is quite good and more widely available (at least in Europe). In North America, Silk seems to be great from what I've heard. Store brand soy milks tend to taste pretty bad from my experience here in Germany, but some of them might have improved since I tried them years ago.
Oatly and Califia both have great oat milks. They also have barista milks that substitute for half and half in coffee!
Thank you for the suggestions!
Welcome! Feel free to message with any questions or if you'd like more suggestions!
Even soy milk in the US isn't really just soy milk. There are so much stuff added to it. It's thick too.
I grew up drinking a lot of real soy milk which has a watery consistency that I can get at some Vietnamese / Chinese grocery stores or tofu shops. Flavor is quite different too.
Though I guess the US put thickeners and other stuff into theirs to help imitate milk
Still better than dairy.