JD Garland is a Youtuber who criticises vegans and veganism, largely on the grounds that veganism is a toxic religion rather than a genuine moral philosophy. His favoured tactic is to claim that a wholly plant-based diet is far more harmful to animals than any other diet. Unfortunately he rather misrepresents veganism – it’s a moral philosophy together with supporting ethical principles which is constrained by both real world conditions and personal willingness – so his criticisms frequently address strawman arguments.

In his latest two videos, “New! Crop Deaths Proof Veganism is a Lie” parts 1 and 2 he hopes to provide yet more evidence for his claim that veganism is really BAD. The following short critique responds to his basic argument.

Garland claims that because a vegan-friendly, plants-only diet requires crops to be grown AND many animals are killed to grow these crops, such a diet is maximally harmful and worse for animals than any other diet. In particular he argues that a vegan diet requires far more crops to be grown than is the case now.

While this is the overall flavour of these videos, Garland’s main contentions here are that most crops are NOT grown for animal feed and that a vegan diet is not cruelty free, ie that vegans are also responsible for a great many animals being harmed and killed. I agree. However, this is not a knock-down argument that completely defuses the value of veganism. In fact, IF one is worried by the degree of harm to animals from cropping, vegans are doing better than most (we should bear in mind that veganism addresses all the ways we humans interact with other animals, so there is ample scope for vegan ethics to offer significant positive benefits for other species beyond the food system).

The reasoning for this conclusion – that a vegan diet is significantly less harmful to animals than a typical Western diet – is straight-forward.

First, a typical western consumer will eat between 50 and 100, possibly as many as 200 animals in a year, plus however many animals are killed as a by-product of production systems (eg chicks and hens killed in egg production, seafood by-catch, etc). On average, none of this happens for a vegan diet.

Second, as well as food derived from animals, most people also eat foods derived from plants – fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, oils, bread, french fries, cakes, pasta, breakfast cereals, juices, jams and other spreads, beer, wine, sugar, etc. Plus, the animals they eat also eat plants. This means that while a vegan-friendly diet has a cropland footprint, so too does that of the typical consumer.

For a vegan-friendly diet to be more harmful than a typical Western diet, it must have a greater cropland footprint. Most research suggests it does not. The crops grown to feed a typical consumer include that used directly for their food and that used to feed the animals they eat. On average, it seems a typical Western diet requires about 0.20-0.25 hectares per year (a more meat heavy than average diet may use even more), while a plant-based diet requires about 0.12-0.15 hectares. This means that a vegan-friendly diet requires approximately 30% less cropland.

Now we can take a look at the arguments put forward in these two new videos. I suggest that overall, the videos are inaccurate and misrepresent the research presented as evidence. They fail to demonstrate that either more cropland is required for a global plant-based diet or that a vegan diet is more harmful on average.

PART 1 (https://youtu.be/ChU9KECnEL8?si=JZEdnuQ5iagkC5DF)

1. At 0:15. The claim being made is that the majority of crops are grown for human food and not to feed animals. This is true. BUT, a significant proportion is grown for feed – up to 20% – while some other proportion ends up as animal feed. Overall, as much as 40% of global arable land is used to feed livestock (Mottet et al 2018). This is an important point.
2. At 1:38. Here the speaker argues that in a vegan world, there would be more crops grown than is the case now. Assuming he means by this a world with zero animal agriculture and all food derived from plants, this is likely to be untrue. What research there is suggests that less arable land would be required (as mentioned above, up to 30% less – see Peters et al (2016) “Carrying capacity of U.S. agricultural land: Ten diet scenarios” – Figure 2).
3. At 3:30. Both speakers claim Our World in Data is a flawed source and somehow driven by evil interests. However, Our World In Data is generally regarded as a reputable source so we should feel confident their data is reasonably fair and accurate.
4. At 5:00. The speaker claims that the OWID graph showing that 77-80% of agricultural land is used for animal farming is misleading. No, it isn’t – this is correct. So it absolutely is true that IF we eliminated animal farming, we would free up for other uses as much as 70% of land currently used for agriculture. Note that the FAO observed in Mottet et al (2018) that some proportion of existing grazing land could be converted to crops (as much as 14% of global agricultural land).
5. At 8:00. Pretending that anyone says that rocky cliffs can be used for crops is mischievous. What people are saying, the FAO included, is that some land currently used for grazing could be used for cropping, and that’s true. Just because there is land that can’t be used to grow crops doesn’t mean we have to graze animals on it.
6. At 9:20. The claim that ruminant grazing for meat is a benefit is somewhat irrelevant to the main argument. While “regenerative grazing” might be a good strategy for restoring degraded grasslands, this could be achieved in other ways. The example given of bison in Romania is a case in point.
7. At 14:00. The chart from the paper “Crop harvests for direct food use insufficient to meet the UN’s food security goal” makes my point clearly, however Garland and his guest seem to misunderstand what they are looking at. As they themselves observe, the land area for feed is half that of the land area for food. In other words, as much as one-third of all arable land dedicated to food and feed is used for feed. This goes to the point I made earlier about respective cropland footprints.
8. At 15:30. Calories/protein are useful measures for working out the area of land needed to supply food. In particular, we can observe that a hectare of cropland can deliver substantial amounts of human edible protein. This is useful if we want to work out how much land is needed to replace animals with crops.
9. At 18:30. The FAO graph where we see that soy meal is just 5% of livestock feed intake is being used carelessly. The proportion of feed intake would be significantly greater – and more salient – if we were evaluating only arable land use for feed (which is the metric in which we are interested).
10. At 19:15 to 21:00. What’s being avoided here is that a significant proportion of soy is used to feed livestock, with about 93% of the soy harvest supplying the feed market. While oil is a co-product of crushing soy, it is likely not the main driver of soy production as a proportion of global oilcrop.
11. At 21:20. Here the speaker claims that soy oil consistently fetches a higher price than meal, so for comparable units of production, the oil is the better value proposition. However, if we go by commodity prices as suggested in the video, soy meal is the greater earner per hectare of harvest (80% by weight is meal and just 20% by weight is oil).
    
    That means that for 100kg of soy, just 20kg will be oil and 80kg will be the meal. I’m not sure what current prices are, but let’s say they are somewhere around $0.45USD per kg for meal and $1.10USD per kg for oil. So, for my 100kg of soy crush, I would get back $36 for the meal and $22 for the oil.
    
    I checked with an ag consultant about this a while back:
    
    “My understanding is that the money is largely in the meal, but it is worth crushing to remove the oil. The meal is a protein source for feedlots; cows, pigs and chickens. The oil finds its way into many uses (food chain, industrial etc) but it is essentially a byproduct. That is what makes it hard for canola farmers because although canola oil is a superior and preferred oil in food manufacture it’s base price is determined by the soy oil price and soy oil production fluctuates with the need for soy meal. Canola is the reverse of soy in that oil is the valuable component, and a greater % (around 40 c.f. 20% for soybeans) and the meal is essentially a byproduct.”
    
    It is most likely that the feed market drives soy’s presence in the oilseed market.
12. At 22:15. Absolute conspiracy theory nuttery. A truly vegan world would NOT be a benefit to the soy industry which depends on the inexorable growth of CAFO production for its own expansion. For example, the protein from all the meat and dairy produced in the US right now could be replaced by current levels of domestic soy consumption; instead it’s largely wasted being fed to CAFO raised animals (which is why the FAO find that we feed such animals about 2-3 times more human edible protein as we get back). A vegan world would not generate more soy.

PART 2 (https://youtu.be/KUNGGEYsVoU?si=fANjPP06tmzYwmwk)

14. At 1:20 The pie charts from the paper “Nutritional and greenhouse gas impacts of removing animals from US agriculture” is NOT saying that a vegan food system requires three times more land for grains etc in total. It’s saying that for human FOOD, those are the relative proportions of sources. The graph does not include crops currently grown for industrial use, export use or animal feed, so it says nothing at all about the total arable land area needed in the current BAU. In fact, it quite clearly says that grains and soy that are currently used for feed are redirected to food: “human-edible feeds that were previously used by livestock are routed for human consumption”.
15. At 4:42. The speaker refers to the paper “Plant-based diets add to the wastewater phosphorus burden” and suggests that a vegan diet would lead to an increased production of fertiliser and hence there must be an increase in cropland. This is a complete misrepresentation of the paper which notes that:
    
    “Livestock density is a major driver of this P inefficiency and pollution due to the extra land and fertiliser P required to produce animal feed and the difficulties of recycling livestock excreta evenly back to croplands (Leip et al 2015, Withers et al 2020). Increasing global demand for animal food products has increased the demand for mined P by 28% since 1961, and 90% of the environmental P footprint for an individual UK resident is due to animal product consumption (Metson et al 2012). As such, transitioning towards a plant-based diet seems beneficial for P sustainability by reducing global P fertilizer demand and lowering eutrophication rates by reducing individual P footprints (Macdonald et al 2012, Metson et al 2012, Thaler et al 2015).”
    
    and
    
    “Although reducing animal products in diets is an effective way for UK consumers to reduce their P, and other environmental footprints (e.g. Leach et al 2016, González-García et al 2018, Vanham et al 2018), these footprints are not the only metric that must be taken into account when planning for a more sustainable food system.”

16. At 5:30. The graph from the paper, “Essential Amino Acids: Master Regulators of Nutrition and Environmental Footprint” is also being used mischievously. In fact, the graph tells us that the land needed to produce any of the main food types is largest for beef and pork, while the smallest area is needed for most vegetable foods and especially for soybeans.
17. At 12:50. Making up stories about governments/vegans forcing people to be vegan is a nonsense. While some fanatics might indeed advocate for this, at the end of the day any progress towards a “vegan” world would depend entirely on the willingness of the people to be moved in that direction. No government wanting to remain in power would risk losing the support of the vast majority by enforcing dietary limitations. This is just more nutty conspiracy theorising.