Resource use

Current agricultural practices—including industrial animal farming—depend heavily on:
  • oil (for transportation), 
  • water (for the animals themselves, and the crops grown to feed those animals), 
  • land (see water). 

Those resources are either subsidized directly through low fees for grazing animals or tax abatements or indirectly in that the costs to society (loss of topsoil, pollution of waterways, depletion of aquifers, destruction of forests and savannah as carbon sinks, release of methane and carbon dioxide leading to faster climate change, higher health-care costs due to illnesses linked to a high-fat diet) are externalized. 

How might proper accounting for such costs—either by making it more directly expensive to use oil, water, and land through taxation or depletion or through making the industry pay for its access to those resources—push people away from meat and dairy? 

How might growing more vegetables and fruits on the available arable land make them less expensive and more available in food deserts, etc.? 

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