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Plant-based diets would cut humanity’s land use by 73%: An overlooked answer to the climate crisis
(veganhorizon.substack.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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You know what else would help? Growing food local, sustainable farming, less animal farming. Getting rid of ocean shipping, that accounts for 40% of global emissions.
I don't know about that. That means only Mediterranean countries get olive oil, only tropical countries get bananas, avocados and chocolate, and so on.
Most countries would have to use a lot more greenhouses, more water, import soil, use more fertilizers.
Or just use local alternatives that are less harsh on their local ecosystem? No one needs olive oil, especially if you're in the Americas where there's a thousand plants able to produce more oil per acre, most of which are pretty tasty. Avocados are an anomaly in the plant world given they are a fatty fruit, but their water requirements make growing them outside the literal rainforests they were domesticated in a nightmare -- there are no large scale avocado farms that are in their native climate, they should be eliminated from all international diets.
And while bananas are neat, there are significantly better sources of potassium, and there's a native tuber producing more potassium than any banana in every single continent if not every single country.
The reason a lot of vegetables have become just so bland and samey is because we are importing non-native plants to places and just ignoring local, native alternatives that have been growing there, statistically in a domesticated way, for the last 10,000 years.
Native plants are awesome, usually a lot more tasty than the bland super spread counterparts, and are easier to farm with less fertilizer and less maintenance like pest spray -- since they've been fighting off local bugs and competitors since before humans touched the ground.
Native fetishization is kind of bullshit in age of climate change I get your point about growing what you can grow where you are within obvious limits but in a few years many native species will not grow in their historical regions and new shit will and soil quality and bearing vary a lot and regions with lots of 0people don't always have best soil water and stuff for growing lots plants.
I agree reducing shipping is important and we need to eat less stupid but native is bullshit fetishism one of them oversimplification intellectual lacunae that let's you stop thinking without encountering or fully articulation the problem
This isn't native fetishization, this is literally fighting climate change. Most native plants have survived far worse fluxations than anything that will happen in our lifetime (and I am a believer we'll have a BOE by 2030), additionally this reduces water use, fertilization use, with the addition of the obvious less fuel use.
Yes, you will have to give up your almonds, which are killing California, and avacados, which are devastating communities across South America. Too bad. Native plants are literally designed over the last 200k years or more to be where they are. That includes more than one ice age.