What Would Happen If The Whole World Turned Vegetarian?

By R. Siva Kumar - 26 Apr '16 14:53PM

What if the entire world goes vegetarian? Would it help living beings?

The vegetarian population is just 4-5% in the United States and Canada, and 30% in India. While the demand for poultry such as cows, pigs, chickens, and sheep keeps increasing, farmers fear that these animals too will start to disappear if the demand for their meat comes down.

Would that be harmful to the world? An asapSCIENCE video explains that with a reduction in the population of these animals, a large part of the land, currently used for pasture, would become free. While part of this land is used to grow crops to feed the animals, the other part is used to cultivate additional vegetable crops. Most of the land used for pastures is too dry to grow crops, and without humans cultivating the land, these areas could become deserts.

With the reduction in carbon-dioxide absorbing trees, there is a boost in the carbon content of the world. Moreover, Timeforchange.org explains that farm animals such as cows and pigs tend to add to climate change by contributing a lot of methane that has been found in their excrement. This chemical is 25 times more powerful than carbon-dioxide in creating climate change.

With a loss in forests, livestock production may lead to approximately 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which are more toxic than all the cars, buses, airplanes, and trains.

Hence, vegetarianism would benefit the world.

One or two negative effects of vegetarianism would be the loss of cheap sources of leather or animal fats used in cosmetics, candles and detergents. Moreover, with 1 billion small scale farmers in the world, a switch over to vegetarianism would force them to shift their lifestyles.