Article
Soy and Deforestation
Soy goodbye to the rainforest
“If there are more vegans, then we will need to grow more soy, and thus more rainforest will be cleared.”
If eating more soy really does more damage than eating meat, that would be a solid reason for me to go back. And yes, soy farming is a major driver of deforestation in South America. So should we eat more animals to reduce soy consumption? Wait a second? What do those animals eat?
Bean Counting
Around 80% of global soy is fed to livestock, like chickens, pigs and farmed fish. Then only around 6% is used for human consumption directly as food like tofu and soy milk. Then the rest is cooking oil and biofuel.
So eating animals is just eating soy but indirectly, and with huge inefficiencies along the way.
So if I really care about saving the rainforest and reducing deforestation, I should focus on reducing my consumption of animal products, not soy itself.
Soy less
Source: Our World in Data: Global land use across different diets, based on Poore & Nemecek (2018).
If everyone ate plants directly, we’d need about 75% less farmland. Imagine how much rainforest and land could be spared if we didn’t have to grow so much soy to feed animals first.
So yes, soy can be bad for rainforests as it’s mostly grown to feed animals rather than people directly. The fix it seems is to reduce our consumption of animal products and eat plants directly.