In advance of summer school…

[Young Master Smeet]

https://theconversation.com/six-ways-the-meat-on-your-plate-is-killing-the-planet-76128

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The scale of the problem can also be seen in land use: around 30% of the earth’s land surface is currently used for livestock farming. Since food, water and land are scarce in many parts of the world, this represents an inefficient use of resources.

and

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Nowhere is this impact more apparent than climate change – livestock farming contributes 18% of human produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. This is more than all emissions from ships, planes, trucks, cars and all other transport put together.

JUst to spoil some of my prepared responses to Paddy's talk: these features of the meat industry actually go straight back to capitalism itself.  Capitalism rewards capital intensive industries, the value created in the foodstock gets transferred to the meat, which is added to again when the meat is slaughtered, procesed and adulterated.  Conversely, the meat itself uses (in its intensively farmed form) less land: the value of land is governed by its least productive use, so using land that would otherwise produce crops, to produce meat (in big big sheds) means the producer can capture back some of the rental value of their land.

Meat is a surplus value hunter.

[alanjjohnstone]

This forum also recently pre-empted this item and touched on some of the points that will arise https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/principle-healthy-meaningful-living#comment-39407It is clear that there will be a continuous debate on the issue of sustainable food production and consumption which will be a complex and complicated one that encompasses many different cultures and circumstances. Definitely not a case of one size fits all. Agriculture both contributes to and is affected by climate change. It adds 10% to hothouses gases. Since reducing the amount of food or expanding arable land is not an option, then we have to tackle the choice of consumption and the methods of producing.Can we come up with definitive answers currently? I am not so sure we can but the more those who do possess the knowledge and experience become socialists – the farmers, the agronomists, and others in the whole food chain begin to apply non-profit mind-set, our options of good practices will begin to become clearer. 

[Young Master Smeet]

At the point of being boring, exactly: the point isn't a rock solid commitment to this or that model of agriculture, but to the principle that conscious human control freed from the logic of capital and it's anti-human incentives will be in charge.Just to put a spanner in the ethical vegan works: vat grown meat would be unacceptable to the ethical vegans if 1 cell from a living animal was ever involved in its production, from a practical point of view, it could be become a land and resource efficient way of producing nutrition.Quorn is unacceptable because it relies on eggs, but a massive upscale of micoprotein production, using marginal land to raise poultry is a viable option and would represent a substantial change in itself.

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