So you think you care about crop deaths…

Crop deaths aren't actually that common

Deaths attributed to one hectare over a crop year are not deaths per lunch. The food from that hectare is divided across thousands of meals.

While a number of studies have been conducted into crop deaths, it's very difficult to get real data, so we have to rely on estimates. I made a calculator to do Fermi estimation, which you can check out at the bottom of this page. It's built from sparse field evidence and explicit modeling choices×sparse field evidence and explicit modeling choices A 2018 paper by Bob Fischer and Andy Lamey audits the thin empirical record. It explains why famous global totals depend on definitions and moral choices as well as field measurements. A 2023 Australian field study observed two machinery deaths among collared mice thought alive at harvest. The measured population decline was only marginal. That result is useful, but it is not a universal death rate. For pesticides, EPA's framework is the other warning: toxicity alone is not field mortality. Exposure, environmental fate, species, and uncertainty all change ecological risk. estimate audit->2023 field study->EPA method->.

Even in the worst case, such as McDonald's cheeseburgers (bun and beef), you'd have to eat hundreds of meals in order to be responsible for even one rodent's death in a wheat field. By contrast, one entire chicken has less than one day's worth of nutrition.

Farmed animals eat crops too

Roughly 40% of U.S. domestic corn use goes to livestock feed×40% of U.S. domestic corn use goes to livestock feedUSDA’s Economic Research Service says livestock feed typically accounts for about 40% of domestic corn use.Fuel ethanol has separately accounted for more than 40% in recent years.Those shares move over time. They do not mean every harvest is divided into a fixed 40% feed and 40% ethanol split.USDA feed use->USDA ethanol use->. Direct food is a much smaller slice, alongside exports and other industrial uses.

About 77% of the global soybean crop by weight goes to livestock feed×About 77% of the global soybean crop by weight goes to livestock feed The Food Climate Research Network estimate allocates 77% of global soy by mass to animal feed. Most soybeans are crushed into meal and oil. That makes soy a co-product system, not a crop in which each bean has only one purpose. By economic value, the animal-feed side still dominates. Saying the feed is all "for cattle" would be too narrow. Poultry and pigs consume large shares of soy meal too. Incidentally, I often eat soy meal sold as textured vegetable protein, or TVP. It is mostly protein and fiber, and it works in all sorts of food. I am boiling some as I type this. A vegan can also eat whole beans or products such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Meat instead of feeding the soy through an animal first. Oxford FCRN report->. When you see stories about soy expansion and South American deforestation, the demand is coming from the livestock industry. Canola is more efficient for making oil; the demand for soy comes from livestock feed.

One caveat is important: most livestock feed dry matter is not human-edible×most livestock feed dry matter is not human-edible"Human-edible" answers a food-competition question. It does not measure field-animal deaths or make the other feed impact-free.The largest non-human-edible categories in Mottet et al.’s global ration are grass and leaves (46%) and crop residues such as straw and stover (19%).Dedicated fodder crops can involve planting, pest control, and harvesting. Grazing and cut grass can also harm animals through land management.Crop residues are trickier. They come from a crop already grown for another output, so assigning its upstream deaths to the residue is a co-product choice—not a second field planted for feed.Livestock also consume about one-third of global cereal production. It's very typical for an animal to graze or forage on pastures for much of their life and then to be "finished" in a feedlot by essentially force-feeding them grains.Mottet et al.->, but the basic point still holds. Dedicated feed crops can have crop deaths. Crop residues share the original crop’s upstream harms.

What about an animal that ate no crops?×A pet peeve I have seen dozens of people claim that they get all of their meat from some down-to-earth homesteading setup. I call this the "my uncle's farm" argument. First of all: I don't believe these people. Maybe they visited a good farm once upon a time. Maybe they really do get some of their meat from their uncle's farm upstate. Maybe they even homestead. I don't believe that they never go to restaurants, order food online, or buy meat from the grocery store. It's not terribly hard to have a homestead and outsource a lot of the things that vegans complain about. If all animal agriculture were replaced with so-called sustainable, local, non-industrialized farms with 100% grass-fed and -finished meat, a steak would cost hundreds of dollars and the majority of the world would have to become vegan out of necessity. The only way the economy can feed all Americans meat every day is through industrialization. That said, my general stance is that, if you are actually the person raising and slaughtering, hunting, or fishing 95% of the animal products you eat, I'm not talking to you and you can feel free to exit this page believing that you've bested me. I also believe that these patterns of behavior result in substantially reduced consumption of animal products. Pastures and other direct land use from animal agriculture still use pesticides, still remove wild habitats, and can cause pollution or other disruptions to local ecosystems. You are still probably responsible for more overall deaths×still probably responsible for more overall deathsJoseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek assembled data from roughly 38,000 farms. Their study finds large variation among producers, but the conclusion is that animal products generally use much more land than plant substitutes.More agricultural land creates more opportunities for habitat displacement and pest control. That is the inference used here.paper + data-> than a vegan who eats crops directly. But, even if this weren't true, if you really care about crop deaths, you should still recognize that vegans reduce crop deaths substantially over virtually all other consumers.

I care about some animals more than others

I know there are some vegans who deny this, and there are even more meat-eaters who will argue that I'm not vegan for thinking this, but I do have a hierarchy of the kinds of animals I care about. For example, I am a human supremacist: I would choose a human's life over a hundred cows. (I suppose depending on the human, but you know what I mean)

I'm also, generally, a mammal supremacist. This is related as well to my size-supremacy; I believe that an elephant's death is substantially more tragic than a chicken's. The hierarchy here is not clear but one very obvious thing is: I care a whole lot more about pigs than I do about insects.

There is evidence that bugs have something approaching feelings, but it's quite limited and, frankly, I'm just not that convinced. My mental model of insects focuses on the hives or colonies: ecologists often refer to these as "super-organisms". Succinctly, if I had to estimate how much I care, killing one queen bee/hive is similar to me to killing one mammal.

Quality of life is important

Generally, the animals who are killed through pesticides or other de-pesting actions have lived their lives otherwise free of the machinations of humanity. They were not caged and they have largely intact and natural mating structures. Often they are killed by accident or entirely incidentally. It's not like "that's ok", but it is way better than the way we treat farmed animals, on the whole.

Veganism isn't absolutist.

I am a vegan and my choices are sometimes responsible for animal deaths. It is not a tenet of veganism to completely eliminate any animal deaths one is responsible for. It is a tenet of veganism to reduce it as far as possible and practicable. I personally think of veganism a little bit like frugality: a frugal person wastes no money. If they can get a good stapler for $5 vs. a slightly better stapler for $300, someone who purchases the $300 stapler will have a hard time claiming they are "frugal". The fact that the other stapler is not $0 is not a good reason for the non-frugal person to throw their hands up in the air and say "you have to spend money either way". If it were true that vegans cause more crop deaths than non-vegans, I would agree that there is a good point to be made. However, "you're still killing some animals, so you're not really vegan" isn't a good point. It's not even hypocritical for a frugal person to pay a small price for something they have to buy.

Sometimes, it's just true!

Not every action that is typically categorized as vegan is a good thing to do, per se.

Avocados and palm oil are often very bad for native ecosystems and water usage. Rice produces significant amounts of methane and fertilizer run-off. Many nuts are similarly horrible for ecosystems or just otherwise inefficient.

Coffee is simply unnecessary, so it might be fair to say something like "anyone who buys coffee for any reason is not frugal", and similarly to say "coffee isn't vegan because it's practicable to simply not drink it".

So I do try to avoid these, and I know many vegans who do as well. "You're not going far enough" is often a fair critique as long as it's not paired with "so why are you even bothering?"