> <These vegetarians get their realms of discourse mixed up when they claim
> that we should all be vegetarian because it takes more land to produce
> meat (for human consumption) than it does to produce non-meat foods. >
>
 this is especially  true only in the mono cropping condition not in a
complex ecosystem that can provide plants and animals foods from  the same
surface of land .
 .

 <I'm putting together a list of the arguments for including meat in our
> diets and I'd appreciate your ideas about the environmental costs of meat-
> eating compared with veganism.  I'd be specially grateful for thoughts
> which include consideration of the full "environmental load" - the water,
> species loss, chemical wastes, energy costs etc.>

 grain fed animals have a desastrous ecological foot print . the gain in
 production is a very short lived one as the soil who support those animals
 ( in grains and overgrazed range ) get desertified in the proces ( loss in
 biomass and diversity leading to erosion )

 plants grown on tilled ground are contibuting in a very drastic manner to
 the impoverishement of the soils in opposition of untilled pastures who can
 contibute to growing soils ( via diversity and natural succession ) if not
 overgrazed .

 this argument will not apply to plants foods grown  in untilled soils (
 natural way of farming ).

 jean-claude