Sam Corrigan
Is the livestock industry massively unhealthy for the planet? Yes, absolutely. Is the beef industry responsible for 80 percent of the deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, according to the Yale School of Forestry? Yep. A viewpoint last week accurately laid out these points as part of a larger argument advocating for more people to switch from omnivorous diets to vegan ones.
That article centered on the idea of voting with one’s dollar; purposefully tailoring your consumer purchases in an effort to sway markets. To cut to the chase, voting with your dollar (let’s call it ethical consumption) is, in the larger scheme of things, impractical at best and impossible at worst.
Let’s go back and examine Brazilian deforestation for an example: cattle ranching accounts for roughly 80 percent of rainforest destruction, but almost all the remaining 20 percent is thanks to crop farming, and specifically the soy industry. In 2018, Brazil’s agricultural exports to the U.S. totaled $3.3 billion, of which more than $1.7 billion was comprised of plant-based products such as coffee, tobacco and fruit juice. Red meats only made up around $280 million. In fact, the U.S. isn’t even in the top 15 importers of Brazilian beef, being outpaced by countries like Libya and Angola.
Soy has been in the news recently, being one of the industries heavily impacted by the ongoing U.S. trade conflict with China. East Asia is one of the largest markets for soy products, and the increased costs to import have cut the industry’s profits by a huge margin. Companies being what they are, they seek to recoup these losses in other ways. For instance, by increasing production.
In 2016, the Brazilian company Hidrovias do Brazil started a project to build a new commercial port just outside the city of Itaituba, located near the very heart of the Amazon rainforest. The port is especially dedicated, according to Hidrovias, to servicing and expanding local agribusinesses. More than half of the shares in Hidrovias are owned by a company called Pátria Investimentos, while another 10 percent or so are owned by the American investment firm Blackstone. The catch? Blackstone also owns Pátria.
Blackstone itself has close ties with multiple major U.S. politicians, most notably President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The former is a close friend of Blackstone founder and CEO Steve Schwarzman, and the latter has received more than $10 million in campaign donations, the most of any of McConnell’s donors. An American company, at first glance uninvolved with agriculture, nevertheless owns the companies destroying the Amazon and the politicians enabling it.
So while the cattle industry is, by a wide margin, the leading cause of Amazon deforestation, simply saying that not eating meat will help stop the destruction is a gross oversimplification. American purchases of beef are hugely unlikely to impact Amazon deforestation, simply by virtue of the fact that we just don’t have access to Brazilian beef or soy, for that matter. The U.S. outstrips Brazil in production of both. Making a choice to not consume meat will likely only affect U.S. environmental causes. To stop Brazilian ranchers from burning the Amazon, you’re going to need to preach to Hong Kong, Russia and Brazil itself.
Which brings me back to voting with one’s dollar. A basic premise of this method is that you are able to tell exactly what your dollar is going towards. For example, knowing that when you pay for a mass-produced steak, you’re paying to a deeply unhealthy industry. But these days, it’s nearly impossible to truly know what your purchase is paying for. Go to a baseball game, and your dollar might make its way to Disney.
Without full knowledge of the intricate webs of production and investment behind each and every product, I would argue that it is impossible to make ethical purchases under our current economic system. Beef isn’t the problem — the industry is.
Voting, not with dollar but with ballot, for motivated pro-environmental and pro-regulation politicians can inspire more change. Campaign for cleaner and more efficient farming practices. Get outand vote, get out and protest, get out and take a stand against the companies ruining the world. Do whatever you can, and do not forget who the true enemy is.