Could the Earth sustain an all vegetarian population?

Question

Yes I am talking about the Human Population. Animals cant become vegetarians if they are born as carnivores.

Answer 1

Definitely. Easily. Vegetarian diet uses far less land, far less water, and yes, far less vegetable food than does a meat diet.

You have to grow huge amounts of vegetable food to feed to the meat animals. Much of our agricultaral production is for meat animals instead of humans.

Meat diet is an environmental disaster, hugely increasing groundwater pollution, depletion of water, and using up land that could grow vegetables for humans to eat.

In terms of food per person per acre of land, a vegetarian diet is many many times more efficient than a meat diet.

To comment on a previous answer, forcing people to be vegetarians is not the issue of the question. The question was merely if vegetarian diet is sustainable. And someone expressed concern about the availability of enough land to grow the vegetables. I want to reassure that person that vegetarian diet requires far less land.

No one's advocating forcing anyone to be a vegetarian, but yes, vegetarianism is more sustainable.

Answer 2

All life on Earth is sustained by plants and has been since the beginning(whenever that was). The planet could sustain a much more dense population too. The biosphere is running at about 10% of its potential at this time. But, if a few changes were made in the distribution of elements this would change higher or lower.

Answer 3

It would require less inputs than trying to produce a high enough yield with a mixed diet. It would depend on how big the population was and what available resources we had. The best answer to this would be high yield diverse agricultural system like Permaculture. Which relies on minimum effort for best yield. The difficulty of this of course was that we would have to also consider all the resources we would need, everything from housing to transport. This would put further demands on the system. I don't really want to be in a position where we have to find out.

Answer 4

The real question is can the Earth sustain it's population growth without moving to an all vegetarian diet?

Answer 5

everyone is made differently, you cannot make something that is a carnivore (tigers,wolves,cats,dogs) into a vegetarian. They would die because their systems aren't made to digest only vegetables.
As for humans, well, it's a different thing. Choice. And many (I live in a farming state) do not LIKE (personally I love my broccoli, and salad, and sometimes eat it more than meats.) vegetables. You can't force someone to do something they wouldn't do in the first place.
And while I like my veggies,I also like steaks, and ribs, and everything else.
And then there is the problem of places to grow these vegetables, we've paved over much of the land to grow our own foods....

Answer 6

Of course it could. If it can sustain a mixed diet population, than it could sustain an all veg population and more. It takes less resources to eat a veg diet than a meat intensive diet.

Answer 7

Actually it doesn't matter, because all of the animals humans eat are themselves vegetarians. If we stop eating them, ranchers will quit raising them and then, in essence, we'll end up eating the same vegetables the livestock would have eaten in the first place.

Answer 8

Yes, but we need to upgrade our agriculture infrastructure. Currently, 40% of the land area of earth has some kind of farming done on it. There are ways to make farming take up less space, but if everyone forsake meat tomorrow, a whole lot of food demand will go up and veggies will get hidiously expensive.

Answer 9

There would be ample carnivore and omnivore species remaining to pick up the slack.

Answer 10

Yes. Growing vegetables uses a singnificantly less amount of resources.