Water is a cycle and isn't actually consumed. Fertilizer requires energy, as does transport.
If we make plant agriculture "sustainable" (i.e. independent of fossil fuels) then we will also make meat agriculture sustainable.
If we make plant agriculture "sustainable" (i.e. independent of fossil fuels) then we will also make meat agriculture sustainable.
Land use is a huge concern, given we already use half of the world’s habitable land for our agriculture [1], putting immense pressure on ecosystems and biodiversity due to this habitat loss.
Organic agriculture is less intensive, meaning for the same total food production, it must be more extensive — it requires more land [2].
That’s not to say there aren’t very good reasons to shift to organic agriculture. Fertilizer runoff leads to vast ocean dead zones, such as that in the Gulf of Mexico [3]. Further, we have an estimated 60 years of farming left if soil depletion continues at its current pace [4].
If we are to both curtail our land use and switch to regenerative farming methods, we must curtail meat production.
It takes around 100 times as much land to produce 1 calorie of beef or lamb versus plant-based alternatives (similar for the same quantity of protein) [5], such that we could reduce our land use for farming from 4 billion to 1 billion hectares and still feed the whole world on plant-based diets.
I’m not sure if I’ve connected the dots here especially well, but I hope I’ve at least conveyed that sustainability is multi-dimensional, and goes far beyond just getting off fossil fuels — even though that is a vital step.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
[2]: https://ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agriculture-better-for...
[3]: https://oceantoday.noaa.gov/deadzonegulf-2021/welcome.html
[4]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...