It's a weird thing that interests me about what would happen if the world went vegan.
That thing being WTF would happen to all the land no longer needed for animal agriculture?
If I remember correctly the math is something like this ...
30% of all dry (non sea covered) land area on the planet is used for agriculture.
(Figure reasonably well supported here)
Chuck in a rough guestimate that another 30% is mountains, deserts and other terrains no use for agriculture or human habitation.
That makes the 30% of land used for agriculture around 50% of all
useable dry land area.
If is true that 80% of all agricultural land is used for animal housing, processing, storage, pasturage, feed crops etc ..
That means that global veganism, either instant or gradual, would free up a massive 40% of the useable land that exists on the planet.
The implications of that on land prices are absolutely mind-boggling.
Human relocations from bad land to good land would become possible on an epic scale.
(With bad land for humans not always being bad land for wildlife that would return massive tracts of land back to natural habitat)
The cost of land for commercial use would plummet making the goods and services we need cheaper.
The cost of land for human housing would plummet as land availability soared making building adequate housing stock and the rents and mortgages thereof much more affordable.
A combination of cheaper rents, mortgages, goods and services would mean a better standard of living for everyone, particularly those on lower wages.
The weird thing on my mind being this; The milking and fleecing of the animal flocks and herds appears to be the essential mechanism by which the human flocks and herds trap themselves into being milked and fleeced to death by the land owning classes.
There's a hell of lot of "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince us he doesn't exist" there, IMHO.
Variation in play being "The greatest trick the 'farmers' of people ever pulled was to convince people that people need to farm animals."
- I just had the most amazing dream....
