Around the world, scientists continue to independently confirm the Humane Party’s findings, and the big takeaway is this: converting to an all-vegan approach to food production would yield a massive expansion in the effective food supply.
For instance, a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that, if the US (which has an estimated human population of 323 million (2016)) abolished the animal-exploitation approach to food production by converting to an all-vegan approach, an additional 350 million people could be fed. The report adds that such a transition “can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland.”
Similarly, a recent study published in Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene found that the world’s current output “of crops is sufficient to provide enough food for the projected global [human] population of 9.7 billion in 2050” if people eliminated animal products from their diet and accepted food that is currently used to feed animal slaves, adding that:
[I]ndustrialised meat and dairy production, which currently relies on feeding 34% of human-edible crop calories to animals globally, is highly inefficient in terms of the provision of human nutrition, since it reduces the energy, protein, iron and zinc supplies potentially available to humans from crops, and is incompatible with a sustainable global food system as currently conceived.
The opportunity to double the effective output of a fundamental and essential process is rare in any business. But the benefits of abolishing the animal-exploitation industries reach well beyond the increase in productivity: transitioning to a plant-based economy also promises significant environmental benefits. For instance, a recent report published in Science found that
[m]oving from current diets to a diet that excludes animal products has transformative potential, reducing food’s land use by 3.1 (2.8-3.3) billion 19 hectares (a 76% reduction), including a 19% reduction in arable land; food’s GHG emissions by 6.6 (5.5-7.4) billion metric tons of CO2eq (a 49% reduction); acidification by 50% (45-54%); eutrophication by 49% (37-56%); and scarcity-weighted freshwater withdrawals by 19% (−5 to 32%) for a 2010 reference year.
The Humane Party, which emerged in 2009 as the U.S.’s—and perhaps the world’s—first vegan, abolitionist political party, is not associated with the above publications, the authors of these reports, or the sponsors behind these studies. Independent verification of the HP’s findings and the science behind the abolitionist position helps to generate a broad base of understanding and support, which will in turn be necessary to achieve success through the political process.
The Humane Herald 