2019 The Year Of The Vegan?

Unearthly wrote: »

https://news.sky.com/story/consumers-ate-150-million-more-meat-free-dinners-last-year-survey-11628745

Nice report on increase in meat free meals in UK for 2018

The funny thing is that those who eat normal healthy diets frequently eat 'meat free meals' for example:

Breakfast musleli and milk - check

Lunch soup and roll with- butter check

Dinner meat veg and optional carbohydrates

It's all part of a healthy omnivorous diet and not at all unusual. The way some go on on you would swear that people were gnawing raw carcasses on a permanent basis :rolleyes:

Unearthly wrote: »

Report says 'evening meals'
Good thing you read the link before jumping in at the chance to negatively react to anything pro vegetarian/vegan....Oh wait :

Nope. Just replying to your comment here tbh.
You said ...

Unearthly wrote: »

https://news.sky.com/story/consumers-ate-150-million-more-meat-free-dinners-last-year-survey-1162874

Nice report on increase in meat free meals in UK for 2018

I replied to what you wrote. Is that comment wrong? If so might be best to correct it so. But good thing at jumping at the chance to make a negative comment against anyone pointing out that people generally eat lots of 'meat free meals' along with eating meals with meat as well.

Tbh that report is a bit all over the place at best and poorly written. First it claims in the headline that it covers an entire year (2018). Then it goes on about relevant "market data, covering the 12 weeks to 27 January" (year unspecified) and then gives figures relating to sales of 'fruit, vegetables and salad' for the month of January only.

But no worries - I can see how you got mixed up

The report does ask "Why you can trust Sky News" - good question lol

Unearthly wrote: »

You didn't read the link at 1st and got caught out. Move on GozundaThe grocery data was published alongside it on Kantar. What's the issue here? Doesn't contradict itself since it's a separate data review

Lol. Looks looks like you hadn't when you wrote your comment. My reply was to that post. But you know that.

Read the article and as I said it really is very poorly written. No worries though Uneathly, it's just another piece of bad journalism imo - but there you go ....

Unearthly wrote: »

It's common courtesy that if you are going to reply to someone's post with quite a lengthy post then you should read the actual link I was talking about It would be like me going to the farmer forum, quoting an article you posted, I write up a big post and then later admit I hadn't read it. Thankfully I wouldn't be so foolish

Unearthly leave it go - you're flogging a dead horse. My first (& rather concise) comment in reply to yours stands.

As you know I already have read and quoted from same - corgito, ergo sum. I believe It's also common courtesy to at least admit to such a simple mistake which I acknowledged could be made by anyone reading that fairly rubbish article.

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Did the math on the above for others to use in the future. Per metric ton of soy beans here are the prices for each:
Soy oil: $70.47 - $115
Soy meal: $282.92 - $307.07
Per bean the meal is worth from 3 to 4 times the oil.

Interesting calculations Tar. However the market prices of these products are not listed as a 'price per bean'.

The product prices are quoted by metric ton of extracted oil and by products (husks plus meal or husks and meal)

It remains that soya oil is the primary and most valuable product on a standard weight by weight basis.

The history of modern soya bean cultivation is quite interesting . The crop was first grown in the US to provide domestic supplies of indigenous cooking oil during WW2. It was only after that markets for by-product such as the meal and husks were diverted to cheap animal feed especially for US based feedlot type production methods.

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Markets do sell by weight of things yes, that makes sense. However, the market nomenclature does not matter to the people growing the product. That's not how it works on the business side of things for them.

For people expanding their farming operations into jungles to the detriment of the environment, they care about the amount they can make for their product and expand based on that.

For an operation growing soy they determine if they will do so and how aggressively they will do so based on how much profit they can get for that product, taking into account the price of its constituents, so per weight of beans how much they can make for the meal and for the oil. With the meal being the vast bulk of their revenue, they will expand moreso based on that over the lesser amount of revenue they can get for the oil.

What a farmer gets for beans versus what large corporations make in profits doesn't amount to a 'hill of any type of beans' tbh ....

Interestingly the bulk of the worlds soya beans are grown in the US and elsewhere and not in 'jungles'

In 2015/16, the United States was the leading soybean producing country with a production volume of 106.93 million metric tons. As of September 2017, the production of soybeans in the U.S. was forecasted to reach some 120.59 million metric tons in 2017/2018.(FAO figures)

Now for the fun part- China is the leading purchaser and user of all soya bean products.

Soybean imports to China have shown an increasing trend over the years, and increased to 94 million tons in 2017/2018, compared to 82 million tons in 2015/2016 season.

For the year 2016/2017 Worldwide soybean production was deemed to have been the largest crop in a decade, with an an estimated 348 million tons.

China grows 12.2 million metric tons of soya. China also accounts for 60 percent of worldwide soybean imports, according to Commodity Basis, ( 94 million tons in 2018), making it the single largest importer and user of soybeans in the world. In total China imports grows and uses over a third of all soy beans produced on the planet.

Food for thought indeed ...

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

I was using the term poorly perhaps, as in the farmer being the person owning the farming operation. I'm sure the actual farmers regrettably have terrible conditions there. The real point of my post was that the people in charge, who are expanding into nature and damaging it, are doing so based on revenue and profit, of which the bulk comes from the meal for primarily livestock, not the oil for humans. That is what the news articles mean when they say that the environment is being ravaged by soy due to expansion for livestock feed. These people are chasing the money and hurting the planet for it.

As detailed above the bulk of soya bean production comes from the US on existing farmland and is used in rotation with other crops (There are claims this helps soil fertility). But no I don't believe the farmers there "have terrible conditions" - they do however get squeezed by the large corporations though. What I find that a lot of what is put out about soya (And I'm no fan btw) is largely misinformation and often repeatedly used without checking the primary industry data. The demand for soya oil continues to grow. And with it the production of soya by-products. It remains that at the end of the day that this soya meal is a commercial by product which would be used somewhere. Shooting all the livestock won't change that ...

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

The US grows 34% of the worlds soy, there is plenty grown elsewhere and it was more the other 66% I was concerned about than those in a rich country like America. Such as the 30% in Brazil and so on, deforestation of the amazon and all that. It certainly could diminish, products rise and fall.

And yet we do need to acknowledge that the US is using its own Soy bean crop to produce oil and are also using by-product soymeal to fed its own cattle.

Looking at all the scaremongering about soybean production we never see any of this information - just the same old thing often repeated without reference to any actual data.

As to Brazil. Again it is necessary to drill down into the actual data to find out why soybean production is increasing in Brazil and who are the principle buyers.

So looking at Brazil - China (a country with a population of 1.386 Billion people) is Brazil's No. 1 buyer of soybeans. China is also a major purchaser of Brazilian pork, beef and poultry.

Brazil exported 50.9 million tonnes of soybeans to China from January to August, 2018 or 78.8 percent of its total exports of the oilseed with Brazil's soybean exports by value to China up 18 percent through the first seven months of last year

Interestingly Brazil all but stopped growth of soy farming in newly deforested parts of its Amazon rainforest during the 2016-2017 crop year after efforts to halt purchases of beans from such areas.

However production is now being pushed in Brazils Cerrado's wooded grasslands, largely fueled by increasing demand from China.

Comparatively the EU imports some 14 million tonnes of soybeans from the Brazil. Much of this is again processed as oil or with the by product being processed for different types of animal and human foods

The US is largely self sufficient in Soy beans. With much of its own crop being used for oil, ethanol production and animal feed. The use of soybean meal derived animal feed there has little if any effect on the Brazillian rainforest.

So objectively looking at the data - the West most frequently maligned for 'destroying the rainforests' in reality has a much smaller impact in countries like Brazil compared to large economy's such as China and it's increasing demand for soybeans. Again I will state I am no great fan of Soybean production in such areas and I would prefer to see alternative type feeds being used. But for what its worth I know that any of this is probably not going to change much of absolute misinformation and rubbish out there already ...

A few of my mates are over in New York this week. None of them are vegan. They’re sending me loads of messages/photos of vegan cafes/restaurants menus. Seems to be huge over there.

They’re even having vegan course themselves.

Good stuff.

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

What's that called?

2 just opened and another next month.

Kale and Coco on Grangegorman Road Lwr & Beo on Manor street. Next month should see V-Face burgers opening on North Brunswick Street.