100: Why Vegan Diets Kill 7.3 B Critters

MK: Every spring, 90 billion honeybees crisscrossed the country in semi-truck to pollinate California's almonds while up to 7.3 billion. Small mammals and insects perish under harvesters each year. How did feeding ourselves become a mass extinction event for the smallest lives on earth? Hey, I'm Michael Kummer.

Here in our homestead, we raise peas, chickens, skis, turkeys, rabbits, and Guinea flower. And also we have a garden, but all of it is managed regeneratively. That means we mimic natural ecosystems to build soil cycle water and boost di biodiversity instead of tearing it down. And while we don't yet raise our own cattle, we partner with grass fed ranchers whose practices align with ours.

So I've seen up close how different systems from Heif hauls to combined harvests impact soil health, water, carbon. And the tiniest creatures you never hear about. Alright, I have to interrupt myself for a moment because this is huge. What is huge? Our giveaway, we are giving away our entire product portfolio.

Why? Well, it's the 100th episode of the Primer Shift podcast. Can you believe it? How quickly time has passed And to celebrate with y'all, we are gonna give away our entire product portfolio, meaning that. One lucky winner. We will get every single one of our products, including the measuring scoop. How cool is that?

To enter the giveaway, just follow both MK Subs and Primer Shift on Instagram and take three friends in the comments of our giveaway post. And that's it. Read the show notes for more information. And now let's continue with the episode. I'm sure you've seen the headlines. Go Vegan, save the Planet, or Eat No Beef to Stop Climate Change.

And you want to do the right thing, but those slogans hide a hidden toll soil washing into streams. Pesticides, wiping out pollinators, machinery, flattening billions of field critters and water wars in drought zones. So in the next 10 to 12 minutes, you'll get data backed, truth on water use, soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and the real carbon cycle.

Plus, while regenerative ruminant systems can rebuild soils better than mono crops. So here's my first question to you. What's better for the planet eating animals? Plants, let me know in the comments. And if you love myth busting deep dives like this, hit subscribe. Now. First, imagine your mourning almond latte, you know to pollinate one acre of almond trees.

Growers need about two beehives and California brings in 2.3 to 2.6 million hives each spring. That's 90 billion bees and pays 360 million in trucking costs. Yet even with that, beekeepers lose 62% of their colonies over winter, meaning 1.1 million hives die off every year. Monocultures like Amman orchards bloom for only a couple of weeks, then offer no forage crowding, hives spreading disease, and pushing peace past endurance industrial.

Almond farms have turned pollination into a squeeze play and half of the hives don't even make it. Next, consider what's under the combined plates. Modern harvesters sweep up everything in the path grain, yes, but also rodents, ground nesting birds, and millions of insects fields. Studies show that an average of six animal deaths per acre at harvest time.

Scale it globally across cereal and oil seed crops, and you get 7.3 billion wild animals killed each year. Mostly mice and voles and deer and insects crushed in seconds. And on top of that, pesticides, on those mono crops. Eliminate roughly. And now settle. You know, sit down for this number, 3.5 million billion.

That's a very, very big number. You know, 3.5 million billions of insects are killed annually driving a two to 3% yearly drop in insect population. And when insects vanish, the entire food web collapses. Here's the thing, a plant only diet can hide an insect apocalypse, and billions of small mammal deaths.

It's not that eating vegan harms no animals. That's a myth. And if you have ever grown your own food, be it a tomato plant or whatever, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The problem is, you know, all of those tiny lives shape the soil, conventional single crop fields through 36 billion tons of topsoil.

Every year soil that took centuries to form, and today, 75% of global farmland is degraded, and we could hit 90% by 2050 if practices don't change. Contrast that with regenerative grazing. By rotating herd moves, mimicking wild herbi wars and leaving plant roots intact. You can sequester about one ton of carbon per hectare per year, rebuild organic matter and restore water holding capacity.

Here's the thing. It's not plants versus animals, per se. It's how we manage land that determines our future. Now, let's settle the real water bill here and where each drop comes from, because there's a huge misconception that raising animals wastes a whole lot of water, whereas raising or growing plants does not.

Let's take our. Favorite almonds. Again, almonds require over 16,000 liters of water per kilogram of nuts, and about 52% is green water, meaning rainfall stored in the soil so you don't have to pay for that. But 44% is blue water from irrigation wells and canals. The remaining 4% is gray water. The amount needed, you know, to dilute salts and and runoff.

In comparison, grass fed and grass finished beef averages just over 8,000 liter per kilogram of carcass weight. Of that 98% is green water, so rained falls directly on pastures, and only 2% is blue water from any supplemental forage or cleaning. But here is the real kicker, you know. Cows recycling much of what they drink because that water doesn't stay in the animal.

40 to 45% is excreted as urine returning moisture and key nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus back into the soil, and that supercharges pasture health. So that take away here is that both nuts and meat drink deeply. But regenerative grazing turns wastewater into a soil building asset. Finally the climate question methane, you know, cows produce methane through enteric fermentation where microbes in the room and break down plant fibers.

Well, that methane makes up, according to official numbers, about 40% of agricultural methane emissions and 14.5% of all human greenhouse gases. That sounds like a lot, right? But here is the key. It's a short cycle exchange, what it's called, what does it mean? Well, here's how it works. Plants pull CO2 from the air cows, eat the plants and microbes convert some carbon into methane cows, burp it back.

But within 12 years, that methane oxidizes back into CO2, that the plants then again consume. And if the herd size remains stable, for the sake of this. Discussion. No new carbon enter enters the atmosphere. It's a closed loop cycle. There is nothing that cows add to the atmosphere. They just recycle. On the flip side.

Fossil fuels, you know, required by heavy machinery to take care of our mono crops. Unlock carbon sequestered over millennia and dump it into the air in a fairly short amount of time, and that increases the total. Carbon pool because that stuff was stored deep into earth and has been been there for millions of years.

That's a whole different discussion, and in case you wonder if you didn't have any ruminants that would eat the grass. Just letting the grass decay releases the same amount of methane, and if the cow eats it and burps it out, no difference whatsoever. The point here is that ruminant methane is a loop.

Oil and gas are a one-way street to warming. So here is what I recommend. Take control of your food supply by growing something yourself. Even a single tomato plant will teach you how harvesting requires managing pests. Yes, you likely have to remove caterpillars by hand, squish them, feed them to the chickens, or do something else.

You are. You will be involved in causing harm to animals if you wanna grow plants. But that hand-on experience builds respect for every organism in the garden and teaches you how stuff really works versus what you've heard online or someone tell you about how bad raising animals is and how, how green raising plants is if you are into consuming.

Animal products seek truly regenerative labels. You know, look for certified grass fed, grass, finished beef pastist, poultry or agroecological crops on your market. You know, or maybe grow it yourself. Best case scenario like we do. But even if you don't, you know, work with someone that you know does the right thing and farms in a way that improves soil quality, that improves the environment, that takes care of animal welfare and anything in between.

And diversify your outdoor spaces. You know, swap out monocultural lawns like Bermuda, which provide almost no habitat for or food for wildlife for pollinator friendly plantings, different crops, weeds at the end of the day and mix species beds. Stop using herbicides, you know, and reduce pesticides. Opt instead for targeted bio controls.

Manual weeding and natural much to suppress weeds without harming insects or soil life. Buy locally and seasonally, you know, source you produce from nearby farms and eat what? What's in season? To cut down on transportation emissions, support local ecosystems and enjoy peak flavorful nutrition. Now, before we wrap it up, I'd like to know from you, which inside surprise you the most, the B highway field, death tolls, water splits, or the methane cycle.

Drop your comment below if you're watching this or consuming this on a platform that supports comments. And if this helped you see food systems in a new light, subscribe for more data driven myth busting on the Primer Shift podcast. Until next time.