vegan columbus: vegan living in central ohio

First of all, the title is a reference to this idiotic post on veganism from the "Stuff White People Like" blog. Summary: they think vegans are ineffectual people full of misguided liberal guilt, and they think it's hilarious. (whole separate rant could be written on how apathy is the only thing that isn't "lame" or "liberal" or whatever, but another time.)

So everyone knows that it takes so much more resources to produce the same amount of food when the "food" in question is animal-derived. Some huge percentage of the world's farmland is used to feed "food" animals instead of to feed people directly. It also wastes other resources like clean water and petroleum, since so much more transportation is required to get the grains made, and to get them to the animals, and to get the animals to the slaughter, and to get the meat to the stores, and then to get most of the meat back out of the stores because it goes bad so quickly. It would be much more efficient to use that farmland to feed humans directly.

But does veganism do anything for world hunger?

Naive answer: Yes, because if there's more food for humans then there won't be shortages.

"Educated" (read:hiply cynical) answer: No, because food shortages are caused by economic and geopolitical factors much more complex than simple net food resources on the planet.

No bullshit answer: Yes, because even though the economic and geopolitical factors involved are quite complicated in many individual cases, basic supply and demand economics still factor in significantly in the creation of this problem. When one considers world food shortages in terms of actual examples rather than just an abstract postmodern boogeyman, this becomes clear: