You do know I’m taking the piss, don’t you? @BoredDarkLord

@Jimbojambo yeah, but someone Else is bound to kick off. They are probably just consulting their Pinterest page of farm murder posts before replying

But, Just to be devil’s advocate, if we weren’t farming species for food, and wanted the land to grow vegetables, we’d wipe them out. That’s how humans operate. @hartfire

@Jimbojambo I agree that humanity as a species is greedy. But nothing is as simple as that.

For starters, it's highly probably that most species, including ourselves, will become extinct within a hundred years due to climate change. Thousands have already gone extinct due to habitat loss. More will die out with the now unavoidable 1.5ºC rise over the next ten years.

But cattle, sheep and goats can live in environments where the soil is too poor or the terrain is too rough to farm - where and only grass and weeds can survive.
Pigs can live in swamps, and hens naturally live in forests.

There's also the economics. It takes acres of grass, or 14 lbs of grain to grow 1 lb of beef. That makes meat a very costly use of the earth's arable land areas. Other livestock are somewhat less costly, but still very expensive compared with the costs of resources for growing vegetables.

Most Westerners eat far more meat than they need. At most, the body needs only as much as the size of the palm of one hand per day to meet all needs for protein. More than that puts strain on the kidneys and contributes to the development of kidney disease in later life.

I think vegans tend to go over the top with their arguments - but they're not entirely wrong either.