Have I turned too "sour"?

Not only as a geography nerd, but also as a nature lover, I spend a big proportion of my free time watching videos or reading blogs that discuss the human impact on the environment. Unfortunately, I have started to notice that an increasing amount of people have turned very sour in regards to the present and the future of our planet.

As Rachel says: "Our planet is beautiful, but it is being destroyed: polar ice caps are melting, forests are being cut down, water is being polluted.."  

While watching Rachel's video, facts and counter-arguments kept flashing in front of my eyes as I was appalled by her dramatic take on the topic. However, I soon realised my blog has turned just as sour. So I asked myself:

What's sweet about soybeans?

In this blog, I attempted to evaluate the different ways in which soy agriculture is challenging planetary boundaries, from freshwaters, to biogeochemical flows and land-system change.

My initial question set me off to understand whether soybeans are destroying the planet. As a result, I only took into consideration the impact of different crops on different planetary boundaries. For instance, soybeans pollute less freshwater than other corn and maize, but they can't produce nowhere near as much biodiesel. 

However, all this agriculture talk lead me to ignore the bigger question: 

Just like most human activities (soybean) agriculture is contributing to destroying our planet and of course nature and wildlife would be better off without it. 

But what's worse?

The world's growing population has to be fed somehow so maybe the sweet side of soybean agriculture is not necessarily comprising of its positive impacts on the environment, but rather the way in which soybean is not as bad as other types of food. 

Soybeans are mainly used to feed animals to support western diet, which includes great quantities of meat. If livestock farming was substituted by soybean agriculture and we gave up meat completely in favour of a soy-based diet, could that save our planet?

Stay tuned to find out!