Veganism as Ground State Minimization: Displacement Across Species, Bodies, and Ecosystems

Veganism, through the displacement framework, is the dietary practice that minimizes total displacement across three scales simultaneously: the individual body, the animals whose suffering is displaced through food systems, and planetary ecosystems displaced by industrial animal agriculture. Livestock agriculture uses 77% of agricultural land to produce 17% of global calories, generates 14.5% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and is the leading driver of freshwater depletion.

Factory farming is displacement of suffering at industrial scale. We formalize all three scales, map the nutritional completeness of a properly constituted vegan diet, analyze the glitch structure of animal agriculture, and identify the return path. The displacement framework predicts: the diet that minimizes cost across all three scales simultaneously is plant-based.