Could giving good vegan food to poor people compete with other effective charity?
The idea: A charity develops or purchases nutrition-complete vegan food, ships it to areas of global poverty, and distributes it to the poorest for free.
The positive impact would be: Improved practical knowledge and demand to make nutrition-complete affordable vegan food, improved nutrition and purchasing power for the poor, reduced farm animal use without appeals to values or emotions toward animals (because the incentive is in-built into the wealth transfer).
It might be less effective in pure wealth transfer than, say, GiveDirectly, but the other upsides could make up for that.
I didn’t see a charity quite like this listed. (A Well-Fed World advocates an approach like this, but supports a diversity of groups and it’s not clear how homogenous and scalable they are.)
Improved practical knowledge and demand to make nutrition-complete affordable vegan food
Could you explain the causal mechanism you have in mind? It seems that such a charity would increase overall demand for vegan food, because it is buying some, but reduce demand from everyone else, because some people who would otherwise have eaten vegan food will instead just take from this charity.
Also I think it would be good if you could outline some thoughts about possible disadvantages of such a charity.
Could you explain the causal mechanism you have in mind?
The beneficiaries of this charity would eat more food than they otherwise would (assuming the charity targets really poor people), and more of it would be vegan, percentage-wise. Since using good, affordable and nutrition-complete food would be an explicit goal, donations would have the welcome side-effect of incentivizing such R&D, as well as scale economics.
I think this is a general argument for eating nutrition-fortified vegan products, but they tend to be high-cost organic life-style products, and I’d prefer to help make them ready for affordable mass consumption.
Also I think it would be good if you could outline some thoughts about possible disadvantages of such a charity.
Opportunity costs if it’s not optimal. Then there’s the argument from wild-animal suffering and ecosystem displacement, that is, that meat consumption helps destroy the environment faster and therefore prevents more animals from suffering. And speculative acceptance problems or PR backlash if, say, the food isn’t healthy. Also, you would need to identify people who really benefit from free food and bring it to them in a cost-effective way (I figure malaria nets don’t spoil as fast as food does.)
Perhaps there could be a niche for this in disaster aid or acute famine relief.
Could giving good vegan food to poor people compete with other effective charity?
The idea: A charity develops or purchases nutrition-complete vegan food, ships it to areas of global poverty, and distributes it to the poorest for free.
The positive impact would be: Improved practical knowledge and demand to make nutrition-complete affordable vegan food, improved nutrition and purchasing power for the poor, reduced farm animal use without appeals to values or emotions toward animals (because the incentive is in-built into the wealth transfer).
It might be less effective in pure wealth transfer than, say, GiveDirectly, but the other upsides could make up for that.
I didn’t see a charity quite like this listed. (A Well-Fed World advocates an approach like this, but supports a diversity of groups and it’s not clear how homogenous and scalable they are.)
Would this have a drawback of disrupting local farming/food economies?
Could you explain the causal mechanism you have in mind? It seems that such a charity would increase overall demand for vegan food, because it is buying some, but reduce demand from everyone else, because some people who would otherwise have eaten vegan food will instead just take from this charity.
Also I think it would be good if you could outline some thoughts about possible disadvantages of such a charity.
The beneficiaries of this charity would eat more food than they otherwise would (assuming the charity targets really poor people), and more of it would be vegan, percentage-wise. Since using good, affordable and nutrition-complete food would be an explicit goal, donations would have the welcome side-effect of incentivizing such R&D, as well as scale economics.
I think this is a general argument for eating nutrition-fortified vegan products, but they tend to be high-cost organic life-style products, and I’d prefer to help make them ready for affordable mass consumption.
Opportunity costs if it’s not optimal. Then there’s the argument from wild-animal suffering and ecosystem displacement, that is, that meat consumption helps destroy the environment faster and therefore prevents more animals from suffering. And speculative acceptance problems or PR backlash if, say, the food isn’t healthy. Also, you would need to identify people who really benefit from free food and bring it to them in a cost-effective way (I figure malaria nets don’t spoil as fast as food does.)
Perhaps there could be a niche for this in disaster aid or acute famine relief.
There’s also a charity called Vegfam—http://www.vegfamcharity.org.uk/ - not sure how effective they are though.