Political Compass Memes

If we used all the pasture land viable for farming we would have abundant and varied produce at a budget cost. Unfortunately that's not the case.

That doesn't sound right. A big part of the reason why beef keeps getting expensive much faster than pork or chicken is because it's getting a lot more expensive to raise pastured animals than factory farming feedlots. It's also why, historically, a culture's preference for pork over beef (or vice versa) could be predicted by looking at how urbanized that culture is.

Not all meat is equal, and beef is particularly inefficient at turning plant biomass (and water) into meat, and needs a lot more land area for traditional methods. Even modern feedlot methods don't actually help that much in terms of competition with other meat animals, because chickens and pigs are also easier to feed in feedlot settings.

Vegetarian diets are pretty cheap for meeting the bare minimum nutritional requirements. Legume+grain is the staple food for many cultures for a reason.

But also in the real world, most people want variety and taste, and meat is often a cheaper and easier way to provide that higher level of enjoyment, compared to the work necessary to process non-animal sources into certain tastes and textures that are easier to find from animal sources. So when we're talking about the diets of rich societies, who can afford to spend money and effort well beyond the bare minimum to keep us alive, we're spending plenty of effort on adding non nutritive flavors, including stuff like spices or fermented sauces.

So you're probably right when focused only on the rich western societies where it is true that the typical vegan spends more on food than the typical omnivore in the same rich society. But it's not broadly true across the board, and at the very upper ranges of luxury spending, I'm not sure that still holds up (some meats and seafoods can get quite expensive at the very very high end).