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The deforestation argument isn't intrinsically valid against either meat or soy consumption. What matters is whether you eat meat or soy from an area that has been deforested.
Not on the assumption that the markets are so closely linked nowadays. If you go out of your way to find out where either comes from, you still add to the demand and still add value to those closely-linked markets. Also, what's happened in some cases (I can't remember the example that I'm thinking of) is that increased demand, sometimes by celebrity chefs who make particular ingredients very fashionable, has caused further environmental degradation in areas where that came from. Lastly, what is clear is that we need more forests (again), what some people call the 're-wilding' of an (increasingly urbanised) world, and that could conceivably occur in many more places than those that have recently been deforested.
Similarly, I think soil erosion is a bit of a red herring if we're taking about locally sourced meat. Most of Britain's grazing land was deforested hundreds of years ago.
I don't know much about that, but Monbiot's implication in one of the extracts that I posted further up is that more recent developments in the Lake District have turned it away from the bucolic vision of peaceful shepherding that is often conjured up into more 'ranch-style' farming that has led to accelerated damage. Again, I don't know if that's true, though it seems plausible.
On the issue in general, two articles that have impressed the urgency on me lately:
(As posted by myself and adroit in the Climate change thread.)
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Soy is pretty much a fungible commodity though - being able to select your soy grower directly is going to be tough. Selecting it indirectly - whether as a direct component of human food, or an indirect component as animal feed, is going to be nigh on impossible.
So eating welsh lamb in fact may contribute to deforestation of the Amazon.
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Oliver Schick
NotThamesWater
@jimmy_james
Some random counterpoints to earlier posts:
Tl;Dr - eating Welsh lamb won't deforested the Amazon and is unlikely to increase soil erosion beyond what has already occurred.