@Jute Oh, Ok.

Jainism isn't huge on missionaries and converting and didn't become the official religion of any large state, which is why their number never got that large

Thank you all so much for your advice. As much as I would want a full vegan country to exist, well, that's not realistic, I see now. So I'm thinking of having a full vegetarian country but only like 83% is full vegan. There is a common ideology in Jūlestabrē very similar to the irl religion/lifestyle of Jainism. Basically Jains want to do the least harm to living creatures as possible, and not take anything that isn't theirs. The eggs belong to the animal it came from, milk belongs to the animal it came from and for it's offspring, wool belongs to sheep not us so it's not morally right to take that stuff away from them. That's a large part of the religion I created for this group of people. The religion is basically chunks of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism thrown into a blender. Seeing that Jainism exists, why not the religion I came up with? But, all religions have their flaws and none are absolutely perfect, probably why Jainism isn't common....

I also would like to raise the point quickly that the irl country with the highest percentage of vegetarian (or largely vegetarian) diets including vegan ones in a country is India at 29-40% of the population adhering to said diet. The percentage adhering to a vegan diet was marked at 27%, however there is no year quoted for that.

The one with a year and quote for the ressource that had the highest percentage vegan diet that I could find was Israel in 2015, where a mere 5% of the population was vegan, and 13% were vegetarian+vegan.

I think if you put a little more thought into the idea of a 90% vegan/vegetarian country, you could produce something interesting. Good luck :)

Edited to add: It's a fictional place...YOUR fictional place...so you can do whatever you want. Isn't that what makes worldbuilding so much fun?

Your Sahar country does not need to be a reflection of your personal views, so why don't you just adopt it to make it more realistic with, say, a culture wherein about 50% of people are vegetarian?

You don't actually need much fertilizer or to raze forests to grow crops. Forest gardening and other methods that work with the natural environment, not against it are an alternative, used in tropical regions around the world. Example is mentioned in this article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/08/rare-victory-for-rainforests-as-nations-vow-to-stop-death-by-chocolate

well i'm glad you're not having them feed their cats vegan diets :'D

I think my overall recommendation is to reduce the "percentage" of veganism of the country, and maybe focus more on a high prevalence of vegetarianism and animal-welfare-informed agriculture methods with a coincidentally high-but-not-quite-that-high number of vegans (which is hard to sell as a really high-percentage country-wide thing esp. historically)

as ashucky said, there are a variety of ways to respect the environment and nonhuman life without 100% adherence to veganism. beekeeping and commercial honey production, for example, actually help bees out a lot (as a species and for individual hives). (obviously cochineal doesn't so much.) dairy cows/goats/etc, in a humane and open-field environment, (probably small-scale,) could be considered safer/happier/healthier than their wild counterparts, in which case their farming wouldn't necessarily need be considered unethical by an animal-rights-considerate culture. (consider the prevalence of milk products amongst most Hindus.)

as for farming vs the environment, since vegetable crops actually require a lot less land than meat and animal products, i dont think you'd need anything near 63% of the land cleared for that. but, you'd still need a decent amount of it. for which i'd say, probably the people don't consider themselves less important than the environment and would consider clearing forest for crops (and meat-eating!), if necessary for survival, to be ethical. (compare Judaism which explicitly allows Jews to break kosher and most other religious rules if necessary to survive.)

Have you also considered that in a number of instances that the use of animals and animal products in our Western world is only harmful to animals due to the industrial processes used to produce them? For example you mentioned wool. There's nothing inherently harmful in sheering sheep, it's merely a matter of mass-production pressure leading to poorer treatment of the animals in order to speed up output. Likewise in harvesting honey; a knowledgeable beekeeper can actually help a colony thrive while at the same time collecting honey for human use.

@Ashucky very cool. I think I've heard of that before.

Ok. Thanks for the info. This country uses a lot of fertilizer, then. But yeah, I'll look up those statistics.

There is another "school of thought" on this matter. In some cultures, especially those living in harsh environments (high altitude or high latitude), it's often considered disrespectful (to animals) to waste their body parts when they die or are killed. In their view, it's respectful to use everything or at least as much as possible to reduce their impact on the environment by reusing and recycling as much as possible. I think in Tibetan culture, for example, their burial rituals dictate that a dead body (of a person) cannot or must not be actually buried but left on the open (in a specified area) for the animals to pick. In their view, that's how they repay and return to mother nature what they took from it, and thus showing respect to it. The idea of "respecting the environment" can go in different ways, depending on many things.

You mentioned your country is in a tropical climate - keep in mind that the soil in such climates is very poor due to heavy rainfall. So you either need extensive agricultural areas (farms) or use a lot of fertiliser. I'd also recommend you look up some statistics of a natural fruit production vs. human consumption ratio in tropical areas so you'd have a better way of figuring out how much food your country needs to produce to feed its population.

@Marlowe Clark Veganism is not using/eating anything that comes from an animal. That also means no wool and fur because of how the animals are treated. Though it is usually about diet, is not exclusively about diet. Animal rights activism and veganism are totally related, the main reason people go vegan is to not support how inhumanely animals are treated.

@Jute According to this article, https://www.peacefuldumpling.com/vitamin-b12-eat-your-dirt "B12 is synthesized by bacteria and is therefore found in areas of bacterial growth, namely dirt and soil. Humans have been getting their B12 from the dirt for hundreds of thousands of years by eating plants that still had bits of soil on them. Today, however, we wash our fruits and veggies so well (and understandably so) that we no longer consume dirt or proper levels of B12. That’s where B12 supplements come in. B12 is easily produced through bacterial fermentation and can be safely made into a daily supplement." So, we can get B12 from soil.

@DzêtaRedfang extremely good point. Obviously I didn't think that through enough. (I'm asking myself the following questions)If this culture is about respecting the environment and being vegan than how the heck do they get land to grow crops especially in a tropical rainforest?? Okay so a lot of fruits and plant materials grow naturally in the rainforest, right? So they could just harvest them when they grow, right? But what happens when there is a strong demand for something, and there isn't enough of that crop? I don't know. 68% of the land is NOT used for growing crops. But then how much land is? Wouldn't you still be cutting down trees and destroying habitats to grow the minimum food the country needs? How much food does the country need? (again I'm asking myself all these questions) This is not a small tribe, this is a fairly populated country. Would food need to be shipped in from other nations? Okay back to your point, @DzêtaRedfang: If this culture is about protecting the environment and not harming it as much as possible, then what I said in the article is now false.

I would not feel. I'd be dead.

Also, veganism relates to food consumption exclusively. I feel like many vegans don't understand this, likely because their reason for being vegan tends to be that they are animal rights activists, and they tend to conflate this with being part of veganism. But animal rights activism and veganism are entirely separate things.

@severy I think what I meant was that being respectful to the environment is a common theme in a lot of Native American cultures.
1. "Is this intended as canonical on Sahar?" I think so, yes, that was an intention, but a lot of thinking probably needs to be done on how it is canonical.
2. "Do they keep pet cats, dogs, etc? If so, how do they feed them?" Yes, pets are kept. They hunt for their food themselves.
3. "What's the stance on honey, cochineal/other insect derivatives, and eggs?" None of that stuff is used. All dyes are plant derived or made from other non-harmful chemical substances, honey and eggs are not consumed.
4. "When you say "ancient scientists" conducted dietary studies .... how ancient are we talking?" I actually do not know exactly how ancient.
5. "Is animal labour used (draft horses/oxen etc)?" I would like to say no and that humans just do all labour, but I'd really need to think about what kind of labour is being done that would be much better for other animals to do it, and not humans.

I have read all your comments, and I would actually like to thank you for bring this all to my attention and being respectful about it. I admit that A LOT more thought on this needs to be done, I know. If some of you are willing to, would you mind helping me think all of this through and help me come up with a new and improved explanation to how this could work? I'm imagining you guys rolling your eyes at this, but, I really would appreciate the help. As crazy as this idea of a vegan nation might sound, and I know I seem kind of stupid but I think somehow it could be possible...but with a lot of work probably. I'll try to reply to each of your comments too and try to answer the questions.

I'd also like to know why the government is paying farmers directly rather than only subsidizing those that need it? And how it knows how much food all the towns and cities in the countries need? What happens when there's too much or too little shipped to an area?

It's not. There are good reasons 0 cultures on Earth are vegan, while a decent number is vegetarian. One of the most important being that due to the complete lack of vitamin B12 in vegan foods it was not possible to stay healthy with a vegan diet prior to the invention of vitamin supplements in modern times.

This article seems more to be a statement of why we all need to be vegan and are morally flawed if we're not, rather than an explanation of the historical reasons behind why the culture described places so much importance on that kind of diet.
Also, for what it's worth, I hadn't previously thought that ancient scientists were usually so hot on the topic of how cancer and heart disease work.

I would also like to ask a question.

You said that they are very much so against harming the environment. I can understand that desire to respect it. However, I did notice that you said that 68% of the land is used for farming crops. This struck me as odd, considering that the large majority of your country is naturally tropical rainforest, with the rest being tropical monsoon, the majority of which would also be densely forested.

This raises the following question : Does the respect of nature stop only at animals? Because to have over 2/3 of the country being farmland would require an extreme amount of deforestation and thus destruction of the natural environment and the habitats of animals, pushing them out of their homes, and in a lot of cases, causing the extinction of entire species, which does in fact seem contrary to the desire to respect nature and in fact, animals, because now the homes of the animals are being taken from them for "human gain".

This thus then raises the following question : How much do they even truly respect animals and nature, especially going by your standards given in the article above?

Please note that there is no such thing as "Native American culture." There are hundreds of separate native cultures in the Americas, many of which do have some things in common, but they're very diverse.

anyhow, I have a few questions:

1. Is this intended as canonical on Sahar?
2. Do they keep pet cats, dogs, etc? If so, how do they feed them?
3. What's the stance on honey, cochineal/other insect derivatives, and eggs?
4. When you say "ancient scientists" conducted dietary studies .... how ancient are we talking?
5. Is animal labour used (draft horses/oxen etc)?