Unsustainable agriculture and vegetarianism
By Peter Johnston "Today a greater percentage of the human race is overweight than at any other time in history. Meanwhile a greater percentage of the human race suffers from malnutrition than at any other time in recorded history. These two developments stem from a common source." — John Robbins, May All Be Fed, 1992. Unnoticed by most, world agriculture has undergone a profound shift this century. In previous times people laboured in the fields to produce grain for people to eat. Today cattle and other livestock are devouring much of the world's grain. The results are not pretty, as Jeremy Rifkin in
Beyond Beef (1992) said: "The poor are getting poorer each year ... Increased poverty has meant increased malnutrition. On the African continent, nearly one in every four human beings is malnourished. In Latin America, nearly one out of every seven people goes to bed hungry each night. In Asia and the south Pacific, 28% of the people border on starvation. "Chronic hunger now affects upwards of 1.3 billion people, according to the World Health Organisation — a statistic all the more striking in a world where one third of all the grain being produced is being fed to cattle and other livestock. Never before in human history has such a large percentage of our species — nearly 25% — been malnourished." Yet at the same time, 80% of young girls in California have been on their first diet by the time they are nine (Robbins, 1992). Almost all Third World nations must import grain, a large proportion of which is fed to livestock. According to Robbins, 75% of Third World imports of corn, barley, sorghum and oats are fed to animals. Most of the nations that now import grain were once self-sufficient in grain. Grain shortages are exacerbated by the IMF/World Bank's emphasis on export crops, rather than on the production of food crops for domestic use. Factor this in with the developing nations' steadily rising demand for meat and you have a recipe for environmental disaster. The Worldwatch Institute, in its document
Taking stock: Animal Farming and the Environment (1991), described the food deprivation that has followed the switch from a grain-based to a meat-based diet. For example, Taiwan was a grain exporter in 1950. Between 1950 and 1990 Taiwanese per capita meat and egg consumption rose by 600%, and annual per capita gain use more than doubled. By 1990, 74% of the nation's grain use was imported, with most of it destined for livestock feed, despite steadily growing harvests. Food shortages and hunger threaten the people of the former Soviet Union. Rising meat consumption has severely aggravated the country's problems. According to Worldwatch "Since 1950, meat consumption has tripled and feed consumption quadrupled. Use of grain for feed surpassed direct human consumption in 1964 and has been rising ever since ... livestock now eat three times as much grain as citizens. Grain imports have soared, going from near zero in 1970 to 24 million tons in 1990, and the [former] USSR is now the world's second largest grain importer." In mainland China the situation is similar. Worldwatch states: "Since 1978 ... meat consumption has more than doubled ... The share of Chinese grain fed to livestock rose from 7% in 1960 to 20% in 1990." Twenty-five years ago, livestock consumed only 6% of Mexico's grain. By 1990, the figure was over 50%. The same trend is seen throughout the Third World — increases in grain-fed livestock require more imported feed. The richest Middle Eastern countries, for example, maintain high levels of meat consumption only by depending heavily on imported feed and meat. In 1965, Egypt was self-sufficient in grain and only 10% of the country's grain went to livestock. By 1991, livestock were consuming 36% of its grain and Egypt is now importing 8 million tons of grain every year. In Syria, despite a phenomenal 1000% increase in the land area devoted to producing barley over the last 25 years, the grain must now be imported. Barley was previously an export crop. Again, livestock is consuming increasing amounts of the country's grain. The shift to grain-fed livestock is being driven by the wealthy nations' demands for fat-marbled meat. Currently, 70% of the US's entire grain crop is fed to livestock. Furthermore, two thirds of all the grain exported by the US goes to feed livestock rather than people. In the countries of the European Community, 57% of grain is fed to livestock. Brazil, a major producer of beef for the North American markets, now feeds 55% of its grain to livestock. Worldwide, between 1988-1990, humans consumed 822 million tonnes of grain, while livestock consumed 642 million tonnes. (
New Internationalist, May, 1995). More than half of Latin America's beef production is exported, with the rest priced beyond the range of most. From 1960 to 1980, beef exports from El Salvador increased more than 600%. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of small farmers were pushed off their land. Today, 72% of all Salvadoran infants are underfed. In Guatemala 75% of children under five years of age are undernourished, while much of the land and other resources for food production is given over to producing meat. Yet every year Guatemala exports 20 million kilos of meat to the United States. Robbins suggests that "If Americans reduced their meat consumption by 10%, enough grain would be saved to feed 60 million people ... about the number of people worldwide who die of hunger-related disease every year. Of course, this doesn't mean world hunger would be solved simply if Americans ate 10% less meat, there are obviously enormous economic, social, and political realities to be faced."
Wasteful
We need to address the wastefulness and unsustainability of our animal-centred diet. There is approximately half a hectare of arable land for each man, woman, and child on Earth. A conventional (meat-based) diet requires one hectare per person. A lacto-ovo (dairy and eggs included) vegetarian diet requires half a hectare per person. A vegan diet requires only one tenth of a hectare per person (Vegan Society, NSW). An animal-centred diet is not only inefficient in land use, it is also highly wasteful of fossil fuels, water, pesticides, and fertiliser and top soil. Production of a kilo of wheat typically requires 220 litres of water, whereas the production of a kilo of beef is likely to require 20,000-50,000 litres of water. Livestock farming has been estimated to contribute more than 50% of US water pollution, and is responsible for 50% of tropical rainforest destruction. In the US, 33% of all raw materials are used for meat and dairy production. For example 78 kilojoules of fossil fuel are expended to produce one kilojoule of beef protein, whereas only two kilojoules of fossil fuel are needed to produce the same protein from soybeans. Growing grains, vegetables, legumes and fruit uses less than 5% of the raw material consumption used in the production of meat (Vegan Society, NSW). According to Waddell, "Clearing the land of trees and overgrazing of sheep and cattle in Australia have rendered two million square kilometres of arid land and 75,000 square kilometres of semi-arid land permanently unusable" (1988). The Australian Consumer Association said in 1991 that "our soils should be regarded as a non-renewable resource. Current Australian agricultural production is incompatible with maintenance of our nation's fragile ecosystems." Returning to a plant-based diet would restore most of those lands to wilderness. According to Rifkin: "The elimination of beef will be accompanied by an ecological renaissance, a grand restoration of nature on every continent ... Countless species of plants, insects and animals will be granted a reprieve from what once appeared to be a sure death at the hands of cattle ranchers and multinational corporations." Current agricultural practices are unsustainable. The planet is losing 24 million tons of top soil every year and the biologically productive land area is shrinking. Acid rain, soil erosion, ozone layer depletion, air pollution, the extinction of species, water loss, and many other environmental degradations are steadily decreasing the world's food producing capacity.
Food scarcity
As the Worldwatch Institute's 1991
State of the World report noted, "World carryover stocks, perhaps the best short-term measure of food security, totalled a record 461 million tons of grain in 1987, enough to feed the world for 102 days. But in each of the next three years world grain consumption exceeded production, leading to a 173-million-ton drop in stocks ... By 1990, carryover stocks had dropped to 290 million tons, enough for just 62 days." In 1991 world grain production dropped by nearly 5%, a decline of 86 million tons. Even if the US was to return to production the 11.3 million hectares made idle under commodity supply management programs, world per capita grain production would still be dropping dramatically. More than 100 nations now depend increasingly on US grain imports, and the consequences of another harvest like in 1988, when drought lowered US grain production below domestic consumption, would be severe. Environmental destruction is creating the conditions which create droughts — the hottest seven years in recorded history have all been since 1980. The US grain harvest has been seriously damaged four times in the last 12 years by unusually hot summers. We must move away from our animal-based diet, whether we remain living under capitalism, or if/when we shift from this profit-based society to one that is needs-based. Either way, it is better to break the meat habit now, to benefit both the health of the planet and ourselves.