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According to the report “Livestock in a Changing Landscape“, authored by an international team of scientists and policy experts (from Stanford University, the United Nations FAO, World Bank, and others), producing animal feed consumes about one-third of the total arable land on the planet. That is staggering. Keep in mind that animals eat far more food than they produce (only about 12% of the calories “invested” in raising livestock animals on average is converted into animal food products for human consumption). AND close to one billion people in the world currently don’t have enough food to eat, AND our human population is expected to continue growing from 7.4 billion today to over 11 billion by the end of this century. Something has to give. We simply cannot feed ourselves by continuously breeding and feeding billions of livestock animals. Our planet is finite, with finite resources, and producing animal foods is highly resource-intensive and exacerbates food scarcity. While there is a complex myriad of issues involved, a mass global shift to vegan diets is a required part of the solution needed if we are to have any realistic hope of addressing food and water security issues and ending world hunger. Of course, also supporting education and family planning, and thereby promoting a slower rate of overall population growth, can help significantly as well. Click to view the full report, “Livestock in a Changing Landscape“. |