The major driver of world hunger? Animal agriculture
I’ve said it before but it’s always worth repeating — especially in the face of the current food crisis:
The livestock sector heavily contributes to world hunger.
Most people don’t know this.
In fact, animal agriculture is the major driver of malnutrition and famines worldwide.
Why?
The simple reason is that animals are an incredibly inefficient food source. While roughly ten to twenty thousand people die from hunger and malnutrition every day, our society wastes massive amounts of grain, corn, soy, and fresh water to grow livestock.
(Yep, that’s right: Not vegans but farmed animals consume the most soy. Around eighty percent of global soy production go to animal feed, while all soy milk and tofu combined use up less than five percent. But the problem goes far beyond soy, of course.)
In general, you need about a hundred calories of grain to produce twelve calories of chicken or three calories of beef. The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people (which is more than the current world population). And while every third human suffers from water scarcity, the production of a single beef burger uses as much water as a hundred days’ worth of showers.
For one person thriving on a plant-based diet, just around 700 square meters of land are needed per year. For meat consumption, on average over 12,000 square meters are needed— roughly 17 times as much. This is also the reason why one third of all usable land on this planet is taken up by the livestock sector and animal feed production. This is equivalent to the total land area of Australia, China, Europe and North America, combined. No other type of human activity comes anywhere close to the land use of animal agriculture.
Studies have consistently shown: The only realistic way to feed a growing world population without land shortages, constant hunger crises and completely eliminating the rain forests is a large-scale shift to plant-based diet.
This has to start with you and me, today.
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I write for compassion and peace. In a world overflowing with information, I seek to pen pieces that make a difference, words that resonate with the hearts and minds of readers.
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