How Our Meat-Eating is Cooking Our Planet
Preamble: On ending hunger, we stand as close as we do to world peace
Exactly one decade ago, the United Nations set out a goal named ‘Zero Hunger’. The aim was a big one — to ‘end’ hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition, all by 2030. For many, the goal might resemble some of the other seemingly impossible dreams that you might have thought of when you were 9-years old, such as achieving world peace. We’re either taught, or we learn, to place distrust on these versions of ideal worlds. It might surprise, then, that 193 countries signed the agreement committing to this goal. Short of being an achievable aim, as a population, it seems we have regressed. As of last year, the number of people affected by hunger grew 150 million over 2 years, with 828 million people failed. Where has it gone so wrong?
The problem has not been down to any lack of food; rather, it’s been due to the inefficient and unequal process of making, distributing and consuming it. Livestock takes 77% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories and 37% of protein supply. This means that, while how much we eat is inherently important, it’s not as important as what it is we’re eating. However, the problem is growing many more facets. As the global population increases, the supply inefficiencies will grow to fall short of supplying the volumes of food required to feed it. Economist Thomas Robert Malthus argued that the human population will eventually outpace food production back in 1798, and while the population continues jumping hurdles, the food system is falling behind now. Adaptation is necessary, and because meats are the most resource-draining food type, people in developed countries like the US must step back on meat consumption and production. To fail to do so would be to continue operating a food supply system that is unsustainable, leading to ecological and humanitarian disaster.
Problem Producers
Meat suppliers in developed countries like the US are growing deaf over the sensitivities of the resources they use. The curation and consumption of meat-based products is much more resource-intensive compared to almost every other type of food that we eat. It takes approximately 1,847 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef — enough to fill up 39 bathtubs. Lentils, often used as a substitute to meats due to its nutritional content and plentiful supply, uses a third of that amount, at 704 gallons per pound. It’s less for other goods, such as vegetables, at merely 39 gallons of water per pound produced. To visualize what this means, one can break down the water used to assemble a simple student’s lunch — so let’s make a turkey and cheese sandwich. A cheese sandwich on its own would require 56 gallons of water in its production, but adding a couple of slices of turkey causes the footprint to jump to 148 gallons. Due to population growth, urbanization and climate change, competition for water resources is expected to increase, and so water supply needs to be allocated thoughtfully. Substitutes to meat like tofu, lentils and soy require much less water to cultivate, which allows for more resources to be freed up for greater food production. Producing more of these substitutes rather than meat would help to plug the gap between those who are receiving food and those who are going hungry.
The process for meat production is not just demanding, but unproductive. All of the aforementioned water goes into watering the grass, forage and feed that the cattle consume over a lifetime. Texas has the most cattle in the US, twice the number of the cattle present in Nebraska and Kansas¹. Combined, these three states account for 27% of the cattle inventory in the US, and all are among the bottom 50% in terms of least precipitation. The grazing practices here are much less productive than beef production and grazing systems in countries with temperate climates and higher levels of rainfall². Temperate climates are present in much of the North-West territory, but either the industry’s inability or unwillingness to change is resulting in meat production that is more susceptible to adverse weather conditions and creates less meat than it could.
In analyzing these statistics, it’s also important to remember the different ways in which cattle are fed as the distinctions have real effects on the footprint left by production. It’s clear that most of our meat is produced without sustainability in mind. For instance, the beef industry utilizes a variety of labels such as, ‘grass-fed’, ‘grass-finished’, ‘pasture-raised’ among others, to describe its feeding process. This imbroglio of terms can be confusing so, in this case, we will focus on pasture-raised and conventional beef, which represent the two extremes of the cattle-raising scale. Pasture-raised cattle spend all their life eating grass. Thus, they rely on grass that is predominantly grown through water from rain. However, at least 80% of beef cattle are raised conventionally³, meaning that the cows spend six months grazing on pasture, and then in feedlots for another six months eating a mixture of corn, soy and other grains to speed up growth. This results in large areas of land and water being used to grow these grains. In 2017, corn production accounted for approximately 25% of total US-irrigated acreage harvested⁴. This represents a significant amount of land that could easily be utilized elsewhere.
Some may argue that cattle consume the grains that are simply not edible by people, and so the large numbers of cattle are necessary in order to reduce waste. Upon closer inspection, the argument holds weight. Some say that almost 90% of all grain produced is inedible to humans, including like almond husks, grass etc. This is a short-sighted argument, as developed countries have the ability to change the way they use their land rather than be dictated by the meat industry about it. It follows that if the agricultural industry was to replace at least a quarter of this, then the world would have much more space. If the world’s 2 billion consumers of meat cut their meat and dairy consumption by 40%, it would save an area of land twice the size of India and save 168 billion tons of greenhouse gasses from being emitted⁵. Furthermore, most feedlot operations in the US — namely in Nebraska, Texas, Kansas, Iowa and Colorado — produce the most corn, wheat, sorghum, and grain by-products.
While there was a meat shortage this year, the industry faced a unique set of supply chain challenges that affected the distribution of meat rather than the production of it, such as a lack of packaging material, owing to the pandemic. What can really help the situation today is increased regulation over the meat industry. In a regular year, continues to flood US supermarket shelves, despite growing inefficiencies. JBS USA is the world’s largest meat company, and it makes over $50 billion in annual revenue⁶. Production is increasing across the board, with beef, pork and poultry production increasing 1%, 2% and 4% per year over the last few decades⁶. Four companies control an anticompetitive sector: Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS and National Beef Packing. Major plants are closing, while these meat companies are still benefitting from rising prices. In addition, many of these meats are raised conventionally; if Americans demanded that their meat be at least grass-fed, then both the meat quality and the use of land would benefit.
Picking Preferences
Meat producers simply must be held accountable for the way that the meat reaches our supermarket shelves. That being said, it is the consumer who ends up making the final choice on purchasing the product, and Americans must make an effort to change their eating habits. Per year, an average American eats over 44% more meat than a Canadian (even though Canada sits in a temperate climate). Comparing figures on a global scale, and we see that an American will eat almost 7 times as much meat as a Pakistani.
It’s true that economical wealth is associated with greater levels of meat-eating. Empires have fought empires, villages have fought villages, men have even fought animals themselves (see the Australian government’s war against emus in 1932, which it lost) for capturing greater food supplies. It’s, therefore, logical that some countries sit on greater amounts of fertile land and crop reserves while other, less economically wealthy nations, face famine. Countries like Ethiopia, South Sudan and Yemen are some of the countries with the highest levels of hunger⁷. Each of these countries place within the bottom 15% in the world in terms of GDP per capita. The correlation is clear, and has been well-established for centuries.
However, particularly in America, meat-eating is a cultural phenomenon — which should make it harder to change the demand. Eating meat has been associated with being American since the 1850s when Americans were getting it in plentiful supply from their neighbourhood butcher. As the industrialization of the food industry continued, meat began to be shipped in from different states rather than slaughtered by local butchers, with production as steadfast as ever. People might argue that it’s difficult to see how Americans would decide to cut back on meat considering how there is seemingly little that Americans agree on, but the fact is that tastes are changing. Of course, we can hardly expect many Americans to suddenly take up vegetarianism, but nearly 39% of respondents to a recent survey said that they’re eating less meat than they used to, and it’s also true that American appetite for beef has been dropping since 1976 as many favour chicken. Alternative diets such as the Mediterranean diet are proving more popular as the world becomes more globalized and Americans are privy to more information in a data-driven age connected by the internet. Consumers are more eco and health-conscious, as part of a movement called ‘conscious consumerism’, and this will come to shape the way our future generations consume food.
Furthermore, if news about heatwaves and climate-change related natural disasters can make the news often, then so can the numerous reports on the disastrous effect meat is having on our atmosphere. In the news today, for example, we might hear that over one-third of Pakistan sits underwater and Texas lies in drought⁸. While they are two distinct situations, the problems in Pakistan and in Texas fall under the same bracket of climate change. Increasing temperatures are causing faster rates and greater levels of evaporation, drawing out moisture from plants and soils. Scientists have found that human-caused climate change has increased drought severity globally, including locations in places such as Australia which are already areas that suffer from water scarcity. Floods, meanwhile, are being triggered by heavier precipitation, a greater frequency of tropical storms and higher sea levels, all results of climate change. We don’t often hear, however, about reports such as one by the UN that estimates that livestock makes up 14% of all man-made greenhouse gasses. A pound of beef produces, on average, around 15 times as much carbon dioxide as a pound of rice, and around 60 times as much as a pound of wheat, corn or peas. We don’t hear about how going vegetarian for a year would save the average American over one metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions, which is the equivalent of driving 2,475 fewer miles⁵. Among the greenhouse gases, cattle emit methane, which is directly released by them to digest their food. If CO2 is the stink bomb, then methane is the dirty bomb — methane traps around 100 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.
Climate Conclusion
To feed another billion people by 2050, people will have to produce double the amount of crops we’re cultivating now⁵, and with our current meat-eating habits, we will fall well short. Production will have to far outpace population growth as the developing world grows prosperous enough to eat more meat. Developed countries’ governments, such as that of the US, must intervene and repurpose their agriculture systems to make food cheaper and easier to deliver, and this includes scaling back meat production. Our food is closely intertwined with the climate crisis, and it’s the world’s hungriest who will be the first to face the consequences of our negligent attitude towards it. As of 2019, only 2 countries are meeting their climate pledges. Cutting down on meat will enable many of these countries to come closer to these targets, and help scale up climate resilience across food systems. It will also save them money — the overconsumption of red and processed meat is expected to have cost the global economy £219 billion in health-related costs in 2020. By intervening in the food supply chain, the cost of these negative externalities will go down as nutritious food becomes more affordable. If we changed diets to meet recommended dietary guidelines, we would produce environmental benefits worth $234 billion per year, and would save $735 billion a year in reduced health-related costs. There’s no two-ways about it — the way we eat meat has to change. Unless we do things very differently, the impact of our meat industry will only get worse, with greenhouse gas emissions, the destruction of biodiversity, and greater levels of hunger.
References:
¹ USDA-NASS. “Annual Cattle Review.” Annual Review. 2021.
² Heidi-Jayne. “A global assessment of Holistic Planned Grazing™ compared with season-long, continuous grazing: meta-analysis findings.” Position Paper. 2016.
³ Greenwood, Paul L. “Review: An overview of beef production from pasture and feedlot globally, as demand for beef and the need for sustainable practices increase.” The International Journal of Animal Biosciences (2021): 6.
⁴ Hrozencik, R. Aaron and Marcel Aillery. “Trends in U.S. Irrigated Agriculture: Increasing Resilience Under Water Supply Scarcity.” Summary. USDA, 2021.
⁵ Ranganathan, Janet. “Shifting Diets for a Sustainable Food Future: Creating a Sustainable Food Future.” Working Paper. World Resources Institute, 2016.
⁶ Carolan, Michael. “Cheap Meat.” Carolan, Michael. The Real Cost of Cheap Food. Routledge, 2018.
⁷ Action Against Hunger. World Hunger: Key Facts and Statistics 2022. 2022. 10 September 2022.
⁸ Méndez, María. Texas is facing its worst drought since 2011. Here’s what you need to know. 19 August 2022. 14 September 2022.
