I feel a little uncomfortable writing this post. I quit eating meat about three years ago, seafood too. I’d thought about it a long time. And after a brief illness during which no food was appetizing, I decided I just didn’t want to eat animals any longer.
My Family Still Eats Meat
At first my daughter became vegetarian with me, though I still prepared meat and seafood for my husband and grandson. But she tired of this, so now I prepare food for the family, and I just eat the vegetables. (My daughter and grandson live with us.)
I Already Made the Change
I’m uncomfortable because I already made the change in eating. My doctor is happy about it. I will say I still eat eggs from our backyard chickens, as well as cheese and butter, so I’m not vegan. But what I’m writing about today is that I’m worried about upcoming food shortages.
Enough for Now But the Future?
The world currently produces more than enough food to feed everyone, yet 815 million people, or roughly 11 percent of the global population went hungry in 2016, according to the United Nations.
By 2050, with the global population expected to burgeon to 9.8 billion, our food supplies will be under far greater stress. While demand will soar, climate change, urbanization and soil degradation will have shrunk the availability of arable land, according to the World Economic Forum. Add water shortages, pollution, and worsening inequality into the mix and the implications are stark.
Mitigating the Risk
According to Time magazine, among those trying to mitigate the risk of collapse is Richard Deverell, director of Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The gardens are a key resource for scientists studying a multitude of food security issues from wild rice varieties that require less water to enset, a banana-like plant that has helped stave off famine in some regions of Ethiopia. The gardens also host the Millennium Seed Bank, which Deverell describes as an “insurance policy” against the extinction of plants in the wild, Time noted.
Food Security and Humanity.
Beef Compared to Other Animals
Researchers from Bard College, the Weizmann Institute of Science and Yale University focused on animals in the U.S. food production system. First, the researchers calculated the feed costs for each class of animal—beef, pork, chicken, laying hens and dairy cows. They did not include fish because data about resources used to raise those animals is limited, and fish only contributed about two percent of American’s animal-based energy intake from 2000 to 2013.
The findings are sobering. Pork, chicken, dairy and eggs are nearly equivalent in their environmental burdens. On a calorie-to-calorie basis, potatoes, wheat and rice require two to six time less resources to produce than pork, chicken, eggs or dairy. But beef requires far, far more resources than any of the other protein categories. The team calculated that beef requires 28 times more land, six times more fertilizer and 11 times more water compared to those other food sources. That adds up to about five times more greenhouse gas emissions. And Then There’s the Fuel
Finally, research from the University of Vermont indicates that the machinery associated with animal-derived foods is high. This shouldn’t surprise anyone; the production of these foods—even seafood—requires machinery, sophisticated processing facilities, feed production, refrigerated transportation and copious amounts of fuel. Modern fruit and vegetable farming systems are highly industrialized, relying on vast amounts of fertilizer, pesticides, and tillage practices that require heavy machinery and plenty of fuel.