Many people, vegans or vegetarians, will tell you that if everyone went vegan, there would be at least as much, if not more, food to feed the world’s human population. For the umpteenth time in my life, I was told that thing again in a comment on another recent article of mine on veganism. This is the comment:
Hi Dimi
I agree and disagree in many of your arguments. I especially like the philosophical ones in the begining.
I’m commenting to raise my objections on the last part of your argument that veganism would make less food available.
What you havent included in your thoughts is that livestock is fed from food we grow. Except,
of course, from grazing practices (the traditional shepherds that leave the animals eat grass or whatever they find themselves). But these methods of growing livestock only account of less than 10% of the total meat consumption according to the UN (http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/themes/en/meat/backgr_productions.html).
So for one kg of meat produced, there have been multiple kg of plants fed to the animals. So if we stopped feeding the animals to eat them and instead eating the crops directly, there would probably be more food available.
My opinion is that the main problem is the industrialization of meat production which is a result of the quantity of meat we consume.
What I think would undoubtively be beneficial for the humanity is to start eating less and less meat, and reduce it enough so as to be produced in a not massive/industrial way.
The argument is basically this: We use so much crop food to feed our livestock, so we just stop feeding these crops to the animals and we eat them instead. So simple, right?
But is it indeed so simple in reality? Or possible at all? Short answer: No, it is absolutely impossible. And here’s why…
What do livestock animals eat?
Livestock animals are fed by either of two principal methods:
- Foraging
- Fodder
In the first case, animals are let out in the pastures to graze for themselves. In the second case, animals are fed with crops cultivated for them by humans. These crops are called fodder.
It is true that fodder accounts for the majority of global meat production. But does this mean that, instead of letting them eat their grass, we feed them bread, honey, chocolate cake, or any other thing that a human would eat? Not at all. The reality is that we just take up the task to cultivate grass for them for the sake of efficiency.
In another study published in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (the same organization provided as a source in the comment above), the author determines that “86% of livestock feed is not suitable for human consumption”.
Studies and statistics aside, all of us know what livestock animals eat: grass.
Can humans eat grass?
This is a list of plants commonly cultivated for fodder:
- Alfalfa (lucerne)
- Barley
- Common duckweed[3]
- Birdsfoot trefoil
- Brassica spp.
- Clover
- Grass
- Bermuda grass
- Brome
- False oat grass
- Fescue
- Heath grass
- Meadow grasses (from naturally mixed grassland swards)
- Orchard grass
- Ryegrass
- Timothy-grass
- Corn (maize)
- Millet
- Oats
- Sorghum
- Soybeans
- Trees (pollard tree shoots for “tree-hay”)
- Wheat
The majority of these plants are grasses that are either completely inedible (indigestible) by humans or have very little nutritional value to them. In the case of cereals, legumes, and roots that are fed to animals, for the most part, they either are unsuitable-for-humans, easy-to-grow varieties of them or low-quality residues of human crops.
These crops are almost exclusively grown on land which is otherwise unexploitable: land where cultivation of more profitable crops for direct human consumption is either impossible (for climatic and geographical reasons) or economically-inviable. Common, minor exceptions to that rule occur: when fodder is periodically grown on land regularly used for human crops, as a means to fertilize and enrich the soil; or for local, microeconomic reasons.
In the end, it’s simple agricultural economics: Just like a cow wouldn’t prefer a semidesert over a good pasture, farmers wouldn’t choose to grow clover in a highly fertile field where they can grow rice, wheat, or vegetables. Just like it would make no sense to breed cattle and feed them to lions in order to eat the latter, it makes no sense to use high-quality human food for feeding livestock. If fodder had a higher nutritional value than the resulting meat and dairy, we would simply be eating the fodder already, without need to go through all this trouble.
Apart from agricultural economics, it may also be said to be simple biochemical economics. At a relatively recent time in the history of evolution, grass came about and took over the land surface of the planet. In response, certain animals developed rumination as a means to take advantage of this novel, abundant source of energy. In response again, certain other animals specialized in hunting ruminants as a means to gain indirect access to grass energy…
From an evolutionary perspective, animal agriculture is essentially an ingenious method applied by early humans to indirectly eat grass.
Industrial vs Organic meat production?
This last section of this article is in response to the last paragraph of the comment above. This topic does not really take a lot of discussion. That would be rather redundant and preposterous. But let us anyway take it briefly.
“The industrialization of meat production is ‘not‘ a result of the quantity of meat we consume.”
It is, in fact, the other way around: The quantity of the meat (as well as everything) we consume is a result of industrialization.
The world population grew sevenfold within a century and a half because of the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution was the cause of this dramatic population growth; not an answer to it.
Industry made more food available so, just like in the fish tank analogy I have used in the previous article, the human population grew proportionately to it.
Although there is a steady growth in the popularity of the organic food niche among middle-upper-class city-dwellers in the developed world, this is bound to remain a niche and could not be applied broadly for obvious reasons.
Perhaps history will eventually take a new course, shifting from the industrial age to the age home-manufacturing with the aid of advanced 3d-printing and nanotechnology and stuff…
…But for now, if we want to maintain our current population, everything we consume, and especially what we eat, whether meat or plants, must necessarily be produced on an industrial scale.
