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Food crisis solution: Go vegan
Peter Singer
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Kai Ryssdal: The floods that've hit the Midwest are sending already high corn prices to new records. That means meat's going to get more expensive too.
Texas, meanwhile, is dealing with brutal heat and drought. Agricultural officials there say the livestock industry stands to take an enormous hit.
So if meat and corn are off the table and other grains are prohibitively expensive, what are we supposed to eat?
Commentator and bioethicist Pete Singer says our diets are going to change whether we like it or not.
Peter Singer: Why are we in the midst of a food crisis when world production of food per person has actually grown steadily since the 1960s?
The answer is that we're not eating the food we grow, sometimes not eating them at all, sometimes wasting at least 80 percent of them.
100 million tons of corn is turned into biofuels that go into our gas tanks. That's a lot less corn for people to eat.
But most corn isn't eaten by humans; it's eaten by animals and that's the biggest part of the problem. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 756 million tons of grain plus most of the world's soybean crop are fed to animals and that amount has increased sharply in recent years as Asian nations have become more prosperous and their populations have started eating more meat.
When we use animals to convert grain and soy into food we can eat, they use most of the feed to keep warm and develop bones and other parts we can't eat. So we're wasting most of the food value of the crops we feed them. In the case of cattle, at least nine-tenths of the grain they eat is squandered.
Is there a simple way to solve the food crisis? Here's one suggestion: Eat less meat, dairy and eggs. In fact, that's what our diets will look like 50 years from now -- vegan or close to it -- unless, that is, someone works out how to grow environmentally friendly and commercially viable meat from cells in a lab.
Last month, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, offered a million dollars for anyone who can produce commercially viable meat from a lab in five years. That time frame is too short, but if they were to extend the deadline to 50 years, I would expect someone to claim the reward.
And if PETA is no longer willing to pay up, the market surely will.
Ryssdal: Peter Singer is a professor of bioethics at Princeton University. His most recent book is called "The Ethics of What We Eat."
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Thank you for raising awareness of this important issue. Modern factory farming is destructive to the environment, wasteful of resources, and unethical both for the suffering it causes to animals but also because of the resources diverted from production of food for human consumption
I marvel at a species that is more concerned about the price of flesh, or corn, than about the suffering, terror, and loss of life linked with eating eggs, dairy products, and flesh. Are our pocketbooks more important than the lives of others? Are our tastebuds and habits to be put before the sufferings of others?
I would like to get that PETA reward. We have been raising beef, lamb and even pork from time to time with out GRAIN for 3 years. Yes, it can be done. We now have our second book out trying to changs how we here in USA raise meat.
Where we live the ground is not suited for grain crops....perfect for livestock. Withour style of raising livestock, we are improving the ground. Crop ground kills the soil with all the commerical fertilizers. We use the animals to bring the soil back to life.
We move the animals every 12 hours to a new pasture. WE grow stockpile grass for the winter feed. Yes we did feed hay for 9 days last year but in our area last year most feed hay from Aug-April due to the drought. We are doing a high stock density grazing style that was developed in South Africa.
We are having universities start looking at what is happening to the land. Grasses are coming back that we did not plant, more song birds, more dung beetles and earthworms are living on our farms.
Just more food for thought. Check us out at greenpasturesfarm.net.
Here's one additional environmental benefit of a vegan diet that never really receives a mention: When you eat no animal products and do your own gardening, you'll find it very easy to live-- gasp-- without a refrigerator! I've done it for years.
What a pernicious thing is the refrigerator.
The TV of the kitchen, I tell you.
Bored, passive,
You confront the oracle and stare. Awaiting the light.
Looking at the other comments to this post, I am concerned at the misinformation from both sides of this debate.
The fact that people are starving in the world is not because people in the west consume too much, but because the food that we have in the world is poorly distributed, caused for the most part by government failures and severe military conflicts.
On the other side, the idea that "domestic meat animals are NOT fed on corn and soybeans, rather, they are grazed on marginal land that can not be used for any other form of agriculture" is complete nonsense. Animals in America do inhabit marginal lands, but that is not where they get their food. It comes from corn and soybeans. Also, the calculations of feed needs for animals is in fact 1 to 1. Its not that it takes 7 lbs of corn to make 1 lb of beef, but that it takes 7 time as much protein from plants such as soybeans to make the same amount from meat.
On the issue of the food crisis, my first thought seems to have been the first thought of Peter Singer, Peter Timmer of CGD and Thomas Friedman of NYT: the increase in meat consumption around the world. I am of course biased, I do a lot of work on the environmental impact of meat and a long time ago was trying to argue there's also an important economic impact.
The more I look into this though, the more I am convinced that this is not the problem with the food crisis. I can in fact find no connection between beef consumption and cereals in any of the data available. This is mostly explained by the fact that production of meat has been growing relatively slowly, and so the market has been able to adjust with some foresight. Yes, it takes more to make meat, but producers have also been making more.
There has been some comment on decreasing world cereal stocks, but if you look at the trends, there's nothing to them that suggests producers haven't still been making optimal choices for production.
So I think the key to the problem is not increasing consumption, but unforeseen shocks. These shocks have been exacerbated by bad policies, and it is the bad policies have hurt the people, not higher consumption.
For example, droughts in Australia, which are the main culprit behind the crisis, were unforeseen, but could have been prepared for. Some solutions include keeping emergency food stocks higher, increasing local production capabilities and developing better market/insurance programs for producers.
I am a PhD student in Economics at the University of California, Irvine. I do work on the environmental impact of diet, specifically meat. I have forthcoming articles in the journal Ecological Economics and Scientific American.
I am enjoying this lively discussion. I'd like to respond to those posting about dairy in the context of sustainable and humane farming practices.
Is there someone who can explain how milk is being produced humanely? Unless milk can be created synthetically in a laboratory somehow, I don't see how it can be produced humanely from animals for human consumption. Here is what I know: The female dairy cow is separated from her newborn calf soon after birth so the milk can be used for humans. This is a very painful thing for any mammalian mother who instinctively intends to nurse and care for her young. Typically dairy cows are only allowed to go through about five or six cycles of giving birth and having their young taken away from them, before they are killed and turned into meat (often for fast-food hamburger chains). Dairy cows are not killed after a lifetime of service; they live only about 25% of their life expectancy, which is about 25 years. Not only are dairy cows deprived of the joy of raising their young, the cows today have been engineered to produce many times the amount of milk per day than had been possible previously in nature. As a result, the cows suffer from abnormally large and painful udders that are often diseased and infected. When I look at this process, I don't see how it can be considered humane.
I've heard people say maybe it isn't humane, but it's just what we have to do to get milk. People believe that, even after weaning, we need to drink breast milk as children and for our entire adult lives to be healthy. And no wonder ... we hear the "got milk" and "milk it does the body good" commercials all the time. But does that make any sense at all? Look around you ... where do you see animals in nature, drinking breast milk from other animals? Sure, adult mammals such as domestic cats will drink breast milk if you give it to them. From what you see in nature all over the world, are there any adult mammals who rely on breast milk to survive?
On top of the general affront against nature that dairy represents ... as other have noted, dairy consumption has been linked to many health problems. According to recent research, not only do we not need milk, but our drinking it is making a lot of us sick! If the aim of sustainable farming is to provide people with the most NEEDED nutrients while doing the least harm to the environment ... then where do "dairy farms" fit into the sustainable farming picture?
To Dennis Hancock: Kudos to you for working to create sustainable agriculture. We need more poeple like you who are committed to living sustainably and wisely using the earth's resources.
For everyone here: I think most people agree that factory farmed animals are treated inhumanely, and we are NOT proud of these industries. The vast majority of meat in the United States DOES come from these industries, though. If all meat were to come from animals grazing naturally, we (Americans) wouldn't be able to eat as much meat as we do today, or ... looking at it another way, we wouldn't be able to have as big of a population.
So if we want to go on living with the population numbers we have today (which really aren't that big, compared to other parts of the world), we have to either (a) accept that we're trashing the planet with factory farming and continue eating as much cheap meat in our country as we want, (b) switch to eating lab meat instead of factory farmed meat (when it becomes available), or (c) reduce our meat intake to the point that the average American is following a plant-based, mostly vegan diet.
I think part (c) is necessary for sustainable agriculture in the USA because the the amount of meat that can be produced by truly sustainable methods in our country would be a trickle (and would be more expensive) compared to the amount we are used to consuming.
The area of grasslands available for livestock is getting smaller every day as we destroy more and more grasslands to create sprawling office parks and suburban housing developments. Also, you have to keep in mind that animals living on grasslands require a lot of precious water to drink. Often people see grasslands and imagine that cattle could live there happily converting grass to protein for human beings, but they forget that NOWHERE is there any potable water for the cattle to drink. That means you'll have to dig ponds to catch rainwater and try to irrigate water in. The same is true for growing plant crops, they need water, too, but not nearly as much water as animals need.
My point here is two-fold (1) I applaud those how are doing their best to raise animals sustainably and trying to end factory farming, and (2) The idea/hope/dream of livestock grazing sustainably doesn't excuse us from cutting down on our meat consumption ... if everyone in America vowed to only eat sustainably grown meat from here on out, our meat consumption would decrease by .... how much? I don't know, but it would be A LOT. I'm sure there are some places in developing countries where the only meat consumed is what we'd call "sustainably grown." And guess what? Those places either have very low populations, or they don't eat much meat per capita.
Thanks to NPR for bringing this story into the spotlight. It is shocking how little attention the connection between animal agriculture, the environment, and food prices has been given. The horrible rate of energy conversion when plant foods are fed to animals instead of being eaten directly is evidence enough that we should be eating lower on the food chain. Pair this with the fact that animal agriculture is the single largest source of greenhouse gasses, and we all should be taking a closer look at what we choose to eat.
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