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The modern practice of animal-based agribusiness has implications for food security, inequality, and human health. Humans produce enough calories in the world to feed everyone, even with an accretionary global population. Still and all, according to the UN, around one in eight people in the world is severely malnourished or lack access to food, due to poverty and high food prices.
While 91% of farmers in the US have crop insurance to cover losses in the event of extreme weather, only 15% of farmers in India are covered. In China, only around 10% of farmers have crop insurance, and just 1% or less in Malawi and most low-income countries. Food security and food sustainability are on a collision course. Reversing direction to avoid this major counterpoint will require extreme downward shifts by large segments of the world's population in their intake of animal carcass, chicken eggs, cow's milk and seafood.
Given current and future crop projections under a warmer climate, it is wasteful to use highly productive croplands to produce animal feed since this is conducive to exhausting the world's food supply. According to one study, “80 percent of the world’s starving children live in countries where food surpluses are fed to animal that are then killed and eaten by more well-off individuals in developed countries.”
Similarly, an advocate for dietary change pointed out, “Intensive meat production isn’t just torture for animals. It destroys the environment, and devours great chunks of our raw materials which we import from the global South as animal feed.” This plant-based advocate continued, “Argentina and Brazil are dramatically increasing their soy cultivation, and it's being fed almost exclusively to the animals we slaughter, forcing up land prices. Small farmers are losing their land and livelihoods. That schnitzel on our plates jeopardizes the food security of many people in the global South.”
Food waste is another mountainous issue since 30% to 50% of food is wasted worldwide. Waste negatively affects global food availability, especially in the US, China, and India. Reducing food waste in these three countries alone could yield food for upwards of 400 million people. Excerpt from "Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming," by Dr. Moses Seenarine, [ http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC ]
Food security is a problem of distribution, not just production. Around 17% of densely populated India is undernourished, even though per capita flesh consumption is relatively low. In contrast, fewer than 5% of people in the US, where 22% of the world’s cattle is raised, are at risk of going hungry.
Overall, the clear trend globally is for rising animal consumption among the urban middle class. Eating animal-based meals is a status symbol. Even with India's religious prohibitions and cultural politics against the eating of cow flesh, 'non-veg' has become a status symbol in the thriving cities. On top of this, across the world, people typically eat animals as part of a feast, holiday or celebration. School cafeterias serve animal carcass every day with few plant-based offerings, raising expectations for a daily dose of flesh.
Even though plants are cheaper, a high-pressure, fast food lifestyle is causing adults to lose their taste for vegetables, and they are forgetting how to cook them. The economic gap between developed and developing countries is reflected in their animal consumption. While people in developed countries fulfill upwards of half, 56%, of their protein needs from animal sources, people in developing countries obtain only 18% in this way.
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the BRICS, are five big developing countries. Economic growth in the BRICS is reflected in their animal consumption, and together, they account for 40% of the world’s population. Between 2003 and 2012, BRICS animal consumption rose by 6.3% a year and is expected to rise by another 2.5% a year between 2013 and 2022.
The upsurge in carnism is due to the expansion in poultry consumption worldwide. Cow carcass is the one category that on a worldwide level showed no gain in consumption levels from 1970-2000. This trend reflects the fact that while cattle consumption rose in developing countries such as China and Brazil, it fell modestly in North America, Oceania, and Europe.
Chicken consumption in China and India is determined by lifestyle to a larger extent than by population growth. Similarly, in Russia, the world’s biggest cow carcass importer, demand depends on prosperity from oil and gas export revenues, since the population peaked in 1991 at around 150 million. While animal carcass is cheap in Brazil, it is expensive in South Africa. Several economic crises in South Africa have ensured that the rising demand for animal flesh is almost entirely limited to cheaper chicken carcass.
Between 2005 and 2050, food demand may soar 60 to 100% higher than the FAO's estimate of 50% from 2005/2007 levels. There are many uncertainties, but food projections are more sensitive to socio-economic assumptions than to climate warming or bioenergy scenarios. With higher population and lower economic growth, food consumption per capita drops on average by 10% for crops and 20% for livestock. This shows that a consumption tax on food animals can greatly lower livestock intake and associated climate-altering gases.
Excerpt from "Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming," by Dr. Moses Seenarine, [ http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC ]
Worldwide, two billion people live primarily on an animal-based diet, while double that sum, or 4 billion people, live primarily on a plant-based diet. In fact, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimated that calories lost from feeding cereals to animals could feed an extra 3.5 billion people.
Another report calculated that 4 billion people could be fed with the crops devoted to livestock. The single biggest intervention to free up calories would be to stop using grains for cow carcass production in the US. By far, the US, China, and Western Europe account for the bulk of the 'diet gap,' and corn is the main crop being diverted to animal feed.
By moderating diets from food animals, choosing less resource-demanding animal products, and maintaining non-feed systems, around 1.3 and 3.6 billion more people could fed. And ending consumer waste of animal calories could feed an additional 235 million people. The WHO estimated that the number of people fed in a year per hectare (2.5 acres) ranged from 22 individuals for potatoes and 19 for rice, to one and two persons, respectively for cow and sheep carcass. The agency added that the low energy conversion ratio from feed to carcass is a concern since the cereal grain being produced is diverted to livestock.
A Bangladeshi family living off rice, beans, vegetables and fruit may live on an acre of land or less. In sharp contrast, the average American, who consumes around 270 pounds of animal carcass a year, needs 20 times that. The current global average animal consumption is 100g (3.5 oz) per person per day, with about a ten-fold variation between high-consuming and low-consuming populations.
For most people in developing countries who obtain their protein from plants, eating animal flesh is a luxury. A kilogram (2.2 lb) of animal carcass can cost from $2 to $5 in the local markets, which is several days’ wages. A typical African eats only 20 kg (44 lb) of animal flesh a year, well below the world average. These findings suggest that over-consumption and dietary habits are of the essence for understanding resource use and GHG pollution, as opposed to expanding population being the primary driver as is popularly argued.
That is, population's importance is related to lifestyle expenditures, and specifically to the over-consumption class. A 2011 report concludes, “The mass consumption of animals is a primary reason why humans are hungry, fat, or sick and is a leading cause of the depletion and pollution of waterways, the degradation and deforestation of the land, the extinction of species, and the warming of the planet."
Growth for Who? Defining Progress by Under-Counting the Hungry Masses
by Moses Seenarine, 12/15/17
Malnutrition affects one in every three people worldwide. It affects all age groups and populations, and plays a major role in half of the 10 million annual child deaths in the developing world. In the children who survive, malnutrition continues to be a cause and a consequence of disease and disability.
The most visible form of hunger is famine, a true food crisis in which multitudes of people in an area starve and die. There are over 850 million people who are chronically hungry. This is the largest number and proportion of malnourished people ever recorded in human history. Plus, being underweight is a major problem globally. A quarter of women in India and Bangladesh are underweight. And a fifth of men in India, Bangladesh, Timor, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Ethiopia are underweight. Being underweight put a person at risk for multiple health problems including anemia, infertility and osteoporosis.
In the entire developing world, or Global South, hunger and poverty are intense and may worsen as economic growth across the world stalls. From 2005 and 2008 food prices almost doubled. To make matters worse, from 2007, there has been a sizable slowdown in food aid, bringing hunger reduction "essentially to a halt for the developing countries as a whole."
As many as 2.8 billion people on the planet struggle to survive on less than $2 a day, and upwards of one billion people lack reasonable access to safe drinking water. There is an enormous and persistent food gap between the global South and the developed north. To illustrate, the average person in the industrial world took in 10% more calories daily in 1961 than the average person in the developing world consumes today. The large numbers of poor and malnourished people in the world are unacceptably high, but these numbers may be much higher due to under-counting.
Misleadingly, the UN set the threshold for hunger as the minimum calories needed for a "sedentary lifestyle." In reality, the number of hungry people could be as high as 1.5 billion, or in excess of 25% of the world's adult population if the threshold was set as the minimum needed for "normal activity." And numbers of the hungry would jump to 2.6 billion, or nearly 45% of the global adult population, for "intense activity."
Currently, 4.3 billion people live on less than $5 a day. Although this figure is higher than the World Bank poverty criteria at $1.25 a day, one report showed that a realistic poverty measure would be around $10 a day. By this standard, over three-quarter of humans live in poverty. One-fifth of the Earth's 7 billion people have no land and possessions at all. These "poorest of the poor" are non-literates lacking safe drinking water and living on less than a dollar a day.
Many spend about 80% of their earnings on food, but still they are hungry and malnourished. The average US house cat eats twice as much protein every day as one of the world's poorest of the poor, and the cost to care for each cat is greater than a poor person's annual income. Half of the world's population have enough food to provide energy, but suffer from individual nutrient deficiencies. Billions of people lack iron, iodine, vitamin A, and other vital nutrients. In addition, racial, ethnic, and religious hatred along with monetary greed cause food deprivation for whole groups of people.
The IPCC's AR5 report suggest that climate transformation will affect poor countries the most, and inflate food insecurity. While Oxfam predicts world hunger will worsen as planetary heating inevitably affects crop production and disrupt incomes. The number of people in the peril of hunger might climb by 10% to 20% by 2050, but daily per capita calorie availability is falling across the world.
Whose Carbon Footprint is Larger? Diet Versus Over Population
by Moses Seenarine 12/15/17
Many parts of the world expect substantial modifications in population size, age structure, and urbanization this century. These variations can affect energy use and GHG outflows. In particular, aging, urbanization and variations in household size can substantially influence GHG footprints in some regions.
Aging will occur in most regions, due to declines in both fertility and mortality. Aging is expected to be particularly rapid in regions like China that have recently experienced sharp falls in fertility. On the positive side, slowing population growth could provide 16–29% of the GHG reductions suggested to be necessary by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate transformation.
There is an inverse relationship between the two main drivers behind increased land requirements for food – as socioeconomic development improves, population growth declines. At the same time, diets become richer. Typically, consumption of animal protein, vegetable oil, fruit and vegetable swells, while starchy staples become less essential. With higher purchasing power comes higher consumption and a greater demand for processed food, animal carcass, cow milk products, chicken eggs, and fish, all of which add pressure to the food supply system. This over-consumption severely affects global sustainability, equity, food security, and GHG emissions.
During a span of 46 years, from 1961 to 2007, a review of FAO data showed that in most regions, diets became richer while the land needed to feed one person diminished. In many regions, dietary change may override population growth as a major driver behind land requirements for food in the near future. Potential land savings through yield improvements are offset by a combination of population growth and dietary change. These dynamics were the largest in developing regions and emerging economies.
Notably, additions to the total per capita food supply were not observed everywhere around the world. In most developed regions, the share of animal products is extraordinary high. From 1961 to 2007, food animals constituted one-third of the available calories in the global North, compared to 10% or less in many of the poorer regions in the global South. These over-consumption dynamics are slowly changing but remains highly skewed.
The FAO projects that world population will expand 34 to 41% by 2050 to reach 8.9 - 9.1 billion. Food demand will soar upwards by 70%, and daily per person calorie intake will rise to 3,130 calories. Food is a major part of climate warming, but it is essential for survival, security and equity. Although the consumption per capita of cereals is likely to stabilize, population growth will escalate the demand for both food animals (almost doubling) and cereals for feed (50%) by 2050.
Another problem related to over-consumption is the hidden population of obesity. The average body mass is climbing at a sharp pace. For the first time in human history obese people outnumber underweight people. Almost 11% of men and 15% percent of women worldwide are obese, while under 9% of men and 10% of women are underweight. In 2005, global adult human biomass was 287 million tonnes, of which 15 million tonnes came from being overweight. This extra mass is equivalent to that of 242 million people of average body mass or 5% of global human biomass. Biomass from obesity was 3.5 million tonnes, the equivalent of another 56 million people of average body mass.
In 2012, the US came in third following the Pacific island nations Micronesia and Tonga for having the highest average weight in the world. By comparison, Americans are 33 pounds heavier than the French and 70 pounds bigger than the average Bangladeshi. In addition to extra energy and food demands, severe and morbid obesity are associated with highly elevated risks of adverse health outcomes.
I am a father, educator and activist. I would like to discuss how we can eat for surviving climate change by considering less as more. Climate change in happening right now and may get far worse in the near future. This year, 2017, is on track to be the hottest year on record. If it is, it will steal the record from 2016, even though this is not an El Nino year. Before 2016, the hottest year was 2015; before 2015, the hottest year was 2014, and so on. Do you notice the pattern here?
The Earth has already surpassed one degree Celsius rise in temperature from 1700 levels, and we're on track to go well beyond the 2C limit aimed for in the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. The atmosphere now has more than 400 parts per million carbon dioxide, and the rate of increase is not slowing down. We may have already passed the point of safe return and it does not look good for my lifetime, and less so for my child. But giving up is not an option for either of us.
The good news is that it is not game over, yet. And since humans are the cause of climate change, we can also do something about it. For example, reducing our personal consumption is an effective way to minimize our greenhouse gas footprint. Each one of us have a new opportunity each day to make better choices in order to minimize our contribution to climate change. With education and awareness raising, it is possible to achieve significant reductions in emissions from diet, travel, and lifestyle. This is especially true for individuals in North America and Europe, who are by far the biggest consumers of energy, animal products, and cars in the world.
There is a tremendous upside to changing our over-consumption habits, and this alone should challenge each of us to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as we can each and every day. Less is more is so many ways, and we need to make conservation cool again. The less natural resources we consume in the present, is the more people will have access to in the future. The lower on the food chain that we consume with each meal, by eating plants instead of animals, the more biodiversity there will be to enjoy. Lower personal energy use, travel and meat intake equals less global heat, and reduced climate vulnerability.
Beyond the personal level, at the community and regional levels, one positive development is the ongoing transition to renewable energy. National policies are slowly shifting away from the use of fossil fuel in energy production and transportation. The 2015 Paris Climate Accord's target of two percent annual reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is a good start, and despite withdrawal by the American administration, most major cities and states are trying to do their part to lower US emissions. There is vast scope for improvement, and we are gradually turning the corner on the carbon economy and headed toward renewable energy.
The bad news is that even if individuals and countries cut down fossil fuel consumption to zero by 2050 or 2100, this will not stop global warming. Going 100 percent renewable will help to reduce greenhouse gas significantly, no doubt, but there is another ingredient in our consumption footprint that needs to be lowered as well.
That component is our diet, specifically greenhouse gases from animal production, which is around 15 percent of total emissions, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The footprint from our carnivorous habit is greater than transportation, including emissions from all cars, buses, boats and planes combined. Moreover, the FAO's 15 percent livestock figure exclude emissions from the seafood and pets industries, and deforestation. According to NASA, clearing land to raise livestock and feed crops is one of the leading causes of deforestation. So we are literally destroying the Earth’s lungs and precious ecosystems to raise farmed animals.
Like fossil fuel consumption, there has been a steady rise in meat intake, with attendant release of greenhouse gases. If fully accounted for, greenhouse gas from carnism may equal to that of energy production. But unlike efforts to limit the expansion of the carbon economy, the animal agriculture industry is promoted at all levels, while their emissions are being ignored by the scientific community and the popular media alike.
The farm animal industry produces more greenhouse gas than all of transportation, so it is not inconsequential. In addition to carbon dioxide, animal production emits half of the world’s emissions of methane, according to the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and the second major contributor to global warming.
Remarkably, emissions from farmed animals are excluded from the Paris Climate Accord, and global consumption is set to double by 2050. While it is critical for us to lower fossil fuel use in energy and transportation, unless these are accompanied by significant reductions in dietary emissions, humans will continue to drive catastrophic global warming.
Similar to the environmental and cultural devastation initiated by the production of oil tar sands in Canada, there are severe ecological consequences associated with animal production, including deforestation, habitat loss, species extinction, soil and water pollution, landlessness, poverty, disease, sickness and death. The impacts on soil, forests, and oceans reduces Earth's capacity for absorbing carbon dioxide and leads to even more rapid warming.
Soy is an important base ingredient of the world’s meat production, and approximately three quarters of the world’s soy goes to animal feed. Soy production has left an enormous scar on the Earth’s surface, more than 400,000 square miles (one million square kilometers), equivalent to the total combined area of France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Jaguars, giant anteaters, sloths and thousands of other creatures have been affected in Brazil and elsewhere.
Bolivia lost 430,000 hectares of forest per year over the previous decade. Although Bolivia is one of the least economically developed countries in South America, its greenhouse gas emissions levels per capita equal or exceed those of many European countries. More than 80 percent of those emissions come from deforestation. Alarmingly, crop yields are set to decline with rising temperatures, so more land and water will have to be used in the future to grow the same amount of animal feed.
Despite its importance, diet and personal consumption is so taboo that climate scientists and environmental activists rarely make reference to this topic. Take for example, Bill McKibben and 350.org, the leading climate advocacy group in the world. The organization has conducted dozens of climate campaigns, including a 100 percent renewable energy crusade, but they do not have a single program to address agricultural emissions. This is not surprising considering that environmental activists and green organizers are avid consumers of animal flesh so there is a huge conflict of interest present.
Al Gore's two movies on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and “An Inconvenient Sequel,” have both omitted greenhouse gas emissions from carnism. Within mainstream climate activism, reducing demand for animal products is not presented as part of the solution. This view is short-sighted since the increasing dependence on animal products in diets worldwide is a major self-inflicted handicap in our capacity to successfully negotiate climate change. Maybe, instead of using vast amounts of water and land to grow crops to feed to animals, to then feed to people, if we just eat the crops instead we could save ourselves from hunger and global warming.
The scientific community is slowly coming around. James Hansen, former head of NASA and one of the world's most famous climate scientist is lead author of a 2017 article titled, "Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions." The paper admits that ruminant production is a concern and added, "we would be remiss if we did not point out the potential contribution of demand-side mitigation that can be achieved by individual actions as well as by government policies."
America’s addiction to cheap meat, fed on corn and soy in vast indoor factories, comes at a high cost in human health problems and environmental destruction. None of these costs are paid for by the companies that produce the meat and feed, such as Tyson, Cargill and ADM. If the costs of pollution, habitat destruction, losses to fisheries and tourism, climate change and impacts on human health were fully accounted for, meat would be a luxury food.
The era of climate migration is here and rather than building walls, nations have to cooperate for climate mitigation and disaster recovery. The climate crisis is a global one that demands a global response. We can devolve into nationalist xenophobia or combine our efforts in a more effective international response. This crisis requires individual change and collective action, and maintaining an acute awareness in every choice we make that less is more.
