How Animal Farming Fuels Global Hunger
Most people don’t know that livestock farming heavily contributes to world hunger. In fact, animal agriculture is the biggest driver of malnutrition and famines worldwide. Find out why👇
Who eats up all the soy? (Hint: it’s not the vegans)
While roughly 24,000 people die from hunger and malnutrition every day, our society wastes massive amounts of grain, corn, soy, and fresh water to grow livestock — resources that could be directly consumed by humans.
Animals are an incredibly inefficient food source. It takes about 100 calories of grain to produce just 12 calories of chicken or 3 calories worth of beef.
The same applies to soy. Therefore, not vegans but farmed animals consume the most soy. Almost 80% of global soy production go to animal feed, while all soy milk and tofu combined use up less than 5%.
Nothing uses as much land as animal agriculture
One third of all habitable land on this planet is taken up by the livestock sector and animal feed production. That’s around 38 million square kilometers (around four times the size of the United States.)
Nothing else that humans do consumes anywhere near as much space.
All urban and built-up land (incl. settlements and infrastructure) and all freshwater (incl. lakes and rivers) take up less than 1% of habitable land, respectively.
Despite using much more land and freshwater (and producing far more emissions), livestock provides just 18% of calories, globally.
82% of global calorie supply and 63% of global protein supply come from plant-based foods, which are much more efficient to produce.
“If the world adopted a plant-based diet, we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares.”
— Our World in Data (2021)
The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people (which is more than the current world population!)
And while every third human suffers from water scarcity, the production of one pound of beef uses as much water as a 135 days’ worth of showers.
Conclusion
The most efficient and only realistic way to feed a growing world population without land shortages, constant hunger crises and completely eliminating the rain forests is a large-scale shift to plant-based living.
Experts say avoiding meat and dairy is the “single biggest way” to reduce your impact on Earth. Even the United Nations have urged a global shift towards plant-based diets to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty, and the worst impacts of climate change.
“Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tear stained face of a hungry child.”
— Philip Wollen, former Vice President of Citi Bank
The mission ahead
The animal industry earns hundreds of billions from suffering and exploitation. Big Meat and Big Dairy use an army of lobbyists and deceptive ad campaigns to dodge ethical responsibility and keep their profits up. We can’t let them win!
I am determined to use this platform to expose the industry’s lies and build public pressure.
If you’re with me, please help me reach people with the truth, by becoming a free or paid subscriber now. 👇
THANK YOU to those who upgrade to paid, it means the world to me!
– Pala
Wow, this is very well put together and seems that there was a good amount of research put into this writing. But it is completely insane and is literally full of misdirected information to fit personal agendas. Outside of plant based proteins from nuts, how is protein 63% plant based? More specifically how is it natural protein without being very processed/manufactured which has been proven not to have the same health benefits as meat proteins. Also vitamin D is kinda important and milk being one of the main natural means of getting such makes It seem pretty important to have cattle or goats even if they never get slaughtered. Eggs from chickens are used I'm so many different means it's nearly impossible to get through life without needing them although I'm sure some extremist have came up with a way but for the average individual it's not logical. I'm All for providing animals both in captivity and in the wild a better means of cleaner living, I'm also an avid hunter and know the difference in wildlife conservation vs extremism. This here is something bill gates would help pay to push and he's nothing short of a lunatic and has openly discussed his concerns about excessive population and the need for major depopulation. If you want to be vegan that's your right to be and I'll be happy for you, don't push your agenda to where it has a negative effect on everyone else just cause you dislike something doesn't mean the world has to cater to your needs, it's you that has to accept that not everyone wants to be nor will be like you. You do your part how you like but don't expect me to do it too. If you do away with livestock you will kill half the world's population In just 1 generation from starvation. Read history if you want to learn something statistics only go so far in real world.