PHOTO: Sheep and cattle are seen at a feedlot in Colorado on Aug. 12, 2019. Preston Keres/USDA.
This op-ed by Alexandra Hostetter appeared on Colorado Newsline on June 29, 2022.
When Russia attacked Ukraine, some tragedies were immediate — loss of life, loss of community, loss of culture and joy. Other tragedies were delayed, lacking speed, but wide in scale. They were global, and it took a war to further expose them.
While scientists and advocates have long urged consumers, governments, and companies to accelerate the shift towards plant-based diets to enhance human health, protect the planet, and promote animal welfare, it took the invasion of Ukraine to throw a spotlight on the cracked global industrial agriculture system and its failure to actually … feed people.
As the conflict escalates, large parts of the world are cut off from life-sustaining food staples such as wheat and corn exports from Ukraine and Russia, with the World Food Program warning that 2022 could be “a year of catastrophic hunger,” with 44 million people in 38 countries threatened by famine.
While it is convenient to blame the invasion as an anomaly in an otherwise effective global food system, it is a lie. The current system produces enough to sustain more than 10 billion people (the current global population is roughly 7.9 billion people). But world hunger remains a problem due to many crops being grown worldwide to feed animals, not humans.
Meat companies tout their role to feed people, but livestock producers used about 61% of global corn and 20% of global wheat between 2016 and 2018. In addition, livestock producers feed about 80% of global soy to farmed animals. In the U.S. alone, more than 50% of grain is fed to farmed animals rather than people. The world’s cattle consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people — again more than the human population on Earth.
A transformation of our global food system is needed — a transformation that prioritizes the production of plants for people, not animals.
According to calculations of the United Nations Environment Programme, the calories that are lost by feeding crops to animals, instead of using them directly as human food, could theoretically feed an extra 3.5 billion people. This could mean the difference between life and death in many parts of the world, especially now. Meat only provides about 17-30 calories in food for people for every 100 calories consumed by livestock. And these calories are generally not consumed by the most vulnerable people facing starvation, but by consumers in rich nations such as the United States and Australia.
A transformation of our global food system is needed — a transformation that prioritizes the production of plants for people, not animals, and a shift in daily consumer choices (eat more plants, less meat). It all boils down to making more food for the planet, in a way that equitably feeds people, and helps protect us all from the growing threat of climate change.
With all the terrible losses in Ukraine, maybe from the tragedy, something can be gained?
Alexandra Hostetter is the director of development and partnerships for the conservation organization Big Life Foundation, and a Sierra Club volunteer.