Food For Thought
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Growing grain for animal feed is extremely resource intensive and wasteful. |
Growing grain for animal feed is extremely resource intensive and wasteful.
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Consider This
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Amount of U.S. grain fed to farm animals: 70%
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Pounds of corn and soy required to produce just one pound of pork: nearly 7
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Water needed to produce a pound of wheat: 14 gallons
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Water needed to produce a pound of meat: 441 gallons
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Of all water used for all purposes in the United States, more than half goes to: livestock production
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Feeding large amounts of grain to farmed animals in order to produce a small amount of meat is an inefficient waste of limited resources.
According to Cornell ecologist David Pimentel, animal protein demands tremendous expenditures of fossil-fuel energy—about eight times as much for a comparable amount of plant protein.
The meat industry is a major cause of fresh water depletion. According to Ed Ayres, of the World Watch Institute, "Around the world, as more water is diverted to raising pigs and chickens instead of producing crops for direct consumption, millions of wells are going dry. India, China, North Africa and the U.S. are all running freshwater deficits, pumping more from their aquifers than rain can replenish." [1]
The great Ogallala aquifer, a resource that took a half million years to accumulate, will be depleted in less than 40 years.[2]
According to Ayres, "Pass up one hamburger, and you'll save as much water as you save by taking 40 showers with a low-flow nozzle." [3]
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