Bon article... Striking numbers. Smart conclusion.
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Credit crunch? The real crisis is global hunger. And if you care, eat
less
meat
A food recession is under way. Biofuels are a crime against humanity,
but -
take it from a flesh eater - flesh eating is worse
* George Monbiot
* George Monbiot
* The Guardian,
* Tuesday April 15 2008
* Article history
About this article
Close This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday April 15 2008 on
p27 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:01 on
April 15 2008.
Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent
threat: the great food recession that is sweeping the world faster than
the
credit crunch. You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of
rice
has risen by three-quarters over the past year, that of wheat by 130%.
There
are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to
the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices.
But I bet that you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1bn
tonnes,
the global grain harvest broke all records last year - it beat the
previous
year's by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world
food
supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will
happen if harvests decline?
There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs. Of the
2.13bn tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01bn, according to
the
United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation, will feed people.
I am sorely tempted to write another column about biofuels. From this
morning all sellers of transport fuel in the United Kingdom will be
obliged
to mix it with ethanol or biodiesel made from crops. The World Bank
points
out that "the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle
with ethanol ... could feed one person for a year". This year global
stockpiles of cereals will decline by around 53m tonnes; this gives you a
rough idea of the size of the hunger gap. The production of biofuels will
consume almost 100m tonnes, which suggests that they are directly
responsible for the current crisis.
On these pages yesterday Ruth Kelly, the secretary of state for
transport,
promised that "if we need to adjust policy in the light of new evidence,
we
will". What new evidence does she require? In the midst of a global
humanitarian crisis, we have just become legally obliged to use food as
fuel. It is a crime against humanity, in which every driver in this
country
has been forced to participate.
But I have been saying this for four years, and I am boring myself. Of
course we must demand that our governments scrap the rules that turn
grain
into the fastest food of all. But there is a bigger reason for global
hunger, which is attracting less attention only because it has been there
for longer. While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed
cars, 760m tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed
animals
- which could cover the global food deficit 14 times. If you care about
hunger, eat less meat.
While meat consumption is booming in Asia and Latin America, in the UK it
has scarcely changed since the government started gathering data in 1974.
At
just over 1kg per person per week, it's still about 40% above the global
average, though less than half the amount consumed in the United States.
We
eat less beef and more chicken than we did 30 years ago, which means a
smaller total impact. Beef cattle eat about 8kg of grain or meal for
every
kilogram of flesh they produce; a kilogram of chicken needs just 2kg of
feed. Even so, our consumption rate is plainly unsustainable.
In his magazine The Land, Simon Fairlie has updated the figures produced
30
years ago in Kenneth Mellanby's book Can Britain Feed Itself? Fairlie
found
that a vegan diet produced by means of conventional agriculture would
require only 3m hectares of arable land (around half Britain's current
total). Even if we reduced our consumption of meat by half, a mixed
farming
system would need 4.4m hectares of arable fields and 6.4 million hectares
of
pasture. A vegan Britain could make a massive contribution to global food
stocks.
But I cannot advocate a diet that I am incapable of following. I tried it
for about 18 months, lost two stone, went as white as bone and felt that
I
was losing my mind. I know a few healthy-looking vegans, and I admire
them
immensely. But after almost every talk that I give, I am pestered by
swarms
of vegans demanding that I adopt their lifestyle. I cannot help noticing
that in most cases their skin has turned a fascinating pearl grey.
What level of meat-eating would be sustainable? One approach is to work
out
how great a cut would be needed to accommodate the growth in human
numbers.
The UN expects the population to rise to 9 billion by 2050.
These extra people will require another 325m tonnes of grain. Let us
assume,
perhaps generously, that politicians such as Ruth Kelly are able to
"adjust
policy in the light of new evidence" and stop turning food into fuel. Let
us
pretend that improvements in plant breeding can keep pace with the
deficits
caused by climate change. We would need to find an extra 225m tonnes of
grain. This leaves 531m tonnes for livestock production, which suggests a
sustainable consumption level for meat and milk some 30% below the
current
world rate. This means 420g of meat per person per week, or about 40% of
the
UK's average consumption.
This estimate is complicated by several factors. If we eat less meat we
must
eat more plant protein, which means taking more land away from animals.
On
the other hand, some livestock is raised on pasture, so it doesn't
contribute to the grain deficit. Simon Fairlie estimates that if animals
were kept only on land that is unsuitable for arable farming, and given
scraps and waste from food processing, the world could produce between a
third and two-thirds of its current milk and meat supply. But this system
then runs into a different problem. The Food and Agriculture Organisation
calculates that animal keeping is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas
emissions. The environmental impacts are especially grave in places where
livestock graze freely. The only reasonable answer to the question of how
much meat we should eat is as little as possible.
Let's reserve it - as most societies have done until recently - for
special
occasions.
For both environmental and humanitarian reasons, beef is out. Pigs and
chickens feed more efficiently, but unless they are free range you
encounter
another ethical issue: the monstrous conditions in which they are kept. I
would like to encourage people to start eating tilapia instead of meat.
This
is a freshwater fish that can be raised entirely on vegetable matter and
has
the best conversion efficiency - about 1.6kg of feed for 1kg of meat - of
any farmed animal. Until meat can be grown in flasks, this is about as
close
as we are likely to come to sustainable flesh-eating.
Re-reading this article, I see that there is something surreal about it.
While half the world wonders whether it will eat at all, I am pondering
which of our endless choices we should take. Here the price of food
barely
registers. Our shops are better stocked than ever before. We perceive the
global food crisis dimly, if at all. It is hard to understand how two
such
different food economies could occupy the same planet, until you realise
that they feed off each other.
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