Is the wide spread availability of meat the root cause of the present global food crisis?!
"China's per capita annual meat consumption has more than doubled since 1980, to 110 pounds today!. That has created unprecedented demand for animal feed!. Producing 1 pound of chicken, for instance, requires nearly 2 pounds of corn and soybean meal!. A pound of pork requires 5 to 7 pounds of feed; beef needs more than 8 pounds!."
"It was impossible for my parents' generation to have meat all the time," said 42-year-old teacher Xue Wei, polishing off a piece of pie!. "Now, we can eat meat every day!."
China's growth and its agricultural base is too abstract to mean much to 20-year-old college sophomore Guo Meng!.
One thing she knows is that her parents hardly ever come to McDonald's, she said while finishing her lunch, but her palate bears little resemblance to theirs!.
"I eat sausage in the morning, a meat dish and a vegetable dish for lunch and the same for dinner," she said!. "If there's no meat, I won't feel full, but if there's no vegetable, no problem!."
http://www!.chicagotribune!.com/news/natio!.!.!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
"It was impossible for my parents' generation to have meat all the time," said 42-year-old teacher Xue Wei, polishing off a piece of pie!. "Now, we can eat meat every day!."
China's growth and its agricultural base is too abstract to mean much to 20-year-old college sophomore Guo Meng!.
One thing she knows is that her parents hardly ever come to McDonald's, she said while finishing her lunch, but her palate bears little resemblance to theirs!.
"I eat sausage in the morning, a meat dish and a vegetable dish for lunch and the same for dinner," she said!. "If there's no meat, I won't feel full, but if there's no vegetable, no problem!."
http://www!.chicagotribune!.com/news/natio!.!.!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
Answers:
Dude, this is a HUGE issue, where to begin!?
I agree with others that there are many factors, I think you make an interesting point!. However, I don't think it's the availability of meat as much as the means by which people get their meat!. Factory farming is extremely wasteful of precious resources!. We've bloated animal populations out of control, and of just a few species, and are funneling so many plants and so much water to raise and sustain these animals until slaughter!.
A meal with meat in it nowadays has all the wastefulness of a vegetarian meal (pesticides, transport, etc) and then the wastefulness of raising an animal for consumption on top of it!. It averages to 16 pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to make a single pound of meat, which is energy inefficient!. We put in more food and calories to make meat than we get back!. And inherent in all the bloated excess of grain and water needed to make a trivially small amount of meat is the transport, cultivation, pesticide use and everything else that comes along with growing vegetation!.
So we've shifted the distribution of plants, water and crops off of humans and onto animals, since animals require so much more of them to produce much less food!. So in order to maintain the inordinate amounts of meat a typical Western diet requires, whatever grain and water left over that ISN'T funneled into animal agriculture is sparsely distributed onto people!. Right now stores in America are rationing rice and flour already!. There are other countries where staple foods have been incredibly expensive for years now!. Corn production can no longer keep up with demand because corn is now used in almost everything - from oil to fuel to corn syrup to animal feed!. The corn crisis will probably catch up with us even sooner than other ones!.
Unfortunately that all means that rich countries like America take as much as they can of whatever crops they can get and at hideous "competitive" prices that further push down countries that are struggling economically!. There are countries on this planet that grow more than enough crops to sustain themselves but their greedy, crooked governments sell them instead, and most of it us used to sustain the levels of crops needed to raise animals!. In other words, because animal agriculture creates such a strain on supply of corn, soy, wheat and other staple crops, it gives people in power of staple-crop producing countries a platform to make a fortune off of!.
There are countries in Africa and South America that we send "aide" and money to, where people are starving to death, and guess what! Some of these countries make enough crop to feed their entire population, but the corrupt government exports cash crop and sits on a mountain of wealth with little to no benefit for the masses!. Rich Western countries continue to buy out these fragile countries' crop supply as long as it is offered because unfortunately, the greedy nature of animal agriculture demands a constant funneling of resources towards it!.
I find it evil the way America celebrates it's benevolence when they send food and aide to underprivileged countries, when America has blood on it's hands when it comes to the very reason why those countries are starving to begin with!. We undermine the country's economy by buying their export crops at low prices, we further damage them by enforcing MORE AND MORE demand because demand for meat is rising, and that means we need even greater and more disproportionate amounts of plants to feed the machine that is animal agriculture!.
On top of it, we are slowly forcing once-fertile countries to completely poison, overwork or otherwise destroy their own soil!. We are only a few generations away from complete collapse of crop supply!. One of the leading causes of environmental destruction is the way rich countries keep pushing poorer ones to up their export crop production!. Poor countries start to till fragile soil or expand into rain forests and other areas to continue to rise up to demand!. And in the end the profits pool at the top anyway while the general population starves to death!.
Most people I know rarely ever go a day without eating meat, not to mention the fact most eat 2-3 servings a day or more!. It's pretty much impossible to dismantle factory farming and go back to hunting or extremely small scale local farming, not unless people want to and are willing to eat far less meat!. I don't think we have enough surface land on this Earth if all the animals that people eat every single year, the billions and billions of them, were spread out and allowed to go back to being free range, wild, roaming game!.
Human beings alone have encroached on so much of the environment, with our sprawling cities, that we expect to have distance from wildlife!. Even here in Chicago and the suburbs, if wild animals wander in from who knows where, people shoot them or relocate them immediately because somehow human beings see themselves as completely seperate, unable to share!. Plus it would still require so much untouched land for animals to feed on!.
To even begin to save ourselves from the impending problem of global shortages of staple crops, we need to massive curb animal agriculture FIRST AND FOREMOST!. We could budget and dilly dally over rice and flour into eternity, there's no escaping the fact that we waste far more of our crops trying to raise and sustain animals!.
Unfortunately, overall the cause and solution all center on the fact that an overwhelming majority of people are ignorant, in fact completely oblivious to these issues, which allows for corruption to continue!. The government of every country on earth is in itself made up of bought-over, crooked politicians, how could people expect them to make decisions that are beneficial for the majority!? They are completely self-serving!. Many are invested in animal agriculture, in the meat or dairy industries!. When the American government begins to sponsor and run propaganda about how human beings need to drink cow milk, as grown, weaned adult mammals, you can tell without a doubt that the government is no stranger to being bed fellows to private interest groups!. The same can be applied to the widespread notion, the pure nutritional disinformation, that you need to eat meat, and a hell of a lot of it, to get protein!.
I can't even imagine a world without these privilege and power systems, however, because unfortunately people are way too greedy and we've gone too far in isolating ourselves from natural ecosystems and the food cycle!. We're pretty much a parasitic infestation on this planet that believes we are entitled, that we deserve, anything we can take from the planet before we die!. People are so stupid that I'm literally becoming increasingly bitter!.
Probably the best way to summarize everything is to end with this note!. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I watched the disgusting abomination that was the TV Show "American Idol Gives Back"!. The show was basically a showcase of millionaire celebrities patting themselves on the back on how giving they were and enticing the general population to contribute money to underprivileged countries!. These are the same countries that are poor because of America's own cutting, greedy nature!. These are countries whose export to import ratio, whose economies, are crippled because of the same people watching and hosting the show - because of animal agriculture and food crop production shortages!.
The show used images of people dying of disease and starvation to force the economically struggling middle and lower class viewing population to edge out a few dollars from their own pockets!.
Meanwhile, the top 1% of earners in America have wealth totaling in the trillions, and the top 1% owns and controls well over 90% of American industry, soil, buildings - anything and everything!. And the top 1% gives back nothing, they impose nothing but struggle on everyone underneath them socio-economically!. They cleverly harness emotional appeals to further yank money from those "beneath them" and then make them believe that they're helping somehow!. They shamelessly talk about children raised in schools with no funding and show images of poverty even within America!.
And then, to put a final nail in the coffin, the entire show is sponsored and peppered with commercials of fast food, of products with meat and dairy, of cars that use corn-based biofuel, of all the products that contributed to the problem in the first place!.
Sometimes I just ask myself, how freaking far are people willing to defend and deny plain common truths in order to justify shoving meat in their face, day in and day out!? How is it that people can buy into the fodder the government feeds them about all the penny pinching things like energy efficient lightbulbs and high gas mileage, which in the end are like pennies to the dollar saved by reducing meat consumption!? How can people illogically believe and accept that they need to drink milk as adults, for instance, but the suggestion that they eat way too much meat crosses the line into weird nutritional vegetarian propaganda!? It's like an insidious evil that penetrates people, where does this intense denial and greed comes from!? I just don't get it!.
Maybe this is all with a purpose though, maybe it's because mankind is so greedy and so easy to dominate and to follow, maybe because the general population is made up of sheep that buy into the massive-scale propaganda machine, that we are set to destroy our own species!. We're basically successful at being a destructive parasite of a species, but we're woefully inept at long-term survival!. I think the purpose behind it might be to wipe ourselves out in the end!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
I agree with others that there are many factors, I think you make an interesting point!. However, I don't think it's the availability of meat as much as the means by which people get their meat!. Factory farming is extremely wasteful of precious resources!. We've bloated animal populations out of control, and of just a few species, and are funneling so many plants and so much water to raise and sustain these animals until slaughter!.
A meal with meat in it nowadays has all the wastefulness of a vegetarian meal (pesticides, transport, etc) and then the wastefulness of raising an animal for consumption on top of it!. It averages to 16 pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to make a single pound of meat, which is energy inefficient!. We put in more food and calories to make meat than we get back!. And inherent in all the bloated excess of grain and water needed to make a trivially small amount of meat is the transport, cultivation, pesticide use and everything else that comes along with growing vegetation!.
So we've shifted the distribution of plants, water and crops off of humans and onto animals, since animals require so much more of them to produce much less food!. So in order to maintain the inordinate amounts of meat a typical Western diet requires, whatever grain and water left over that ISN'T funneled into animal agriculture is sparsely distributed onto people!. Right now stores in America are rationing rice and flour already!. There are other countries where staple foods have been incredibly expensive for years now!. Corn production can no longer keep up with demand because corn is now used in almost everything - from oil to fuel to corn syrup to animal feed!. The corn crisis will probably catch up with us even sooner than other ones!.
Unfortunately that all means that rich countries like America take as much as they can of whatever crops they can get and at hideous "competitive" prices that further push down countries that are struggling economically!. There are countries on this planet that grow more than enough crops to sustain themselves but their greedy, crooked governments sell them instead, and most of it us used to sustain the levels of crops needed to raise animals!. In other words, because animal agriculture creates such a strain on supply of corn, soy, wheat and other staple crops, it gives people in power of staple-crop producing countries a platform to make a fortune off of!.
There are countries in Africa and South America that we send "aide" and money to, where people are starving to death, and guess what! Some of these countries make enough crop to feed their entire population, but the corrupt government exports cash crop and sits on a mountain of wealth with little to no benefit for the masses!. Rich Western countries continue to buy out these fragile countries' crop supply as long as it is offered because unfortunately, the greedy nature of animal agriculture demands a constant funneling of resources towards it!.
I find it evil the way America celebrates it's benevolence when they send food and aide to underprivileged countries, when America has blood on it's hands when it comes to the very reason why those countries are starving to begin with!. We undermine the country's economy by buying their export crops at low prices, we further damage them by enforcing MORE AND MORE demand because demand for meat is rising, and that means we need even greater and more disproportionate amounts of plants to feed the machine that is animal agriculture!.
On top of it, we are slowly forcing once-fertile countries to completely poison, overwork or otherwise destroy their own soil!. We are only a few generations away from complete collapse of crop supply!. One of the leading causes of environmental destruction is the way rich countries keep pushing poorer ones to up their export crop production!. Poor countries start to till fragile soil or expand into rain forests and other areas to continue to rise up to demand!. And in the end the profits pool at the top anyway while the general population starves to death!.
Most people I know rarely ever go a day without eating meat, not to mention the fact most eat 2-3 servings a day or more!. It's pretty much impossible to dismantle factory farming and go back to hunting or extremely small scale local farming, not unless people want to and are willing to eat far less meat!. I don't think we have enough surface land on this Earth if all the animals that people eat every single year, the billions and billions of them, were spread out and allowed to go back to being free range, wild, roaming game!.
Human beings alone have encroached on so much of the environment, with our sprawling cities, that we expect to have distance from wildlife!. Even here in Chicago and the suburbs, if wild animals wander in from who knows where, people shoot them or relocate them immediately because somehow human beings see themselves as completely seperate, unable to share!. Plus it would still require so much untouched land for animals to feed on!.
To even begin to save ourselves from the impending problem of global shortages of staple crops, we need to massive curb animal agriculture FIRST AND FOREMOST!. We could budget and dilly dally over rice and flour into eternity, there's no escaping the fact that we waste far more of our crops trying to raise and sustain animals!.
Unfortunately, overall the cause and solution all center on the fact that an overwhelming majority of people are ignorant, in fact completely oblivious to these issues, which allows for corruption to continue!. The government of every country on earth is in itself made up of bought-over, crooked politicians, how could people expect them to make decisions that are beneficial for the majority!? They are completely self-serving!. Many are invested in animal agriculture, in the meat or dairy industries!. When the American government begins to sponsor and run propaganda about how human beings need to drink cow milk, as grown, weaned adult mammals, you can tell without a doubt that the government is no stranger to being bed fellows to private interest groups!. The same can be applied to the widespread notion, the pure nutritional disinformation, that you need to eat meat, and a hell of a lot of it, to get protein!.
I can't even imagine a world without these privilege and power systems, however, because unfortunately people are way too greedy and we've gone too far in isolating ourselves from natural ecosystems and the food cycle!. We're pretty much a parasitic infestation on this planet that believes we are entitled, that we deserve, anything we can take from the planet before we die!. People are so stupid that I'm literally becoming increasingly bitter!.
Probably the best way to summarize everything is to end with this note!. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I watched the disgusting abomination that was the TV Show "American Idol Gives Back"!. The show was basically a showcase of millionaire celebrities patting themselves on the back on how giving they were and enticing the general population to contribute money to underprivileged countries!. These are the same countries that are poor because of America's own cutting, greedy nature!. These are countries whose export to import ratio, whose economies, are crippled because of the same people watching and hosting the show - because of animal agriculture and food crop production shortages!.
The show used images of people dying of disease and starvation to force the economically struggling middle and lower class viewing population to edge out a few dollars from their own pockets!.
Meanwhile, the top 1% of earners in America have wealth totaling in the trillions, and the top 1% owns and controls well over 90% of American industry, soil, buildings - anything and everything!. And the top 1% gives back nothing, they impose nothing but struggle on everyone underneath them socio-economically!. They cleverly harness emotional appeals to further yank money from those "beneath them" and then make them believe that they're helping somehow!. They shamelessly talk about children raised in schools with no funding and show images of poverty even within America!.
And then, to put a final nail in the coffin, the entire show is sponsored and peppered with commercials of fast food, of products with meat and dairy, of cars that use corn-based biofuel, of all the products that contributed to the problem in the first place!.
Sometimes I just ask myself, how freaking far are people willing to defend and deny plain common truths in order to justify shoving meat in their face, day in and day out!? How is it that people can buy into the fodder the government feeds them about all the penny pinching things like energy efficient lightbulbs and high gas mileage, which in the end are like pennies to the dollar saved by reducing meat consumption!? How can people illogically believe and accept that they need to drink milk as adults, for instance, but the suggestion that they eat way too much meat crosses the line into weird nutritional vegetarian propaganda!? It's like an insidious evil that penetrates people, where does this intense denial and greed comes from!? I just don't get it!.
Maybe this is all with a purpose though, maybe it's because mankind is so greedy and so easy to dominate and to follow, maybe because the general population is made up of sheep that buy into the massive-scale propaganda machine, that we are set to destroy our own species!. We're basically successful at being a destructive parasite of a species, but we're woefully inept at long-term survival!. I think the purpose behind it might be to wipe ourselves out in the end!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
I really don't know!. Let's face it, a large cause of world hunger is distribution, not resources!. But maybe if people worldwide ate less meat, rural farmers and folks in not-as-developed countries would be able to eat the food they grew instead of feeding it to livestock to become some rich person's meal!.
Excess meat consumption has its problems--destruction of the rainforest and utter waste of resources, to name two--but I can't honestly say that if everyone went veg it would solve world hunger!. It might solve some other problems, but probably not that!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
Excess meat consumption has its problems--destruction of the rainforest and utter waste of resources, to name two--but I can't honestly say that if everyone went veg it would solve world hunger!. It might solve some other problems, but probably not that!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
Its not just down to China, its wrong to cite one county AFTER many others have enjoyed the benefit of exploiting the world for many years,
But it is true that the current level of meat production per capita is unsustainable!. As the population rises, people will have to eat less meat!. Although i have a sneaking suspicion the industry will find even more ways to compress farming and concetrate animals to use less land and yet still increase production!. Not a good future for farm animals!.
Fast areas of rain forest clearings are created to grow cereals for raising beef!. Irigation and drainage of lands has caused many indigenous peoples in the world ( in parts of the US, Australasia, Aftrica and Asia ) to change thier lifestyles!.
I've no idea if its the root cuase, but its certainly a favourite for a medal!.
And, looking at my own cattle and sheep, i can guarantee you i could feed more people off the land that it takes to support them than the meat they would provide!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
But it is true that the current level of meat production per capita is unsustainable!. As the population rises, people will have to eat less meat!. Although i have a sneaking suspicion the industry will find even more ways to compress farming and concetrate animals to use less land and yet still increase production!. Not a good future for farm animals!.
Fast areas of rain forest clearings are created to grow cereals for raising beef!. Irigation and drainage of lands has caused many indigenous peoples in the world ( in parts of the US, Australasia, Aftrica and Asia ) to change thier lifestyles!.
I've no idea if its the root cuase, but its certainly a favourite for a medal!.
And, looking at my own cattle and sheep, i can guarantee you i could feed more people off the land that it takes to support them than the meat they would provide!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
Actually it is the massive growth in demand for biofuels that is causing the global food crisis!. Please do not be mis-lead by peoples biased thoughts on the matter,the proof is in this link, of course clearing vast swathes of rainforest for commercial beef production is unethical and wrong, but people who buy locally bred and slaughtered animals are not to blame, I blame places like Mcdonalds rather than consumers!.
http://uk!.news!.yahoo!.com/afp/20080430/ts!.!.!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
http://uk!.news!.yahoo!.com/afp/20080430/ts!.!.!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
OMG Here is another export of the ugly American
Often people have no real understanding of the impact of the influence of American advertising in terms of the shaping of opinion and habit!.in the global marketplace -- even as far away as China and India!. When for more than a century it has been marketed that a chicken in every pot and beef three times a day makes for a wealthy person -- what do you expect!? People's ignorance is a breeding place for corporate idiocy with a total focus on greed - money - power!.
Do you honestly think that anyone in the halls of commerce has an inkling of conscience or consequence!? Do you think that these people care!? Since when have the corporations ever had a long range view as to the impact of their policies on people, animals or the planet!? Conscienceless corporate policies = culpable planetary and personal consequences!. Pathetic!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
Often people have no real understanding of the impact of the influence of American advertising in terms of the shaping of opinion and habit!.in the global marketplace -- even as far away as China and India!. When for more than a century it has been marketed that a chicken in every pot and beef three times a day makes for a wealthy person -- what do you expect!? People's ignorance is a breeding place for corporate idiocy with a total focus on greed - money - power!.
Do you honestly think that anyone in the halls of commerce has an inkling of conscience or consequence!? Do you think that these people care!? Since when have the corporations ever had a long range view as to the impact of their policies on people, animals or the planet!? Conscienceless corporate policies = culpable planetary and personal consequences!. Pathetic!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
perhaps in some specific areas that would be true!. but in the place where i am in, the main culprit is agricultural land converted to non food production ventures such as industrial parks, golf courses, mass housing units etc etc!. there is also a misapplied "agrarian reform" where land is distributed to inefficient single farmers!. what once produced say 50 sacks (at 50kg per sack) of rice or corn, now only produces less than half due to the inefficient methods and lack of capitalization/resources of the individual small scale farmer!. i understand India is going through the same situation!.
and consider one factor: the current rice production here would have been sufficient for the population twenty years ago with enough excess for export, reserves and emergency stocks!. now, with the population almost doubled, it is simply not enough!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
and consider one factor: the current rice production here would have been sufficient for the population twenty years ago with enough excess for export, reserves and emergency stocks!. now, with the population almost doubled, it is simply not enough!.Www@FoodAQ@Com
I dont think so!. Busy life,Change in food habits,unhealthy diets,etc!.!. are causing food crisis!.Www@FoodAQ@Com