[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Pleasures of the Flesh

[Bill Totten]

If you care about hunger, eat less meat.

by George Monbiot

Published in the Guardian (April 15 2008)


Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent
threat: the great food recession which 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 in the past year, that of wheat by 130% {1}. 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
{2}. But I bet you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1
billion tonnes, last year's global grain harvest broke all records {3}.
It beat the previous year's by almost five per cent. 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
2.13 billion tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01 billion,
according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), will feed
people {4}.

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" {5}.
Last year global stockpiles of cereals declined by around 53 million
tonnes {6}; this gives you a rough idea of the size of the hunger gap.
The production of biofuels this year will consume almost 100 million
tonnes {7}, which suggests that they are directly responsible for the
current crisis. In the Guardian yesterday the transport secretary Ruth
Kelly promised that "if we need to adjust policy in the light of new
evidence, we will". {8} 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 which 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 100 million tonnes of food will be diverted
this year to feed cars, 760 million tonnes will be snatched from the
mouths of humans to feed animals {9}. This could cover the global food
deficit fourteen times. If you care about hunger, eat less meat.

While meat consumption is booming in Asia and Latin America, in the
United Kingdom it has scarcely changed since the government started
gathering data in 1974. At just over one kilogramme per person per week
{10}, it's still about forty per cent above the global average {11},
though less than half the amount consumed in the United States {12}. We
eat less beef and more chicken than we did thirty years ago, which means
a smaller total impact. Beef cattle eat about eight kilogrammes of grain
or meal for every kilogramme of flesh they produce; a kilogramme of
chicken needs just two kilogrammes of feed. Even so, our consumption
rate is plainly unsustainable.

In his magazine The Land, Simon Fairlie has updated the figures produced
thirty years ago in Kenneth Mellanby's book Can Britain Feed Itself?
Fairlie found that a vegan diet grown by means of conventional
agriculture would require only three million hectares of arable land
(around half the current total) {13}. Even if we reduced our consumption
of meat by half, a mixed farming system would need 4.4 million 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 I am incapable of following. I tried it for
about eighteen 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 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 nine billion by 2050.
These extra people will require another 325 million tonnes of grain
{14}. Let us assume, perhaps generously, that politicians like Ms 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 225 million tonnes of grain. This leaves 531
million tonnes for livestock production, which suggests a sustainable
consumption level for meat and milk some thirty per cent below the
current world rate. This means 420 grams of meat per person per week, or
about forty per cent 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's 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 {15}.
But this system then runs into a different problem. The FAO calculates
that animal keeping is responsible for eighteen per cent of greenhouse
gas emissions. The environmental impacts are especially grave in places
where livestock graze freely {16}. 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. It's a freshwater fish which can be raised entirely on
vegetable matter and has the best conversion efficiency - about 1.6
kilograms of feed for 1 kilogram of meat - of any farmed animal{17}.
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.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Eg http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7284196.stm

2. World Bank, 14th April 2008. Food Price Crisis Imperils 100 Million
in Poor Countries, Zoellick Says. Press release.
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21729143~menuPK:51062075~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html

3. Food and Agriculture Organisation, April 2008. Crop Prospects and
Food Situation.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ai465e/ai465e01.htm

4. ibid.

5. World Bank, 2008. Biofuels: The Promise and the Risks.
http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTWDRS/EXTWDR2008/0,,contentMDK:21501336~pagePK:64167689~piPK:64167673~theSitePK:2795143,00.html

6. Gerrit Buntrock, 6th December 2007. Cheap no more. The Economist.

7. Food and Agriculture Organisation, April 2008, ibid.

8. Ruth Kelly, 14th April 2008. Biofuels: a blueprint for the future?
The Guardian.

9. Food and Agriculture Organisation, April 2008, ibid.

10. The British government gives a total meat purchase figure of
1042g/person/week for 2006.
http://statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/publications/efs/datasets/UKHHcons.xls

11. There's a discussion of global average figures here:
http://envirostats.info/2007/09/18/0406/

12. See Food and Agriculture Organisation, 2006. Livestock's Long
Shadow. Figure 1.4, page 9.
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e.pdf

13. Simon Fairlie, Winter 2007-8. Can Britain Feed Itself? The Land.

14. Based on the current population of 6.8 billion consuming 1006
million tonnes of grain.

15. Simon Fairlie, forthcoming. Default livestock farming. The Land,
Summer 2008.

16. Food and Agriculture Organisation, 2006. Livestock's Long Shadow.
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e.pdf

17. The FAO (ibid) gives 1.6-1.8. On April 12th, I spoke to Francis
Murray of the Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, who
suggested 1.5.

Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/04/15/the-pleasures-of-the-flesh/


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