Source: instagram.com
A common misconception we encounter is, "If the world went vegan, we wouldn't have enough land to grow crops to feed everyone!"
In reality, a diet that includes animal products requires *far* more land than a plant-based diet. Global animal agriculture currently raises and slaughters some 70 BILLION land animals for food every year. Think about all of the land needed to house, graze, and grow feed crops for 70 billion animals.
By comparison, it takes drastically less land, water, energy, and crops to grow plant foods for 7 billion humans. In fact, a United Nations Environment Program analysis of global agricultural yields finds that better use of existing crop lands could feed 3.5 billion more people simply by shifting away from growing crops for animal feed and instead growing crops for direct human consumption. Reallocating crop lands in this way could increase available global food calories by as much as 70 percent, according to researchers.
In a recent article for The Guardian, "Goodbye— And Good Riddance— to Livestock Farming," environmental journalist George Monbiot notes, "All forms of animal farming cause environmental damage, but none more so than keeping them outdoors. The reason is inefficiency. Grazing is not just slightly inefficient, it is stupendously wasteful. Roughly twice as much of the world’s surface is used for grazing as for growing crops, yet animals fed entirely on pasture produce just one gram out of the 81g of protein consumed per person per day... That vast expanse of pasture land, from which we obtain so little at such great environmental cost, would be better used for rewilding: the mass restoration of nature. Not only would this help to reverse the catastrophic decline in habitats and the diversity and abundance of wildlife, but the returning forests, wetlands and savannahs are likely to absorb far more carbon than even the most sophisticated forms of grazing.
The end of animal farming might be hard to swallow. But we are a resilient and adaptable species. We have undergone a series of astonishing changes: the adoption of sedentarism, of agriculture, of cities, of industry.
“Animal agriculture puts a heavy strain on many of the Earth’s finite land, water and energy resources. In order to accommodate the 70 billion animals raised annually for human consumption, a third of the planet’s ice-free land surface, as well as nearly sixteen percent of global freshwater, is devoted to growing livestock. Furthermore, a third of worldwide grain production is used to feed livestock. By 2050, consumption of meat and dairy products is expected to rise 76 and 64 percent respectively, which will increase the resource burden from the industry. Cattle are by far the biggest source of emissions from animal agriculture, with one recent study showing that in an average American diet, beef consumption creates 1,984 pounds of CO2e annually. Replacing beef with plants would reduce that figure 96 percent, bringing it down to just 73 pounds of CO2e.”
Source: https://climatenexus.org/climate-issues/food/animal-agricultures-impact-on-climate-change/
I came across this powerful video on instagram (@the.undisputable.vegans), I had to share it.