ON GRANARIES - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 138

most entirely absorbed by the livestock sector adjusting to higher prices with reduced
output, higher productivity and use of alternative non-food feed items. 19
And Bjorn Lomborg adds in the same vein:
Increased security is due … also to the so-called feedgrain buffer. A bad harvest
means that consumption gets scarcer. But when world market prices increase as a re-
sponse, less grain will be used to feed livestock, thus partly compensating for the ini-
tial scarcity. When the grain supply dropped and prices increased in 1972-4, the re-
duction in US feed consumption was as large as the total global production shortfall. 20
Or as the vegan commentator cited a few paragraphs above might have put it : 'Reducing
meat production by just ten per cent in the US freed enough grain to feed 60 million
people.' 21
Since 1968, the amount of grain produced per person globally has been fairly stable,
varying between a low of 292 kilos per person in 1970 and 2002, and a high of 343 in
1984 (with the median being 314) suggesting that a feed buffer of around 50 kilos per per-
son might be desirable, equivalent to perhaps 10 to 15 kilos of meat per person in a good
year. 22 This is about 16 per cent of average production, whereas Tristram Stuart suggests
that 'agronomists reckon that in order to generate food security, nations should aim to sup-
ply around 130 per cent of nutritional requirements.' 23 However not every year is a good
year and a certain amount of buffer is provided by food waste which would decline under
conditions of duress, so I will stick with 50 kilos of grain per person. If this is regarded as
feed for default meat - which seems reasonable since it is making use of a necessary sur-
plus - then it adds substantially to the default livestock budget estimated in Chapter 4. How
to ensure that this surplus is distributed equitably raises politically contentious questions
too complex to be considered here.
Until recently, there were few other ways that this flexiblility of demand could be
achieved, other than by directing surplus grain towards animals. The main alternative was
to turn grain into alcohol. In the early years of the 19th century, the United States was not
only a 'Hog Eating Confederacy' but was also awash with whisky, thanks to the bumper
crops of corn coming off the virgin soils of the mid west. 'Come on then if you love top-
ing,' William Cobbett wrote from America, 'for here you may drink yourself blind at the
price of a sixpence.' 24 Nowadays we have a more mundane use for corn alcohol which is to
mix it with diesel and use it to power motor cars. The growth of biofuel manufacture over
the first decade of this millennium has been so rapid that it now rivals meat production as