Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Scientifically, it's clear that a carnivore diet is less energy-efficient. Each step on the food process has
a ten percent efficiency rate. The first step is the food producers, or the plants. The next phase on the meat-
eating ladder is feeding the plants to the livestock. Then, that livestock is fed to humans.If that middle step
were cut out, the world's crops could conceivably support 10 times more humans. 'We've been aware of
this for a while' said Johannes Feddema, associate professor of geography at the University of Kansas.
10
1
Wardle, Tony (n.d.), 'Hype, Hypocrisy and Hope',
Growing Green International
9. Cf also: 'because crop
production yields ten times more food than animal farming …' Dave from Darlington, 'Horse Power ',
Growing
Green International
5.
2
Found at:
www.vegsource.com/how_to_win.htm
3
Pollan, Michael (2006),
The Omnivore's Dilemma
, Bloomsbury, p 199.
4
Whitefield, Patrick (2004),
Earthcare Manual
, Permanent Publications, p 258.
5
Dave from Darlington (n.d.), 'Sustainable Agriculture',
Vohan News International
3.
6
Rifkin (1992),
Beyond Beef
, Dutton, p 160.
7
Fiddes, Nick (1991),
Meat a Natural Symbol
, Routledge, p 211.
8
Harris, Marvin (1991),
Cannibals and Kings
, Vintage, p 193.
9
Boyan, Steve (n d)
How our Food Choices can Help Save the Environment
,
http://www.earthsave.org/envir-
10
Ashley Thompson,
Beef: It's What Affects Global Warming
, Multimedia Reporting (Bradford-Utsler)
10
May
2006,
One way to settle this matter is to turn to the feed calculations in an agricultural hand-
book, since writers of these pricing manuals for farmers do not have an ideological axe to
grind. Nix's
Farm Management Pocketbook
has tables which show that for UK grain fed
beef, raised from 115 kilos at 12 weeks to a slaughter weight of 530-550 kilos, the feed
conversion ratio of grain to live animal is 5:1 in an average enterprise, and 4.6:1 for a high-
ratio of feed to meat of between 9.1:1 and 8.4:1. Bearing in mind that we are now compar-
ing weight of feed and meat, rather than protein content, Rifkin appears to be about right.
However - and this is where room for error or manipulation creeps in - that accounts
for only the final 415 kilos of the animal's growth. The first 115 kilos of growth, much of
which occurs in the mother's womb, is a more complicated matter. Since a cow usually has
only one calf per year, it is necessary to attribute to the calf's feed budget the upkeep of its
mother over an entire year, plus a fraction of what it cost to rear the mother to calf-bearing
age, minus a fraction of the mother's eventual meat value. If the mother is a suckler beef
animal, then she will probably have been living on grass; but the inefficient feed conversion
ratio can still be invoked, and a zealous analyst can quite easily find a way of determining
the feed to live weight ratio of the 115 kilo calf to be anything up to 30:1 - which in turn
makes the feed to meat ratio of the finished animal around 19:1.