Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
feed about 1.3 billion people, over 20 per cent of the world's population, at least 300 milli-
on more than the number of people estimated to be malnourished.
53
More to the point, two thirds of this 600 million tonnes of grain is used in the industri-
alized countries for the benefit of the 20 per cent of the world's population who live there.
And even more to the point, given that the report is written by US scientists, a quarter of
this grain is used to fatten animals for the benefit of the five per cent of the world's pop-
ulation who live in the USA. In effect, what the CAST report says is that it is not a waste
of protein for North Americans and Europeans to use extravagant quantities of human food
to fatten animals, because farmers in the Third World make up for it by rearing animals on
feed which couldn't be eaten by humans. This is like saying 'it's no problem if we Americ-
ans burn barrels of oil and release tonnes of carbon, because hey! Those guys over in India
and Africa hardly use any.'
Whilst a casual reader or slipshod journalist might easily overlook this flaw in CAST's
logic, and its evasion of the obvious conclusion, it is hard to believe that the authors of a
report endorsed by 38 scientific bodies were too stupid to spot them, so I am inclined to
conclude that they were happy to mislead.
1
McLaren, D
et al (
1998)
, Tomorrow's World
, Earthscan, p 144.
2
Annual Abstract of Statistics
(2009) 21.3 'Agriculture Land Use'; DEFRA (2009)
Agriculture in the UK
, Table 5.2.
3
Rifkin, J (1992),
Beyond Beef
, Dutton, p 60, citing G Tyler Miller. Quote slightly edited.
4
Shelley, Percy (1813),
A Vindication of Natural Diet,
London, p 20.
5
Singer, Peter (1990),
Animal Liberation
, Pimlico, 2nd edition, p 165.
6
Harris, Marvin (1987),
The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig
, Touchstone, p 21.
7
Steen, I (1988) 'Phosphate Recovery',
Phosphorus and Potassium
217, Sept-Oct 1998,
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/
8
Lappé, Frances Moore (1982),
Diet for a Small Planet
, Ballantine.
9
Cited in Rifkin (1992),
op cit
.3, p 161.
10
Smil, Vaclav (2004),
Enriching the Earth
, MIT Press, p 165.
11
Nix, John (2007),
Farm Management Pocketbook
, Imperial College London, p 96.
12
Garner, F (1946),
British Dairying
, Longmans, p 143.
13
That figure is for fattening a calf derived from the dairy industry. Fattening a calf from a dedicated beef herd is
arguably more likely to produce meat at a ratio of anything up to about 20 to 1 - but much of the feed is likely to be
rangeland grass that humans cannot eat. Nix (2007),
op cit.11
, p 89; Belyea, R
et al
,
Using NDF and ADF to Balance Di-
ets
, University of Missouri Extension, 1993,
http://muextension.missouri.edu/explore/agguides/dairy/g03161.htm
;
Dairy
Cattle Nutrition
, Penn State,
http://www.das.psu.edu/dairynutrition/nutrition/tables/
14
Seré, C and Steinfeld, H (1996),
World Livestock Production Systems
, Animal Production and Health paper 127,
FAO; cited in Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) (1999),
Animal Agriculture and Food Supply
,
1996, p 25.
15
Gold, Mark (2004),
The Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat
, Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), p 23.
