Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Credit: W Gerbens-Leenes and S Nonhebel, “Food and Land Use. The Infl uence of Consumption Patterns on the
Use of Agricultural Resources”,
Appetite
45: 24-31 (2005)
The second noticeable feature of this table is how expensive vegetable oil is in terms of
land use. The production of vegetable oils requires 20.7m
2
per kilo, and margarine even
more. This is about the same as beef, which is by far the most inefficient form of meat to
produce. By comparison, butter requires 13.8m
2
per kilo; and pork (which can comprise
anything up to about 50 per cent fat) 8.9m
2
. Elsewhere, Nonhebel writes: 'In the course of
researching these food systems … I was struck by the huge acreage required for growing
