Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
an unholy alliance of vegetable oil consumers and meat eaters, without either of whom cul-
tivation would be unviable. Perhaps we should make it unviable. Soya oil consumers seek-
ing to lower their food footprint would be advised to switch to higher yielding European-
grown oils such as rape or sunflower oil, or else to lard; similarly motivated consumers of
soya-fed meat would do better to chose livestock fed on genuine byproducts, lucerne or
grass; or else go vegan.
1
Davidson, H R (1949),
The Production and Marketing of Pigs
, Longman Green.
2
Cobbett, William, (1822),
Cottage Economy
, Peter Davies, 1926
3
Ross, Alice (2002),
Cottolene: The Mysterious Disappearance of Lard
,
http://www.journalofantiques.com/Feb02/
4
Wood, Alan (1950),
The Groundnut Affair
, Bodley Head. On more recent deforestation for groundut production in
Senegal, see Coura Badiane (2001),
Senegal's Trade in Groundnuts
, TED Case Studies 646, 2001
www.american.edu/
5
Schill, Susanne (2008), 'Sizing Up the Soybean Market',
Biodiesel Magazine
,
http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/
6
Gerbens-Leenes, W and Nonhebel, S (2005), 'Food and Land Use. The Influence of Consumption Patterns on the
Use of Agricultural Resource',
Appetite
, 45, pp 24-31; Gerbens-Leenes, W
et al
(2002), 'A Method to Determine Land
Requirements Relating to Food Consumption Patterns',
Agricultural Ecosystems and Environment
90, pp 47-58.
7
Nonhebel, Sanderine (2004), 'On Resource use in Food Production Systems: the Value of Livestock as “Rest Stream
Upgrading System”',
Ecological Economics
, 48.
8
Elferink, E V, Nonhebel S, and Moll, H C (2007), 'Feeding Livestock Food Residue and the Consequences for the
Environmental Impact of Meat',
Journal of Cleaner Production
, xx, 1-7.
9
Nonhebel (2004),
op cit
. 7. Cf Schill, Susanne, 'USDA Raises Projections for Soybean Prices',
Biodiesel Magazine
,
11 June 2008;
www.biodieselmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=2429
10
Nonhebel (2004),
ibid
.
11
Both crops have similar total crop yields of 2.25 tonnes, which represent the global average yield for soya beans
in 2007 and the West European 2007 yield for sunflower (the sunflowers are net of hulls). But soybeans are only 20 per
cent oil, whereas sunfowers seeds are around 40 per cent. Figures from FAOSTAT,
http://faostat.fao.org/
12
This valuation can either be achieved through an assessment of monetary value or of nutritional value. Under nor-
mal market conditions the monetary value broadly reflects the value of the end product - for example the fact that soya
oil costs about four times as much as soya meal per kilo, mirrors the fact that it takes roughly four kilos of soyameal
to produce a kilo of pork. In the case of the figures given in Table 3, it is assumed that the soya oil is four times as
valuable as the meal, whereas the sunflower oil is six times as valuable - a rough reflection of typical market condi-
tions. However market conditions do not always remain normal. Between 2001 and 2007, the price of sunflower oil rose
steadily from a 20 year low of $350 per tonne to $1280 per tonne, while the price of sunflower meal stayed broadly the
same at around $100 per tonne. This was at least partly due to subsidies for biodiesel oil crops. The high price of the oil
would increase its share of the land-take, and decrease that of the meal, although in ecological terms nothing had changed.
Clearly, volatile prices like these can make any assessment of the land requirements through market value alone mean-
