In earlier blogs, we have discussed the benefits of being vegan in health, environment, and animal ethics. To look forward to this, we will delve into the impact of veganism on our food security.
“A reduction of meat consumption by only 10 percent would result in about 12 million more tons of grain for human consumption. This additional grain could feed all of the humans across the world who starve to death each year — about 60 million people.”
Regardless of geographic location, people in every corner of the world are impacted by hunger. The contributing factors behind hunger are often the same i.e. inequity in food distribution, food waste, and the effects of animal agriculture on our global food system.
One key step to solving world hunger in the long term is to adopt a more sustainable approach to food production. Thus, it means we have to adopt and encourage more sustainable eating habits, limit food waste, and abolish animal agriculture.
As per some research conclusions, if the food we currently produce were distributed more equitably, and more attention was paid to eradicating waste, we could feed the current population of the entire globe without producing any more food.
Then, can we solve the hunger problem only by improving the food distribution system and limiting the waste…???
The answer is simply no.
Some questions may arise in your mind here, like-
If we have enough food then just by changing the food system and employing sustainable methods why can’t we eradicate the hunger problem?
The answer to these questions lies in our perspective.
Instead of feeding people, much of the food grown today is fed to livestock. It means feeding the world’s crops to farmed animals meant an equivalent number of calories or a similar amount of protein became available through animal-based products. But in actuality, it yields just a fraction. In essence, we take a large amount of food, pass it through farmed animals, and get a much smaller amount back. We can conclude, that animals take in more calories than they provide us.
Animal agriculture uses about 77 % of all the land used for farming in the world, with the remaining 23 % of land being used to grow crops for human consumption. A major part of the land used for animal agriculture is used to grow feed for livestock to consume. Dedicating such a large proportion of agricultural land to meat and other animal products which are calorically inefficient — is simply unsustainable.
Cheap meat, dairy, and eggs are an illusion–we pay for each with depleted forests, polluted freshwater, soil degradation, and climate change.
So, if we grow plant foods directly for human consumption, we would need less than a quarter of the agricultural land we use today and would cut food’s climate emissions and automatically the water pollution in half.
The food we choose to produce has a substantial impact on the entire world. Wider acceptance of plant-based diets would be a big step in the right direction. It encourages the conservation of resources like land, water, and crops, which are used more efficiently in plant-based agriculture.
Plant-based diets are less damaging to the environment and more calorically efficient than animal-derived products.
Animal agriculture is a major contributor to environmental destruction and degradation. When we stop eating meat, 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions which is caused by animal agriculture, would be eliminated. The future effects of this reduction on public health would be enormous.
If we want to fight hunger and ensure food security for everyone, we need to redirect yields and land that can be used for animal feed to human consumption.
“We can feed an extra four billion people a year if we reject the bloated and wasteful factory farming systems that are endangering our planet’s biodiversity and wildlife.”
Many of us agree that the increase in the frequency of plant-based eating is a key step in solving a vast array of problems ranging from climate change to habitat loss and world hunger.
Veganism can have a positive impact on global food security. By adopting a plant-based diet, we can reduce our dependency on animal agriculture, free up resources, and help to ensure that more people have access to healthy, sustainable food.
By choosing to eat vegan, or plant-based, we are doing our part to shift to a more calorically-efficient food production system. We can create a more secure and sustainable food future for all.
“Every time you sit down to eat, you have a powerful opportunity to eliminate world hunger at your part.”
Leaving you again with some questions to ask yourself...
Is it morally justifiable to continue practices that contribute to global hunger when these resources can be redirected to feed people directly?
What moral justifications do we have for continuous consumption of animal products?
We hope you will now understand the basic problem and will look for some solutions for the same.
We’ll be back with another perspective in our other blog.
Stay tuned, see you!