Intensive farming doesn’t 'make poverty history'

Inefficient food systems

There are various assessments of the ‘efficiency’ of animal farming. Pro-trade sources may omit certain factors in their food conversion calculations, such as health costs from foodborne diseases, industrial worker health problems, costs of transporting feed, etc.

The following analyses, from independent sources, show that meat production is an inefficient food conversion process.

It takes an average of ten pounds of grain or soya feed to produce one pound of beef. The land-use efficiency of soya production is almost 18 times higher than that of beef, and eight times that of all meats. A person eating a typical western meat-based diet directly and indirectly consumes enough plant and water resources to feed 20 people a healthy plant-based diet. The devotion of so many food resources to the production of animal-based foods represents an inefficient, inequitable, unethical and unsustainable system.

The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that a 50 per cent reduction in meat eating in the developed world by 2020 would mean 3.6 million fewer malnourished children in developing countries.