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Cutting animal products out of
our diets, rather than merely
reducing meat consumption by 60%
as called for in the report,
would very likely allow an actual
reduction in land use by 2050 -
and it would eliminate an
enormous amount of direct
suffering.
Grist January 27, 2014
Read the whole story
here...
http://grist.org/news/un-warns-us-to-eat-less-meat-and-lay-off-biofuels-or-were-in-for-it/
U.N. warns us to eat less
meat..., or we’re in for
it
By John Upton
We’re overconsuming
ourselves into environmental
oblivion.
Farming will eliminate
forests, plains, and other wild
areas nearly the size of Brazil
by 2050 around the world if we
can’t mend our agricultural,
dietary, and biofuel-burning
ways. This unsustainable drive
for more growing land will result
in rising hunger and more
frequent riots as food prices
increase.
That’s the salty
prognosis in a new report by
scientists working for the
U.N.’s International
Resource Panel.
The amount of farmland has
increased 11 percent since the
1960s, as growers struggle to
meet growing populations’
ballooning demands for food and
biofuel, according to the report.
About 1.5 billion hectares, or
3.7 billion acres, is now being
used globally to produce crops,
and that figure continues to
grow. Making matters worse, about
a quarter of the world’s
soils are degraded, which reduces
the amount of crops that can be
grown in them.
....
What may be hardest for some
of the world’s poorest and
hungriest residents to stomach is
the vast amount of farmland
that’s being dedicated to
growing crops ... for animal
feed.
“One of our key
challenges is overusing
agricultural land for growing
meat,” said report lead
author Robert Howarth of Cornell
University. ....
...
If current trends continue, by
2050, when the world population
is expected to be greater than 9
billion people, between 320 and
849 million hectares of natural
land would have been converted to
cropland, according to the
report. The upper end of that
estimate approaches the size of
Brazil. The lower end is twice
what the scientists behind the
report consider to be safe.
But there is hope. Here are
some highlights from the
report:
[G]ross expansion of
croplands by 2050 could be
limited to somewhere between 8
per cent and 37 per cent,
provided a multi-pronged strategy
is followed for meeting the food,
energy and other requirements of
the global economy. …
The authors believe global net
cropland area could safely
increase to up to 1,640 million
hectares by 2020. While they
recognize there is still great
potential in increasing yields in
regions like Sub-Saharan Africa,
the authors highlight new
opportunities to steer
consumption towards levels of
sustainability, particularly in
high-consuming regions.
...
Oh, and one more big-ticket
item: We need to stop wasting so
much damned food! “Reducing
unsustainable demand can be
achieved in a number of
innovative ways,” the report
says. “This includes aiding
consumers to cut out wasteful and
excessive consumption behaviors,
improving efficiency across the
life-cycle of agricultural
commodities, and increasing the
efficiency with which land-based
resources are used.”
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