Despite the fact the human population doubled over the past 40 years, food production was always able to keep up with demand.The regular production of largely predictable crops, mostly harvested during one season of the year and coupled with the food stocks left from the previous year, ensured there was always enough to meet the needs for both food and animal feed.
Saturday
Before I go: this just in the Winnipeg Free Press. Not an animal-rights column but a column about the stupidity of promoting animal agriculture and meat-based diets. It has to stop, if we are going to "feed the world."
Despite the fact the human population doubled over the past 40 years, food production was always able to keep up with demand.The regular production of largely predictable crops, mostly harvested during one season of the year and coupled with the food stocks left from the previous year, ensured there was always enough to meet the needs for both food and animal feed.So what changed?For one thing, there are simply more people on the planet.But that's not the main cause for concern.A bigger challenge is the dramatic growth in the use of grains for animal feed for meat.It's partly due to consumption at home -- Canadians today eat more meat than they used to.But the real pressure comes from the developing world, where rapidly rising incomes are driving exponential growth in demand for meat.
In China, for example, annual meat consumption has jumped from three to 60 kilograms per person over the past 50 years.This is still far less than the 88 kg per person in Canada, but since China has one-sixth of the global population, the total amounts are staggering.Today the amount of cereals used to feed animals is rapidly approaching that of total human food, and the rise of soybean use for that purpose is even more dramatic.
