Cassidy et al. / Environmental Research Letters
Shifting crops grown for animal feed and biofuel to food for direct human consumption can feed an additional 4 billion people with existing cropland, a study says.
Posted on 08/06/2013 9:11:24 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The lab-grown burger taste-tested Monday in London is billed as one way to avert a looming food crisis by freeing up the agricultural resources used to feed billions of cattle each year. Another way to avert the crisis is to stop eating animal products altogether, according to a recent study.
In fact, "we find that doing a complete radical shift away from grain-fed animals, and stop producing biofuels, that you can increase calorie availability enough for 4 billion people," Emily Cassidy, a researcher at the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, told NBC News.
She and colleagues examined 41 major crops grown around the world, which account for more than 90 percent of global crop production, to find out how much food is being produced and how it is being used.
They found that 36 percent of the calories produced are used for animal feed. Of those, 12 percent wend their way to the human diet as meat and animal products. Another 4 percent of human-edible calories are used to produce biofuels.
Growing all those crops for direct human consumption instead increases available food calories by up to 70 percent, Cassidy and colleagues report in the Aug. 1 issue of Environmental Research Letters.
When those additional calories are translated to the number of people who can be fed a 2,700-calorie-a-day diet, the team's math shows an additional 4 billion people can be fed with food grown on existing farmland.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
The next bubble. The food bubble.
Rid the world of revolutionaries, and the poor will be able to grow and harvest their crops.
These people can pound sand. They want us all to eat soybeans.
Why do that when they can just sneak into the USA and get food stamps and send the food to other countries?
http://www.naturalnews.com/041475_food_stamps_EBT_cards_New_Yorkers.html
The earth is full, thou shall not want. - GOD
“Another way to avert the crisis is to stop eating animal products altogether...”
Hell no.
Don’t touch my bacon!
2700 calories a day is a recipe for the fat/overweight problems we already have in the USA.
That is waaaay too much for the average America- regardless of gender.
If we would stop burning our food in our fuel tanks, some of the food problem would be alleviated. Also, the money saved for not subsidizing the conversion of corn into ethanol could be used to either plant more fruit- or nut-bearing trees (good for avoiding erosion AND for producing food over a long period with minimal additional inputs of water or fertilizer) would help.
Oh, and I agree with getting rid of the revolutionaries. Even just getting them out of power would be fine for me...but removing their demand for food, and also using their worthless carcasses to feed the hogs, would be of immense benefit to all concerned.
Stop feeding pets and give that feed to humans.
Every day people feed Cats and dogs that are merely animal eating and crapping machines.
These pets add to pollution when they crap in the streets and fields, they add to the sanitation p[roblems when people scoop and bring it home to flush it or toss it in the trash . We could feed a country on what we toss into America’s pets. Outlaw pets.
Soylent Green was on TV yesterday, It’s a Great idea, why aren’t we doing it. Euthanasia and Soylent Green could feed us instead of feeding the worms at the cemetery or wasting valuable fuel cremating —virtually wasting good food.
My ideas of course are sarcasm , but these nuts are serious.
Which is the craziest?
If some people can’t feed themselves, then why should I be forced to feed them?
Let me think about if for a minute NO.
Because you’re a creepy-ass cracker?
Or Africa could start modern agriculture and feed as many people per farmer as in the USA.
1. We don’t need four billion more people.
2. If we concentrate on pork production, we can go a long way toward starving out 2-3 billion muzzies who would also be a large contributor to the 3-4 billion new mouthes to feed, as predicted in the article.
3. I like sausage, ribs, pulled pork, cutlets, pork roast, etc. Seems like a good idea to me.
The earth is full, thou shall not want. - GOD
Yeah,,,when the human population on the entire planet was what,,,maybe 5,000?
Exactly. Tell THEM to go on a meatless diet in order to survive and grow their own. Bet they would figure out a way to do it.
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