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Are we all destined to be vegetarians in 50 years?

Jul 21, 2008, 02.56pm IST

NEW YORK: In the first quarter of 2008, grain prices climbed to a 30-year high. On average, food prices are 54% higher than in 2007; grains have gone up 92%. Hard-pressed to afford staples, hungry mobs rioted in Haiti, Mexico, and Bangladesh.

Some experts say the skyrocketing grain prices fulfil a longstanding prediction: A growing world population has more buying power. The newly affluent eat more meat. A rising share of the world's agricultural output goes to animals.

While grain supplies are more than adequate to feed everyone now, the current price spike shows that even an adequate supply doesn't preclude hunger for the world's poor.

And in the future, a day may come when there isn't enough grain for both humans and livestock—at least not at the US consumption rate.

Add to this the environmental impacts of modern industrial-scale meat production, and many wonder: With a predicted world population of 9.5 billion by mid-century , are we all destined to be vegetarians?

"Using grain to feed cattle rather than people is putting enormous strain on stocks," says Katarina Wahlberg, social and economic policy program coordinator at Global Policy Forum, an NGO. "Current consumption levels are unsustainable."

One-third of the world's arable land grows food for livestock, and about 36% of world grain becomes animal feed. The problem, say experts, is the inefficiency of converting grain to meat.

A pound of beef takes 7 pounds of feed to produce. For pork, the ratio is 1 to 3; and for chicken, 1 to 2. (Cold-blooded fish, which don't need energy to maintain body temperature, are farmed more efficiently.)

The average American eats about 275 pounds of meat a year. Each American, in effect, consumes 1,765 pounds of grain yearly, says Lester Brown, author of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. Only 220 pounds of that is consumed directly in foodstuffs like bread, pasta, and breakfast cereal. The rest is through animal products.

If everyone consumed grain at this rate, today's 2 billiontonne world grain harvest would feed only 2.5 billion people—twofifths of the world population. If the world ate the way Italians do—882 pounds of grain per person yearly—we'd feed 5 billion people. And if we all ate the way India does (11-1 /2 pounds of meat per person yearly, or 440 pounds of grain), our grain supply could feed 10 billion.

For Brown, this exercise has serious implications. Moral issues aside, hungry people lead to social unrest. And that has consequences for everyone. "How many failing states before we have a failing global civilization ?" he asks. "No one knows the answer because no one has ever been here before."

Courtesy: Christian Science Monitor