You’ve probably heard that cows are bad for the environment. Their burps and farts are warming the planet. But bovine methane emissions are just the beginning of beef production’s environmental impacts. Cattle farming is one of the most resource-intensive and wasteful forms of food production.
Industrial cattle farming diverts crops that could be used for human consumption to animals. This results in huge losses as calories are converted from grain to meat: only 17-30 calories enters the human food chain per every 100 calories of edible grains fed to livestock.
However, the energy loss is only one part of the trouble with using crops as animal feed. Globally, the growing and harvesting of soy, grain, and corn crops for animal feed accounts for one-third of arable land. To make matters worse, the agricultural industry uses 70% of the planet’s freshwater resources.
To get a better idea of why beef is so wasteful, consider Brazil. Brazil led the world in beef production in 2018. Not surprisingly, Brazil is also the largest producer of soy in the world.
Soy production in Brazil has more than doubled since 2000 and according to André Antonio Vasconcelos, a researcher at Global Canopy, Brazil now devotes more than 10 times the area of Switzerland to growing soybeans. Land conversion is often a byproduct of cattle ranching due to the soy produced to feed the cattle and the physical space the cows take up. According to the World Wildlife Fund, cattle ranching and soy production are responsible for 80% of the deforestation that occurs in the Amazon Rainforest, releasing up to 340 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere annually. In 2016, 90% of soybean production for Brazil’s domestic market was intended to be used as animal feed, while globally 97% of soy produced goes directly to animal feed. Industrial soy agriculture is water- and fertilizer-intensive, and it needs an estimated 10,000 gallons of water per bushel (roughly equivalent to 8 gallons).
Meat in general, and beef in particular, uses resources that aren’t always accounted for. Not only are forests being ruined, but our water supply is being diverted as well. The water footprint of raising cattle for beef is estimated to be 1,800 gallons of water per pound, compared to the 576 gallons of water it takes to produce one pound of pork (still quite a lot, but not as much as beef). This means that cattle ranching and the crop irrigation needed to produce cattle are putting pressure on an already scarce resource.
Once cattle are the proper age and weight, they are brought to the slaughterhouse. This journey shouldn’t be dismissed. Often, they are transported 1,200 to 1,500 miles away from their original home with 40 to 45 of them crammed into a trailer. This transportation effort poses yet another strain on the environment.
Despite the tremendous environmental costs of producing beef, the Food and Agriculture Organisation found that globally, 20% of the 263 million tonnes of meat produced each year is wasted. But it isn’t just the meat that is wasted. So too is the cleared land, the lost biodiversity, and the water all affected to raise those livestock. Wasted food means humans are putting pressure on land and water resources and ultimately the planet’s ability to sustain us, only to throw away a large portion of the world’s food supply.
However, there could be a solution to both of these problems: using food waste as animal feed. Food waste is a global problem, with ⅓ of the world’s food supply or 1.3 billion tons wasted annually. Utilizing food waste as animal feed, instead of feeding them grain and soy, would be extremely beneficial to reducing annual global food waste.
From New York to San Francisco, United States cities are establishing bans on commercial food industries from dumping organic and food industry waste into landfills. You’re probably wondering: what happens to all this organic waste? Well, for example, in Massachusetts, the Department of Environmental Protection requires that organic and food industry waste be composted, used for anaerobic digestion, or animal feed.
Justin Kamine discusses how his company, Kamine Development, headquartered Bedminster, New Jersey, is working to find ways to convert food waste into animal feed faster. He says, “if we could capture those nutrients that very same day and immediately turn it into a soil amendment or pelletized animal feed the very next day, we could create healthier, more profitable, and sustainable solutions for supermarkets, farmers, and consumers.” Working on finding sustainable solutions to agriculture, the company developed a technology that recycles an estimated 30tons of fresh food waste into fertilizer and animal feed in just three hours.
Do you think about where your food comes from? How many resources go into producing it? There’s an opportunity to minimize the land and water resources that the livestock industry currently depletes if we were to just recycle our food waste to animal feed. Let’s kill two birds with one stone.