"Supply is low, demand is high. We have gone from three meals a day to two. Then it will be one meal. Then we will die," said Yoseph Yilak, head of the local [Ethiopian] grain traders' association. "Why is the world taking corn for fuel? It will mean the death of many people."
That's from the Wall Street Journal on the crisis of rising world food prices.
The problem is completely overblown in the US, where food is just not that large a piece of peoples' budgets. But it is an enormous problem in the developing world, particularly in Africa, where people can't compete with US demand for inefficiently produced ethanol, and Asian demand for meat. I've started hearing scattered comparisons to the Irish famine, when the oddly (government) structured markets meant that the country was a net grain exporter while two million of its citizens either starved or migrated. Unfortunately, migration has tightened up quite a bit since then; hungry Africans largely have nowhere to go.
What can we do? Start by converting our food aid to cash to encourage local production, rather than shipping our grain there. Increase food aid, obviously. Refuse to buy ethanol, if that's even possible--it definitely isn't in places where it's a mandatory additive, and I'm not sure it's possible anywhere. End (oh, pipe dream!) our ridiculous ethanol subsidies. Try to drive a little less.
One thing you can do--and it's a suggestion, not a moral pronouncement, so please, no anti-vegetarian screeds--is cut down on your meat consumption. Meat is a gigantic consumer of grain, and dairy and eggs are also gigantic grain sucks. If most Americans dropped their meat consumption back to three or four days a week, or went vegan one day a week, this would have a measurable impact on the world price of grain. Obviously, on an individual basis, it's not much--but every pound of meat you don't eat is many pounds of grain that go back on the market to feed someone else.
Yes, yes, I know, this sounds all hippy-dippy, like the three weeks in 1976 when your Mom made you boycott grapes and eat hempseed cereal. And obviously, this is not a long-term solution, since we hope that the market will eventually adjust and provide more supply. But in the shortish term, it might help the market adjust by some way other than starving some of the customers until they no longer demand . . . well, anything.
Also, you may have noticed that meat is getting kind of pricey. Best bet is that it will go up before it goes down, since meat is essentially grain cubed, with a time lag. Get a good cookbook--I recommend Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian--and you'll barely notice that you're eating less meat. I'm not urging anyone to discover the joys of marinated tempeh breakfast strips (mmmmm . . . tempeh), but there are lots of vegetarian foods that you would eat even if they weren't vegetarian, just because they're really good. Macaroni and cheese, potato soup, mushroom pie? What's not to love?
You can also use less meat when you cook with it--if you think vegetarian food is too much like joining the Viet Cong, may I point you to the excellent Betty Crocker 1950 Picture Cookbook, which you definitely couldn't accuse of being too culinarily avant garde. It's rife with comfort food designed in an era when people watched the amount of eggs, cream, and meat they used, because those things were expensive. It's especially good if you don't really know how to cook, because it was basically designed for new brides. Also, the advice for bored housewives in the back is alone worth the cost of the book.
And in a really weird roundabout way, you might help lower your gas bill; grain needs fertilizer (especially in Africa) and fertilizer needs natural gas. It's pretty much an all-around win.
Nice post, Megan. Funny how posting a call for people to act ethically has to be couched so severely. "Sorry to be so silly, but maybe consider not causing suffering by your choices? Oh, forgive me for the crazy talk!"
According to the FAO, only 100 million tons of cereal crops go to biofuel, while 760 million tons go to animal feed -- and the latter figure isn't even counting soy (the vast majority of which goes to animal feed):
"There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs. Of the 2.13bn tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01bn, according to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation, will feed people. ... But there is a bigger reason for global hunger, which is attracting less attention only because it has been there for longer. While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars, 760m tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals - which could cover the global food deficit 14 times. If you care about hunger, eat less meat."
More here: http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/resources.html
Of course, this doesn't touch on the brutality of factory farms and industrial slaughterhouses.
As always: I apologize for even mentioning the suffering of others!
I'll stop eating meat if you'll stop eating cheese and drinking milk. They all come from cows, you know.
Actually, I won't. I love meat.
Good post, phrased well. I'll give it some thought.
Er . . . I have. I'm a vegan.
The meat market may do some funny things in the middle-term, though; you may see farmers selling cattle earlier than they normally would have because grain has become too expensive to continue feeding them (without full certainty of future sky-high meat prices). There might be a short-term glut before the crunch.
heh,
You have a damn good point about meat consumption and cutting back.
I think it's kinda funny-amusing how despite your best protestations, you come across as ... strident in your thoughts. Nothing wrong with that! but you have to admit you were doing some hardcore evangelizing, all efforts to not ruffle feathers aside :)
It's your blog, and I enjoy reading it, but I can't help but make a remark from the peanut gallery on this one!
---
as an aside, if you're still looking for good music here's a few 'out there' bands (all of which should have tracks available on myspace, if you dare to go there):
Freezepop - Synthpop
Mindless Self Indulgence - ummm, psychotic gutter punk.
Otep - Experimental Metal
The Birthday Massacre - Goth/rock
None of this stuff would ever hit the commercial radio, but I'd be shocked if you didn't really like at least 2 of these bands.
it is simply against our gene protocol to stop eating meat entirely. We can certainly reduce consumption but it is really unhealthy to stop eating meat entirely. All those foods you mentioned above might taste great but they are terrible for you. Stick with organic meats, vegetables, fruits and nuts. It will keep you lean and healthy.
Pointing to famine in Ethiopia when citing food problems in Africa is generally a bad idea, because so many of the problems there can be traced to conscious decisions made there. If anything, saying that a world food crisis is at its worst in Ethiopia is a fine argument for how poor national economic policies are the true culprit of hunger. Ethiopia is cursed with the following salient policy decisions made by its government, among others:
1. The country is still basically feudal. Last I checked, it is illegal to own agricultural land in Ethiopia. Farmers lease it from the state.
2. The country is in an on-and-off war with breakaway Eritrea. They also were very recently trying to govern Somalia through military occupation.
3. The government is actively suppressing dissidents, political opposition, and religious and ethnic minorities.
With these factors alone a famine every generation is assured with even cheap world food prices.
Megan,
Your suggestions sound like the Jimmy Carter-era to wear a sweater and turn down the thermostat. The food we eat is a personal choice and the problem is too much government intervention.
You are more market-savvy then that. The market process for all kinds of food are distorted by perverse incentives that encourage farmers and ag businesses to plant certain crops but not others and let land lie fallow. Not just the financial subsidies.
State governments announce the price of a gallon of milk every year. Why the hell do they? The price of milk is set by government.
The politicians who push this crap have blood on their hands.
I won't stop eating meat, but I'll also say that this post doesn't sound hippy-dippy. A good capitalist is always aware that purchase decisions are based more on just the best product for the lowest price. If buying meat causes the meat industry to be more competitive in buying grain which causes a population to be priced out of the market completely (i.e., starve), which reduces competition in the market, causes the price of grain to rise, and ultimately causes the price of my meat to rise, then I should consider that. I should also consider the impact the loss of that population in the market.
In short, good on you!
The gist I get from the article, meanwhile, is that wheat is much more profitable when sold to places other than Ethiopia. The US, as well as other nations, has a robust food aid program - which mainly just ships food and cash over to Ethiopia, sans farming expertise. In other words, we're feeding the man for a day, not for a lifetime.
So the next thing for me to understand is why it's so hard for Ethiopia to grow enough food for itself. It's not like it's all desert; there's lots of farms there.
Meanwhile, tell you what; while I won't stop eating meat, I will try to buy more Ethiopian goods. Like coffee!
Liberty Lover, indeed that is true. But while waiting for ethanol subsidies to be overturned, I'd like to do what I can for the dying Africans.
Carbs.
It is harder for the market to adjust to demand if demand is adjusted to the market in the interim.
This issue did not magically appear overnight. Those who were surprised by it were not paying much attention.
I wonder if the world will now demand that we switch back to growing non-GM corn, so that they don't have to eat donated "frankencorn".
An honest question. Is not eating meat really a solution to the present problem if as you say the market will adjust in the long term. I mean how long does it take to grow a cow? In the short term is a farmer really going to stop feeding his livestock because I didn't buy a hamburger?
I am pretty sure Ethiopians are always periodically on the verge of starvation (or what Garrett@11:35 says).
But let me make sure I understand this. If I forgo the pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts that I buy every couple of weeks, then I will have done my part to solve the complex issue of world hunger? Or is this one of those things where EVERYONE really has to do it for it to work and I will be going without meat without result while waiting for the bandwagon to get full?
Or will the drop in demand for meat cause such a price drop, that newly monied folks all over India and China start consuming meat at a level that offsets the drop in consumption here, causing no drop in overall consumption (and grain use).
I am betting that for every person here who dumps off of meat, there are probably 10 people worldwide who are starting to get the type of income that encourages meat consumption. No meat for Megan, but Vikram and Li Yang will more than render her noble solution moot.
Actually, meat prices go down, then up, in response to an increase in grain prices. What happens is that higher grain prices induce a slaughter of cows being reared for later consumption, which raises the supply of meat now but reduces it later. That way you get meat now and don't have to feed the cows with expensive grain. (Rosen, Hansen and Scheinkman have a JPE article on this)
The effect Mike E. describes might be happening now. I have seen meat prices dropping recently. I watch them every time I shop, and buy in bulk when the price looks good. Pork, chicken and beef prices had all been steadily rising, then pork and chicken became relatively cheap in the last couple weeks. It may be something else though. I would think that beef, with the higher feed/food ratio would be affected more. Maybe beef producers don't have as much flexibility.
"But while waiting for ethanol subsidies to be overturned, I'd like to do what I can for the dying Africans."
That's really silly. If a handful of people switch to vegan diets that will have no important effect on African food supplies. One wonders whether Megan wants to proposes a real solution, or engage in a kind of sanctimonious grandstanding.
And anyway, there is reason to doubt whether hip vegans with their orgnic produce are doing anything for Aficans. Organic farming is inefficient. It uses up more resources and drives up prices.
So Megan could just as easily have said "Help Africans; don't buy organic." But that wouldn't have been as trendy.
A classic response to problem solving. "If only everyone lived like I do, the problem would go away." I'd agree with the "santimonious grandstanding" comment, except I don't know what santimonious means. Increasing protein consumption in the developing world is crucial to increasing their overall health and life span. It does work against the environmentalist goal of reducing world wide population.
Just because I think the wording above suggests that you don't get this, and so it's misleading:
Where ethanol is mandated as an additive, it's not for "green" reasons, it's as an anti-knck additive (well, it _is_ for "green" reasons in that the alternative is/was lead.) It's not out of some secret attempt to convert you onto gasohol.
I think corn-derived ethanol is a retarded idea, but it's not the main reason people are hungry in Africa. The main reason is that sub-Saharan Africans are largely incompetent at modern farming, and, in places like Zimbabwe, they have dispossessed the whites who were highly-productive farmers.
.. but you can be more specific in terms of meat.
For beef, 12kg of grain becomes 1kg of beef.
For pigs, 3 kg of grain becomes 1kg of beef.
Simply eating pork instead of beef would dramatically change grain consumption.
Don't know the stats on grain consumption to milk.. but I bet it's less than 12 to 1..
Personally... i like meat.. but I mainly eat only ham now.. and less than about 1.5 lbs a week.
agreed,
Could you explain how: "For pigs, 3 kg of grain becomes 1kg of beef." :-)
Your statements regarding meat only apply if the animals are grain fed. If you only eat animals that are truly grass fed, there is no problem. Systems like rotational grazing have next to no inputs, improve the land in the process, and are remarkably productive. Without the subsidies for corn and petrochemicals rotational grazing is more cost effective than concentrated animal feedlots. As oil and natural gas prices go up, meat produced this way will become much more cost effective.
As to chicken and eggs, they too can be produced with minimal inputs. I buy chicken from a local producer who uses chicken tractors to reduce grain consumption and increase the quality of the meat, while at the same time improving the land. I also keep chickens in my backyard for eggs, and feed them scraps, bugs, and some corn.
My point? Veganism isn't the only way to approach this problem. In fact, I think promoting veganism is the exact wrong way, as you'll just convince people that doing the right thing is too hard and they'll do nothing.
It is increasingly apparent that most of the major issues facing humanity -- including climate change, food, energy, water, pollution, species preservation, war and political instability -- are tightly interconnected. Humanity, and the planet as a whole, can no longer afford to live on meat and oil. But, as some of the posts on this thread indicate, getting people to give up meat is likely to be even harder than getting them out of their cars.
I doubt that the market will eventually "adjust" and bring things back to "normal". You've heard of "peak oil". Well, get ready for "peak meat". The planet is about to deliver hard lessons in how to run a household (ecology/economy).
mijnheer,
Then we had better get ready for "peak people".
"Humanity, and the planet as a whole, can no longer afford to live on meat and oil."-minjheer
Minj, I'm sorry to have to inform you that people are consuming ever more meat and oil and are somehow surviving. Indeed, living standards around the world have been increasing. As the World Bank reports:
The poverty rate around the world has been declining for some time, largely due to market reforms in India and China. So, for all the dire talk about poverty, for all the faddish pleas to abandon meat and cars in the name of averting an imminent catastrophe, the truth is that things have been getting better. We have plenty of reason to be optimistic. So I'm going to have a nice juicy steak tonight and wash it down with some read wine to celebrate the rising standard of living around the world that market reforms have brought.
Ed Reid: Yes, it will be "peak people", one way or another.
Google "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler". This New York Times article says, "about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States."
Also googlable: "Livestock a Major Threat to Environment" for the FAO report.
That should read "red wine," though I will also do some reading tonight. Perhaps "Free to Choose." Or maybe one of Paul Ehrlich's books just for amusement.
Or perhaps we carnivores should save the wildlife by diversifying. =)
If most Americans dropped their meat consumption back to three or four days a week, or went vegan one day a week, this would have a measurable impact on the world price of grain. Obviously, on an individual basis, it's not much--but every pound of meat you don't eat is many pounds of grain that go back on the market to feed someone else.
So we've gone from "Eat your food, there are starving children in Africa" to "Don't eat your food, there are starving children in Africa"? That latter one sounds like a collective action problem on a scale of 300 million. I'm not hopeful.
I also have no interest in cutting back my meat consumption to three or four days a week. I already eat less meat daily than I used to, simply because it reduces my overall grocery bill, and also I can get many of the necessary animal fats and proteins from eating whole milk and cheese, both of which I enjoy about as much as meat and can be stretched across a greater number of meals.
As others have stated, Africa has deep structural problems that go far beyond a temporary swing in world grain prices. My expectation is that you could make more difference to a starving African by contributing $20 to an organization like World Vision than you ever could by changing your diet.
Megan,
You should look at this comment by Don Coxe of BMO financial. Don's been covering the commodity markets in Chicago since forever so I would say "he knows"
Anyway his point was that the market will reduce meat consumption for you by making it sky high expensive in the next 12 months because herds in the US and Canada are beign reduced; ranchers can't affored the grain feedstock to maintain their herd size.
http://watch.bnn.ca/market-morning/april-2008/market-morning-april-30-2008/#clip49664
PS - I forgive him his comment on latte liberals which if you look at it in context makes no sense as a political statement. It was his way of saying - upper middle class or bourgeois. Right wing framing - it works so well it changes basic language!
I think the idea of cutting back on meat for ethical price considerations won't work now. Assume you eat a little less meat so that food will cost others less. The decreased demand will cause a decrease in price (both admittedly small). However, a much bigger effect is just down the road. Meat prices will rise soon, causing a much bigger decline in demand than the ethical dieters caused. Anything that causes price decreases now, is offset because it delays the suppression of demand by price increases later.
The time when this ethically based strategy makes sense is when food prices are stable.
So Megan could just as easily have said "Help Africans; don't buy organic." But that wouldn't have been as trendy.
That is true, but it is not more true than “Help Africans; don't buy meat."
Another approach is to eat meat that requires less grain per kilo of meat. Which is to say: meat from small animals that reach maturity quickly. So prefer pork to beef, chicken to pork, and broiler farmed chicken to free-ranged.
I wonder what would happen if the EU became more accommodating to genetically modified foodstuffs?
I don't buy organic; I think it's a waste, and I've said so before.
I second Norther Observer. Our neighbor has raised cattle herds of a hundred head or so all his life, and he just tried to sell several because of the astronomical feed prices. Of course, this is what everyone is doing now, so the meat prices are in the basement. It's easy to see beef prices climbing rapidly soon once all this stock is reduced.
But all this ecohysterical farming-for-the-fuel-tank business needs to be reined in. It's compounding the problem of weather-induced crop failures and driving up prices for lots of other produce. Not to mention that it's putting more farmland to use for monocultures.
Megan,
There may be a hole in your logic: Lets say Americans greatly reduce our consumption of meat. Then meat producers will raise less and there will be surplus grain. Fine so far..but... Won't this surplus cause a decrease in the price of grain? If the price is reduced, it stands to reason that farmers will produce less of it at some point. Eventually the price may stabilize at an even higher level than now if there are fixed costs like barges, grain elevators & etc. that still have to be payed for.
We could also look on the demand side for non-food items: We all save money by reducing our meat consumption, so what do we do with this money? We spend it on stuff we are not currently buying (we are currently buying meat). This increase in demand for non-meat stuff will cause economic resources (capital, labor, natural resources etc.) to go into production of that stuff (or services). Effectivly, whatever we spend our money on--it causes resources to be expended in producing it.
Really, the only way to reduce 3rd world hunger as an individual is to send the money you save on food to a charity which addresses these issues.
It's complicated--food depends on fixed inputs like fertilizer and land that in the short term, at least, are proving hard to expand. Over the long term, you're right--but the very fact that the price is rising means that it's not perfectly elastic.
Megan doesn't buy organic. Great. But that doesn't change the fact that her implication (if you eat meat you are killing Africans) is rather daft. One could just as easily say:
*Sorry, I botched it the first time. So here it is as it should have read. I just want to add to it that Africa has a lot of serious problems, but Western meat eating is not one of them.*
Megan doesn't buy organic. Great. But that doesn't change the fact that her implication (if you eat meat you are killing Africans) is rather daft. One could just as easily say:
No. Not right.
There are a lot of reasons that African countries have struggled, and there has been a long and spirited debate about it among development economists. Geography, institutions, excessive govenrment interference, political instability--all of these could be important reasons for African economic troubles.
What's clear, though, is that Nigeria won't suddenly become Taiwan if we switch from chicken to tofu or if Megan shuts down her website. So why not focus on real solutions?
I don't mean to insult Megan (who really is quite insightful at times), but this post is just plain goofy.
You have changed man, it use to be about the markets. Now all you do is drink that liberal kool-aid and sit around and hang with hippies.
:) A little common sense would produce tremendous results. good luck with that
I refuse to cut back on using flavored ethanol.
Mack's 12:02 point seems spot on. Why should we expect the animal-feed market to adjust faster than the human-food market?
No mention of Mugabe?
I'm sure I'll be flamed as monster, but there's a much more effective solution to sub-Saharan African hunger, if we're really serious: a little tough love. If they want food aid, we'll be more than happy to send them as much GMO corn and wheat seed as they can use. Otherwise, I suggest they take it up with the Europeans.
I don't buy organic; I think it's a waste, and I've said so before.
There's one product type where I disagree, and that is organic milk. If you live in an area where fresh dairy delivery is unavailable or impractical due to a minimum order quantity, organic is about the next best thing and the cost is, at worst, no higher.
there's a much more effective solution to sub-Saharan African hunger, if we're really serious: a little tough love.
Yeah, because the real problem with those Nigerien peasants is we've been coddling them too long.
Here in Vietnam, I'm running up against the odd problem that while I'd like to eat less meat and more vegetables, you can't trust vegetables. They get huge loads of pesticides dumped on them, and half of the Vietnamese veggies grow semi-immersed in water (morning-glory, lotus roots, watercress, water spinach, etc.), which means they suck up the runoff of barely-existent sewage systems. You'll see farmers growing one small plot of organic veggies for their own consumption, and dumping chems on their main fields for the market.
That's why I think the organic-foods movement has been hugely beneficial. The European organic foods market is what's driving food safety reform in third-world agri exporters like Vietnam, and the benefits will come back to their own citizens.
So, to sum up Megan: she got no beef with them Vietcong. Yes?
Brooksfoe,
Hey, yeah and while they're going organic, maybe they can arugala and artichokes. Sure a few million of them might die of starvation and those that live will be dependent on us for their food, but that's a small price for being trendy.
Is the problem really ethnaol? With corn, probably so. But with other grains I think we are seeing a much bigger problem: the pass-through effects of the run-up in fuel and fertilizer costs, coupled with some bad weather issues (e.g., the Australian and Indonesian drought which has created a huge drop in rice production). It is time and past time for governments to take whatever arcane tax and regulatory measures they can to burst the oil bubble. When people are going hungry it is not time to coddle speculators.
Bill,
Vietnam runs a large food surplus every year and is the world's second leading exporter of rice and its leading exporter of coffee. The main concerns of people buying food in Vietnam are not "starvation". They are 1. being poisoned by the pesticides and antibiotics in their food, which are often found to exceed USDA-safe levels by a wide margin, and 2. more recently, food price inflation driven by the devaluation of the dollar (to which the Vietnamese dong is tied) and by rising world food prices, which drive up prices even for foods which Vietnam has in surplus.
I have no idea what you're rambling on about, but that's not surprising because you don't either.
Can we wear fur?
I think it might keep us warmer and we could then set the thermostat a few degrees lower and reduce our consumption of CO2 producing fossil fuels.
While I won't pretend to dismiss your personal experience, I can't help but notice that, for all its exports, Vietnam has a 25% child malnutrition rate. But, hey, I guess that doesn't matter when you're patting yourself on the back about how much more you know than the rest of us and putting your tastes in food fashion over reality.
Vietnam has a high child malnutrition rate because about 18% of its population still live under the World Bank-determined absolute poverty line, and because of some very poor dietary customs for children -- many parents start replacing breastfeeding with thin rice gruel at 3 months. Overall food supply has nothing to do with it. What I'm talking about is the fact that the movement to impose safe food standards in Vietnam is being driven by foreign import standards, including organic foods standards in Europe as well as strict Japanese seafood standards, etc.
Megan: Don't wear leather, either.
The problem with eating grains and legumes, potatoes, pasta, and such, is that this isn't particularly a healthful diet for H. Sapiens - too many carbs.
Someone please tell me how you eat vegan and low-carb.
Marcus
Someone please tell me how you eat vegan and low-carb.
Legumes, and lots of them. You'll be grazing the soy fields like a proper goat. Have about the same levels of gas output, too.
Great post, Megan. Thanks for the sanity.
For all you meat eaters-why don't you check out some sustainably-farmed meat. It's healthier and more eco-friendly. Sure, it will cost you more, but, um, that's what food costs. And you'll eat less food, but more nutrition. You support the local economy, and you become substantially less dependent on grain and petroleum. You can have your steak and eat it too.
Other interesting point: my asthma has pretty much disappeared since I stopped eating corn-fed animals and animal products.
The Bittman cookbook is great. Very comprehensive and much more user friendly than the Crescent Dragonwagon veggie cookbook I own, but never use.
Here's a helpful tip I like to use:
Fry up a package of bacon and save the grease. Then you can cook all you vegetables in that instead of using oils or butter. Everything tastes better when swathed in the comforting essence of pork belly.
A few things:
1) The whole point of the "eat less meat" argument is that it uses less resources. The net effect of eating 1 less pound of meat is not just an equivalent gain in resources used to produce non-meat food...it's a gain that is orders of magnitude higher (2-10 times?).
2) For some people (like me), the ability to reduce their environmental impact is much more effective reason to eat less meat than is anonymous cruelty to animals.
3) The "if I eat less meat, someone in Asia will just eat more" argument is pretty silly. No one uses that same argument to defend why they still drive gas guzzlers. As will all environmental changes, if you care, you're just going to have to suck it up and make some small personal sacrifices...sacrifices that you might not ever "see" the benefits of.
4) This post is not at all "holier than thou". Get a grip people. Megan is not even asking for you to change, just putting out her thoughts on the subject. Sounds like she touched a nerve with some of the defensive "oh yeah, screw you...I'll keep eating meat" responses? Lighten up.
5) "Saving the environment" doesn't have to be black and white. Everyone taking baby steps is going to make a much bigger difference than a world where you're either "vegetarian/vegan/don't own a car/grow your own food/don't wear leather/compost/recycle everything you ever bought" or "don't care about the environment."
Ryan,
The problem is reducing meat consumption is going to have little impact on the environment.
This is because the most environmentally destructive agricultural practices receive direct subsidies from the government. Meat production does not.
Additionally cattle ranches act as a thin green line preserving intact habit and keeping it from being converted to heavily subsidized grain production.
If not consuming beef makes ranching less profitable it will economically push the conversion of intact habitat from environmentally friendly and sustainable cattle grazing towards much less environmentally friendly grain production.
If you want to change your diet to help the environment and the animals eat more beef and less pork and chicken.
Ryan,
a commenter at the link below points out why focusing on meat consumption and not the farm programs will increase environmental destruction not decrease it.
Sugar Coating the Farm Bill
Another article on the farm bill,
Focusing on meat consumption while ignoring the farm bill is meaningless at best and counterproductive at worse.
The good news? A boneheaded proposal in the lousy $300 billion-plus farm bill seems to be holding up its passage. The bad news? We live in a country where anyone within barfing distance of power thinks that what the U.S. sugar industry needs is more protection from the federal government.