Have you ever heard the claim that 86% of animal feed is inedible to humans? This statistic is often used to imply that animal farming merely uses the waste from farming human food. However, the research behind this figure shows the opposite: animal feed competes with food security.... Growing crops for farmed animals consumes more than 1/3 of global crop production, yet only 12 percent of those calories then become human food.
Have you ever heard the claim that 86% of animal feed is inedible to humans? This statistic is often used to imply that animal farming merely uses the waste from farming human food. However, the research behind this figure shows the opposite: animal feed competes with food security. Let’s break it down.
Byproducts and crop residues comprise less than 1/4 of animal feed used globally. The vast majority is either taken from pasture or grown explicitly for animal feed. Growing crops for farmed animals consumes more than 1/3 of global crop production, yet only 12 percent of those calories then become human food.
The oft-heard assertion that “We grow enough food to feed 10 billion people,” while true, is typically made without sufficient context. What happens to all that food? Well, we feed vast quantities of it to farmed animals. Some 36% of global crop calories are used for animal feed, of which only 12% becomes human food, due to the metabolic waste inherent in using animals to inefficiently convert “feed” to “food.”
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