A recent report released by vegetarians stated; “Growing crops is at least five times more energy efficient than crazing cattle, twenty times more efficient than raising chickens, and over fifty times more efficient than raising feedlot cattle! In this way, eating animal products clearly wastes energy resources that were naturally formed over millions of years, and in the process spews pollution into the environment we live in.” Vegetarians maybe biased because they are already against eating meat, but these results do back up the point that this essay is based upon. Another point of view of vegetarians and animal rights supporters is that grazing cattle just for food is inhumane as the animals then have to be killed. Vegetarians also are concerned with the matter of space, “It takes ten times as much land to maintain a carnivorous diet than to support a vegetarian one.”
On a farmer’s perspective, they could argue on both sides; crops are less expensive to grow and growing them is more space efficient than grazing cattle, however grazing cattle is less work for the farmers. A cow grazing in one acre of land produces enough meat to sustain a person for two and a half months; however soybeans grown on that same one acre would nourish a person for seven years.
Animal agriculture is a source of water pollution; this is mainly due to the fact that livestock produce 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population in the US. None of this receives sewage treatment; instead it ends up polluting our streams and rivers! The amount of water needed to produce a pound on wheat is 25 litres, and the amount needed to produce a pound of meat is 5000 litres! This therefore also shows that water is not only being polluted by grazing cattle, it is also being used much more than it would be on growing crops.
As mentioned before, there are many perspectives on this argument and one of them is that crops are being wasted on feeding cattle. Livestock consume most of the crops that are grown, so if there was less livestock, we’d receive more crops for ourselves. However, as over half the population do not eat much wheat, soybeans or corn, it would be pointless to cut down the amount of cattle being raised. On the other hand, the amount of grain that is needed to end extreme hunger is 40 million tonnes and the amount of grain fed to the animals in the West is 540 million tonnes, so therefore, reducing the amount of cattle being bred would put a stop to human starvation and hunger.
In my personal opinion, I agree that the statement is debatable. I agree that in an ideal world animals would not be slaughtered purely for food, however, because meat is easily digestible, it is an easy way for us to get the energy we need. Humans, unlike cows, do not have four stomachs so would find it incredibly difficult to, for instance, digest grass, which is the producer of the energy.
