Vegan Eating - Environmental Benefits

Vegan Diet is more Green, & better for our planet!

You may have heard of the health benefits of eating a vegan diet,

(see http://www.vegansociety.com/html/food/nutrition/

but did you realise there are many strong environmental benefits too?

Water

World agriculture uses 70% of fresh water for irrigation.

Much of this land is wasted to grow feed crops for livestock rather than food for people. Professor David Pimentel of Cornell University's Ecology Department has calculated that it takes 500 litres of water to produce 1kg of potatoes, 900 litres per kg of wheat, 3,500 litres per kg of digestible chicken flesh and a massive 100,000 litres for 1kg of beef.

Land & Grain

In 1900 just over 10% of the total grain grown worldwide was fed to animals; by 1950 this figure had risen to over 20%; by the late 1990s it stood at around 45%. Over 60% of US grain is fed to livestock.

A vegan diet can meet calorie and protein needs from 300 square metres using mainly potatoes. A more varied diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables, grains and legumes would take about 700 square metres. Replacing a third of the calories in this diet with calories from milk and eggs would double the land requirements and a typical European omnivorous diet would require five times the amount of land required for a varied vegan diet.

Energy

A study by the US Department of Agriculture concluded that their results "pointedly reveal the high level of dependency of the US beef cattle industry on fossil fuels. These findings in turn bring into question the ecological and economic risks associated with the current technology driving North American agriculture."

This same technology is being adopted as a model for industrial livestock production throughout the world. The study's review of energy inputs versus energy outputs in food calories showed that while corn and barley produce about five times as much food energy as the energy used in production, beef production uses about three times as much energy as the food energy produced. This means that corn and barley production is around 15 times more efficient in terms of fossil fuel input than beef production.


All this should be food for thought for any serious ecologist or anyone who wants to help improve the planet.

http://www.vegansociety.com