It's Time for the World to Get Realistic about Meat

Abstract

Raising more grain and meat per hectare of land is now more important to the world's future than further lowering the global population growth rate. That's because the human population is already stabilizing rapidly, but global meat demand is soaring. Will the additional meat be produced by ploughing up the world's tropical forests and other wildlands, or by increasing yields from existing fields and pastures? Will land-deficient Asia's workers be priced out of world markets by high food costs? These are vital questions for the twenty-first century, both for people's quality of life and for saving the environment. The real food danger for the future is not famine, but the potential that millions of square miles of wildlife habitat will be ploughed up for low-yield crops and livestock.