Home > Columns > Veggie Revolution > Top 5 Ways Livestock Wreck the Planet

Stopping the destruction of wild green spaces is just one reason for dumping animal products from your diet – other reasons include your health and the welfare of farmed animals. So if your family gives you a hard time during the upcoming holidays for rejecting that turkey leg, tell them some of these surprising facts about the havoc wrought by livestock.

1. Livestock Drive Climate Change

The livestock sector is responsible for at least half of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. That’s according to two environmental-assessment specialists employed by the World Bank Group, Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang. Their meticulous analysis is reported in their landmark Worldwatch article “Livestock and Climate Change“. Check out this short summary of Goodland’s and Anhang’s work.

How can livestock generate all those GHG? Fermentation in their guts creates 37% of human-induced methane; methane is much more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Deforestation to graze livestock or to grow their feed is another major source of emissions. “A molecule of CO2 exhaled by livestock is no more natural than one from an auto tailpipe,” stress Woodland and Anhang.

2. Livestock Worsen Water Shortages

Nearly half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for the dinner table, according to author John Robbins.

Water shortages are cropping up all over the planet these days. Droughts due to climate change and the booming human population contribute to the problem. But the livestock sector is responsible, too – vast quantities of water are used to irrigate their feed crops. One pound of beef requires 2,400 gallons of water to produce, while one pound of wheat requires only 25 to 108 gallons. Notice, that’s the water for just one pound of beef. A typical “2 sides of beef” from one steer weigh 700 lbs when arriving at the supermarket. You do the math.

3. Livestock Dominate Arable Land

Livestock production accounts for 70% of all agricultural land on the planet, and 30% of the land surface of the planet. Consider this in relation to the fact that the world’s human population has expanded from 6 billion to 7 billion in just the last 12 years. More and more people need to be fed.

Expansion of livestock production, for instance, has changed the landscape of Latin America. 70% of previously forested land in the Amazon is now occupied by pastures, and livestock feedcrops cover a large part of the remainder. These facts are all reported in “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” a 2006 research document from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

4. Livestock Pollute

Livestock is the world’s largest source of water pollution, according to the United Nations’ FAO. The pollutants include animal waste, antibiotics and hormones, fertilizers and pesticides used on their feedcrops, and sediments from eroded pastures or trampled streams. In the U.S., livestock are responsible for 55% of erosion and sediment, 37% of pesticide use, and a third of all N and Ph pollution of freshwater.

5. Biodiversity Gets Slammed

A full 40% of the planet’s mammals are victims of habitat loss and degradation. So reported the 2008 conference of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), a group that includes more than 1,000 government agencies and NGOs, conservation groups, and 11,000 scientists in 160 countries.

And it’s going to get a lot worse before the century is over. The causes of habitat loss and degradation? Conservation International has identified 35 global hotspots for biodiversity, defined by species richness and high levels of habitat loss. Of those, 23 are affected by livestock production. Of 825 terrestrial eco-regions identified by the Worldwide Fund for Nature, 306 are threatened by livestock.

Want to Help?

Choose plant-based foods, and explain why to everyone you know. Average Americans eat between 216 and 246 lbs of meat per year, far more than residents of any other country. In the U.S., around 60% of our grain goes to livestock. This is a very inefficient use of our agricultural lands. Feeding the grain to people directly could feed up to 10 times more people.

Or, another way of looking at it – we could stop converting natural, wild spaces to agricultural lands if we made more efficient use of the farms we have now. And simply eating less meat can help. Even a couple of meatless days a week will reduce your ecological footprint. Going vegetarian or vegan is even better. Check out the recipes on this website for help; see the new vegan cookbooks reviewed here too.

Photo by Sally Kneidel

Coming up:

Top 5 Health Reasons to Choose a Plant-based Diet
Top 5 Humane Reasons to Choose a Plant-based Diet

UPDATE: Jon Stewart on media coverage of “Climategate” vs… the McRib.