Economical Reasons

ECONOMY

North America uses seven times more land per capita for livestock grazing and growing grains for farm animals than most countries in Asia. About one-fifth of the world’s land is used for grazing, and two fifths are used for growing crops (FAO 1997).One acre of land can produce 40,000 pounds of potatoes, or 250 pounds of beef.

CATTLE GRAZING

Grazing is particularly damaging to grasslands in dry regions, where perennial grasses are exhausted, and instead weeds grow that lack sufficient root systems to prevent against soil erosion. As different forms of plant species are lost, the surrounding wildlife also dies or migrates to another area (Turning and Brough 1991).

Grasslands are natural ecosystems that support many different types of plants, birds, rodents, and other wild animals. According to a United Nations study, “The Global Assessment of Human Induced Soil Degradation” (ISRIC 1990), about 10.5% of the world’s fertile land suffers from moderate to extreme degradation. Overgrazing by livestock and current farming practices are the principal causes of this degradation.

GRAIN PRODUCTION

According to the FAO ( The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization), feeding livestock consumes %95 of the world’s production of soy, %44 of cereal, %80 of corn and 95% of oats grown in the U.S. In order to produce 31.2 million tons of animal flesh, it takes 192.7 million tons of grains (FAO 1997; USDA 1997).

Fifty-six percent of all U.S. farmland is devoted to beef production, and to produce each pound of beef requires 35 pounds of edible grain and soybeans, which could be used to feed the hungry. pigs are also very expensive to grow, for every pound of meat produced from pigs, it takes about eight times as much food (USDA 1997).

Three times more fossil fuels must be burned to maintain a meat-centered diet than to have a vegetarian diet. To produce 1 kilo of protein from half of a herd of livestock uses 25 times more gasoline than is necessary to run a small car for 32 km (20 mi), or enough water sufficient for 17 showers.

The percentage of protein wasted by cycling grain through livestock is calculated by experts as 90%. Most of the grains used for animals is turned into manure, to make one kilogram of beef, about forty kilograms of manure is created (Environment Canada 1995).