Want to help reduce the impact of the World Food Crisis (see eatmyflorida.com for details about that)? Stop eating meat.
Almost 40 percent of all the grain grown in the world is slated for animal feed. Feeding animals is an inefficient process, requiring about 8 kilos of grain to produce every kilo of cow flesh, or 2 kilos for every kilo of chicken. According to a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, meat production uses six to 17 times as much land, five to 26 times as much water, six to 20 times as much fossil fuel and six times as much biocides as grain. Just to cap it all off, remember that a single, grain-fed cow produces as much greenhouse gas every day as an SUV out for a 45-minute cruise. And America is the world's largest consumer of red meat.
You don't have to give up meat entirely. Like all industrialized agriculture, you lessen your environmental impact dramatically by finding and purchasing local, sustainably raised meat. A steak from that pastured cow you bought with some friends has about the same environmental impact as a pound of grain shipped in from other parts of the world. And it tastes a heck of a lot better than a handful of wheat.
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2008.