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To feed 4 billion more, skip meat, milk and eggs, study says
NBC News ^ | 08/06/2013 | John Roach

Posted on 08/06/2013 9:11:24 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Graphic on calories
Cassidy et al. / Environmental Research Letters
Shifting crops grown for animal feed and biofuel to food for direct human consumption can feed an additional 4 billion people with existing cropland, a study says.

The lab-grown burger taste-tested Monday in London is billed as one way to avert a looming food crisis by freeing up the agricultural resources used to feed billions of cattle each year. Another way to avert the crisis is to stop eating animal products altogether, according to a recent study.

In fact, "we find that doing a complete radical shift away from grain-fed animals, and stop producing biofuels, that you can increase calorie availability enough for 4 billion people," Emily Cassidy, a researcher at the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, told NBC News.

She and colleagues examined 41 major crops grown around the world, which account for more than 90 percent of global crop production, to find out how much food is being produced and how it is being used.

They found that 36 percent of the calories produced are used for animal feed. Of those, 12 percent wend their way to the human diet as meat and animal products. Another 4 percent of human-edible calories are used to produce biofuels.

Growing all those crops for direct human consumption instead increases available food calories by up to 70 percent, Cassidy and colleagues report in the Aug. 1 issue of Environmental Research Letters.

When those additional calories are translated to the number of people who can be fed a 2,700-calorie-a-day diet, the team's math shows an additional 4 billion people can be fed with food grown on existing farmland.

(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: agriculture; food; hunger; meat
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To: calex59

Desalination is very expensive.


81 posted on 08/06/2013 3:25:07 PM PDT by ThisLittleLightofMine
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To: SeekAndFind

OKAY... the vast majority of milk, meat and eggs we eat are all produced in this country probably, so if we let it spoil and rot.... how does that help someone in Bangladesh or Kenya?


82 posted on 08/06/2013 3:27:10 PM PDT by GeronL
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To: SeekAndFind

To feed 4 billion more, end socialism!


83 posted on 08/06/2013 3:27:36 PM PDT by GeronL
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To: ThisLittleLightofMine

That depends on what the need is.


84 posted on 08/06/2013 4:47:36 PM PDT by calex59
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To: SeekAndFind
"and stop producing biofuels"

Worth saying again.

85 posted on 08/06/2013 4:50:35 PM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: rfreedom4u

My daughter around age 8 told me how eating animals was cruel and mean, and keeping them in cages was bad, compared to being in the wild. I showed her Youtube videos of lions and hyenas hunting animals and killing them. I asked, is being taken care of in cages and then gently put down and eaten by people better or worse than living and dying like THAT!
She has stopped spouting vegan and vegetarian ideas picked up from friends, but did retain a preference for soy milk.


86 posted on 08/06/2013 5:16:15 PM PDT by tbw2
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...

Thanks SeekAndFind.
Shifting crops grown for animal feed and biofuel to food for direct human consumption can feed an additional 4 billion people with existing cropland, a study says.
What's their FR nicks?


87 posted on 08/08/2013 8:29:03 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's no coincidence that some "conservatives" echo the hard left.)
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To: SeekAndFind

The clarion call here is ‘SEND MONEY TO AFRICA’ ...Yes Africa, where corruption is king and the UN feeds on guilty white kickbacks...


88 posted on 08/09/2013 3:35:09 AM PDT by GOPJ (Sob stories make bad law...)
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To: SeekAndFind

That is not a healthful diet for everyone.

I experimented with vegetarianism in the early 1990’s.

I gained forty pounds and got sicker and sicker until I finally gave up and went back to bacon and a low-carb diet.

Soy and wheat are poison for me, and so is high-carb eating.

Sometimes I think that the PTB are pushing these insane diets for the entire world so that everyone will get fat and diabetic.

Then O’blamaCare can refuse treatment to the fat diabetics and berate them for having “brought it upon themselves with poor eating habits.”

Agenda 21.


89 posted on 08/09/2013 5:08:11 AM PDT by TheOldLady
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