FACT SHEET: GLOBAL HUNGER AND POVERTY
THE REAL COSTS OF BEEF:
GLOBAL HUNGER AND
POVERTY
Beef production causes human hunger and poverty by diverting grain and cropland to support livestock instead of people. In developing countries, beef production perpetuates and intensifies poverty and injustice, particularly if beef or livestock feed is produced for export.
* Seventy percent of all U.S. grain -- and one third of the world's total grain harvest -- is fed to cattle and other livestock. At the same time, between 40 and 60 million people die each year from hunger and diseases related to hunger. As many as one billion suffer from chronic hunger and malnourishment.1
* U.S. livestock -- mostly cattle -- consumes almost twice as much grain as is eaten by the entire American population. Globally, about 600 million tons of grain are fed to livestock, much of it to cattle.2
* Two-thirds of all U.S. grain exports foes to feed cattle and other livestock rather than hungry people.3
* In Africa, nearly one in three people is undernourished. In Latin America, nearly one out of every seven people goes to bed hungry each night. In Asia and the Pacific, 22 percent of the people live at the edge of starvation. In the Near East, one in nine is underfed.4
* Chronic hunger and related disease affect more than 1.3 billion people, according to the World Health Organization. Never before in human history has such a large percentage of our species -- more than 20 percent -- been undernourished.5
* Undernutrition affects nearly 40 percent of all children in developing nations and contributes directly to an estimated 60 percent of all childhood deaths, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. More than 15 million children die every year from diseases resulting from, or complicated by, undernourishment.6
* If worldwide agricultural production were shifted fron? livestock feed to food grains for direct human consumption, more than a billion people could be fed -- the precise number which currently suffer from hunger and malnourishment.8
* Feeding grain to livestock is an extremely wasteful method of producing protein. Feedlot cattle require nine pounds of feed to make one pound of gain. Only 11 percent of the feed goes to produce the beef itself. The rest is burned off as energy in the conversion process, used to maintain normal body functions, absorbed into parts of the cattle that are not eaten -- such as hair or bones -- or excreted.8
* Cattle have a feed protein conversion efficiency of only 6 percent, producing less than 50 kg of flesh protein from more than 790 kg of plant protein. A feedlot steer consumes 2,700 pounds of grain by the time it is ready for slaughter.9
* Asian adults consume between 300 and 400 pounds of grain a year; three-fourths or more of the diet of the average Asian is composed of grain. A middle-class American, by contrast, consumes over a ton of grain each year, 80 percent of it through eating cattle and other grain-fed livestock.10
* Two out of every three people around the world consume a primarily vegetarian diet. With one-third of global grain output now going to cattle and other livestock, and with the human population growing by almost 20 percent in the next decade, a worldwide food crisis is imminent.11
* Three quaners of America's public western land -- covering 40 percent of the eleven western statss -- is leased to cattlemen at prices far below market value.12
* Nearly half of the earth's landmass is used as pasture for cattle and other livestock. On very rich grasslands, two and a half acres can support a cow for a year. On marginal grazing land, 50 or more acres may be required.13
* In the 1960s, with the help of loans from the World Bank and the Inter- American Development Bank, many Central and South America governments began converting millions of acres of tropical rain forest and cropland to pastureland for the international beef market. Between 1971 and 1977, more than $3.5 billion in loans and technical assistance went to Latin America for cattle production.14
* Many major U.S. corporations invested heavily in beef production throughout Central America in the 1970s and 80s, including Borden, United Brands, and International Foods. Other American multinational companies such as Cargill, Ralston Purina, W.R. Grace, Weyerhauser-, Crown Zellerbach, and Fort Dodge Labs, provided most of the technological support for the Central American beef industry, from frozen semen to refrigeration equipment, grass seeds, feed, and medicine. 15
* The beef industry in Central America has enriched the lives of a select few, pauperized much of the rural peasantry, and spawned widespread social unrest and political upheaval. More than half the rural families in Central America -- 35 million people -- are now landless or own too little land to support themselves, while powerful ranchers and large corporations continue to acquire more land for pasture.16
* In Costa Rica, cattle interests cleared 80 percent of the tropical forests in just 20 years, turning half the arable land into cattle pastures. Today, just 2,000 powerful ranchincg families own over half the productive land in Costa Rica, grazing 2 million cattle most of whose meat is exported to the United States.17
* In Guatemala, less than 3 percent of the population owns 70 percent of the agriculitural land, much of it used for raising cattle. Nearly one third of Guatemala's beef production was exported to the U.S. in 1990.18
* In Honduras, land used for cattle pasture increased from just over 40 percent in 1952 to more than 60 percent in 1974. Total beef production tripled between 1960 and 1980 to over 62,000 metric tons annually. In 1990, more than 30 percent of the beef produced in Honduras was exported to the United States.19
* In Nicaragua, beef production increased threefold and beef exports increased five and a half times between 1960 and 1980.20
* By the mid 1980s, Central America had 80 percent more cattle than 20 years before, and produced 170 percent more beef.21
* In Brazil, 4.5 percent of the landowners own 81 percent of the farmland, while 70 percent of the rural households are landless. Between 1966 and 1983, nearly 40,000 square miles of Amazon forest were cleared for commercial development. The Brazilian government estimated that 38 percent of all the rain forest destroyed during that period was attributable to large-scale cattle development benefiting only a few wealthy ranchers.22
* In developing countries, the poor receive no benefit from cattle ranching. Modern beef production is capital intensive but not labor intensive. The average rain forest cattle ranch employs one person per 2,000 head of cattle, or about one person per twelve square miles. By contrast, peasant agriculture can often sustain a hundred people per square mile.23
* Latin American countries are using more of their land to graze cattle, and to grow feed crops. In Mexico, where millions of people are malnourished, one-third of the grain produced is being fed to livestock. Twenty-five years ago, livestock consumed less than 6 percent of Mexico's grain.24
* When land in developing countries is used to produce livestock feed, much of it for export, less land is available to peasant farmers to grow their own food, and so less food is available. As a result, staple food prices rise, and the impact is mostly felt by the poor. In Brazil, black beans, long a staple food for the poor, are becoming more expensive as farmers have switched to growing soybeans for the more lucrative international feed market.
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