What did you learn about dietary choices from using the footprint calculator? Now imagine that you could translate what you learned into an effective societal policy on food- what would it be? And how would this policy effect the need to alleviate world hunger?
925 million people on earth do not have enough to eat according to the FAO [Food and Agricultural Organization]. That's almost 1 in 7 inhabitants of our planet!
Food & Hunger >
Space use
Animal agriculture uses significantly more land than crops. Beef, chicken, and pork are in constant demand and use acres and acres of land. Forests are being cut down every day because of this. If we were all vegetarian or vegan it would save a lot of forest covered land. This is important because trees take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.
I agree with you about how animal agriculture is taking up large amounts of land and cutting down acres of forests. Countries could also save billions of gallons of water, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide. There are benefits from becoming a vegan or vegetarian but there are also some downsides too. If all people were to go vegan or vegetarian, we would lack many of the nutrients that meat provides us. Of course, there are so many people today who have changed their diets trying to save animals and other reasons but many of them end up taking dietary supplements which is less natural than consuming meat products. Poultry, meat and fish supply us with iron, vitamins, magnesium, and other minerals that are essential to human diets.