Taking land inventory at the 7 billion mark of human population
Sixty billion animals worldwide for our food. If the entire world ate the way we do, we'd soon need to raise and kill 300 billion animals each year.
Our love affair with the typical Western diet is completely unsustainable for very much longer. This week as we officially passed the seven billion mark according to the U.N., we are reminded of the incredibly wasteful feeding model in the Western world. What do I mean by wasteful?
Let’s start with the amount of arable land required to feed our population. Some simple arithmetic:
- It takes over three acres per person to produce the Western diet of meat and dairy three meals a day.
- It takes about 1/6 of an acre to feed someone who eats nothing but plant-based foods.
- On average, it takes from ten to twenty times more land to feed a given population the Western diet as compared to a plant-based diet.
- Arable land (where food crops can be grown) totals roughly 8 billion acres.
- With 7 billion people that works out to just over one acre per person.
So, if you passed 3rd grade arithmetic, you obviously realize that we would need over 20 billion acres of arable land to feed all 7 billion of us the Western diet — about 12 billion more acres than we have. What does this mean? Clearly, everyone cannot eat this wasteful diet-style. And it’s getting worse all the time – not better.
Note: Much of this information is covered in our well-referenced book with 306 footnotes. Also, a few references are shown below, but you may want to do some of your own research. It won’t take you long to realize that we have a very serious problem on planet Earth.
In a mere blink of history, this is typical of what humankind has done to our planet.
A little background on population. Humans have been around for about 200,000 years and the global population stood at about 250 million at year 1 A.D. It took us a little over 1800 years to reach one billion mark. Since then:
- 1927, we reached two billion. (adding one billion in 123 years)
- 1959, we reached three billion. (adding one billion in 32 years)
- 2011, we reached seven billion. (adding one billion every 13 years since 1959)
It gets worse. Our population continues to grow at about 200,000 people per day and is projected to rise to 9 to 13 billion by 2050. At the same time, more people around the world are choosing our wasteful diet-style around the world every year.
When people coming out of poverty have a little money for the first time, they want to start eating like people in the United States and Europe. And we’re placing McDonald’s, Burger Kings and KFC’s all over the world sot that they can do just that.
If we all ate what Nature intended for us to eat, we could feed all 7 billion humans on far less than half of the land we're using today.
We’re not done yet. Our 8 billion acres of arable land is shrinking due to degradation every year — losing an area about the size of South Carolina each year. Some forecast that at the current rate that our total arable land per person could drop from 1.1 acres/person that we have today to only .59 acre/person by 2039. Clearly, we have a problem.
A Sad Summary. When you consider that there has been life on this planet for 4 billion years and that humans arrived just 200,000 years ago, it’s mind-boggling what our race has done to our home since then. And most of that damage has been done in just the last 50 years.
While a relative newcomer to the planet, in just the past few hundred years (a mere blink in the eye of history) we have taken possession of all of the land and have lived as if all of the other creatures have been placed here for our pleasure.
One recent example of how we’re running roughshod over our precious planet was reported earlier this year in Fast Company prompting me to blog on 7-19-11, Burning trees in the Amazon — to feed pigs in China (See source article below). To support a completely unnecessary diet-style, we’re destroying the environment, wasting fossil fuel energy shipping soybeans across the ocean so that the Chinese don’t have to depend on other countries to meet their steadily growing demand for pork.
All of this madness began to come into focus for me back in 2003 when I had my “blinding flash of the obvious.” Suddenly, after reading and studying this topic for about six months, it became crystal clear for me as I realized, “Oh my God, we’re eating the wrong food.”
The solution is so beautiful, so simple and so wonderful for our planet and all of her millions of species of creatures.
The Bottom Line. Clearly, what we’re doing cannot continue for much longer — and unless we humans correct this problem soon, we’ll leave Mother Nature no other choice but to do it herself. And that wouldn’t be a very pretty picture.
While our collective problem is maddeningly complex and frustrating, the primary solution to all of the above is incredibly simple. We simply must begin to aggressively return to the natural diet-style — the one that Nature intended for us to eat all along. As we make that move back to plant-based eating, not only do we solve our problem with the shortage of arable land, but we also make a huge dent in our problems with water shortage and pollution, our energy crisis, and the global warming issue.
Finally, the single biggest human problem in most developed countries would be almost totally eliminated — our absurdly high cost of “disease care,” now standing at 17% of the GDP in the USA. Everything is connected.
Haven’t had your blinding flash of the obvious yet? Take a few hours and watch the following two documentaries; they may very well change your life. And if enough of us watch them, they may change the world.
“Earthlings” — A documentary that we all NEED to see
HOME – a 2009 film — a powerful eye-opener
J. Morris Hicks, author and activist. Working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.
Frequently I am reminded of what Mark Twain said over 100 years ago. I think he got it right about our reckless and selfish species — way back then. People didn’t like hearing it then and they probably won’t like hearing it now:
“Twain had arrived at the not unreasonable but never popular conclusion that mankind “was not made for any useful purpose, for the reason that he hasn’t served any; that he was most likely not even made intentionally; and that his working his way up out of the oyster bed to his present position was probably a matter of surprise and regret to the creator.”
If you like what you see here, you may wish to join our periodic mailing list. Also, for help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4-Leaf page. From the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.
If you’d like to order our book on Amazon, visit our BookStore now.
—J. Morris Hicks…blogging daily at HealthyEatingHealthyWorld.com
Population and Arable Land Information from One Simple Idea.com
Time Magazine. “Head Count” by Andrea Ford (10-31-11)
SHARE and rate this post below…One more thing, occasionally an unauthorized ad may appear beneath a blog post. It is controlled by WordPress (a totally free hosting service). I do not approve or personally benefit whatsoever from any ad that might ever appear on this site. I apologize and urge you to please disregard.
J. Morris Hicks, engineer. writer. big picture guy. 
Yes, let’s not focus on the other problems. Clearly how we eat is the only real thing in the way of fixing this broken world. People ONLY consume, right? Oh, and natural diet? I suppose we just have canines for shits and giggles right? Human beings are OMNIVORES for a reason. You ever looked at a hardcore vegan next to someone who eats a healthy balanced diet that includes both meat and veggies? They generally look pale, sometimes almost emaciated in comparison. Granted, the amount and way we consume our food supply does need to change, but cutting meat out is just plain stupid.
I’ve seen “Earthlings” and have now made it about 2/3’s of the way through “Home” online. It is magnificent……….and scary to sit and confront so much that is overwhelming. I’ve ordered a copy. I want my husband to see it and he will never sit down to watch online. I need for him to wake up to some of this, because he would rather not think about it. I may be able to get some others to watch it too, if I don’t explain the contents ahead of time and scare them off. So many people are like lemmings and would rather keep marching toward the cliff. Why?
Unfortunately, overpopulation fearmongers seem to overlook issues such as inequality and bad infrastructure as the real problems, and see people as just consumers and not producers. There are actually many reasons to celebrate 7 billion. This milestone proves how ingenious we are, that we’re better at keeping more people alive longer now than ever before, and we have more brains to create and develop more useful technologies and innovations to accommodate a growing population. Yes, there are still problems of starvation and lower standards of living for many on the planet, but neither history nor mathematical logic bears out the conclusion that population pessimists reached of resource scarcity. Where there are these problems, we need to go about creating more for everyone rather than curbing our numbers. In the Victorian times, the world’s population was a small fraction of what it is now, yet there was still poverty. What changed and improved our lives in the West was not going down from 1 billion to less, but improving sanitation, healthcare, our general standards of living, and discovering and taking advantage of scientific breakthroughs. We should see humanity as a solution and not the problem. I came across a spoof recently that parodies the many ridiculous overpopulation fears and paranoia – it is hilarious and brilliant! http://www.worldbytes.org/get-off-my-planet-happy-birthday-7-billion/
I’m beginning to look at the consumption of animal produce as a vice, similar to smoking and even more difficult to expunge from society. However, due to the facts coming out about how harmful smoking is to health, laws being passed to forbid it in public places, societal pressure and the price of smoking going way up, smoking is not gone but it is very much less of a presence in society. Even the hard-core smokers we know have all quit.