A Few Statistics

My husband loves numbers – he should have been a mathematician.  The past few weeks I’ve been working on completing my certification in Plant Based Nutrition through eCornell and the course has been a treasure chest of information.  I’ve been sharing some of the information with him and it’s been interesting to say the least!  For instance, did you know that the Standard American Diet is made up of 51% Oil and Refined Carbohydrates, 42% food from animals and 5% fruit and vegetables (2% of the 5% is compromised of potato chips and french fries).  Amazing isn’t it?  It’s no wonder that disease and cancer is on the rise!

One of my fellow students posted an article from The World Preservation Foundation and it contained some statistics that I thought were not only alarming but important for everyone to take note of.  Please feel free to share and pass these along.

1. Raising livestock and their by-products account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide green house gas (GHG) emissions.
2. Thirty percent of the entire land surface of Earth is devoted to livestock production, including plants used to feed the livestock.
3. Replacing meat with plant-derived sources of calories and protein could reduce the land area required to feed the human population by more than 80 percent and recover about 25 percent of the landf or restoration, solar energy capture, or other eco-friendly purposes.
4. Between 23-30 percent of our global ecological footprint comes from agriculture, primarily livestock production.
5. Beef takes 70 times more land to produce than vegetables.
6. 80 percent of the world’s soy production is consumed by livestock.
7. About 50 percent of the world’s grain supply is used to feed livestock. This is while almost 11 million children who live in the countries where these feed grains are grown, die ironically of hunger each year.
8. In 2009, for the first time, the number of people suffering from hunger exceeded 1 billion. This doesn’t include people facing hunger shortages from natural disasters.
9. If all 6.78 billion people on Earth began consuming as many animal products as residents of the United States, we would need over 3 planet Earths to meet the demand. If all people on Earth became vegetarians, less than one Earth would be needed to meet food demands.