Can Veganism Mitigate World Hunger and Starvation?

Multiple studies show that we can feed far more people on a plant-based, vegan diet.

“The calories that are lost by feeding cereals to animals, instead of using them directly as human food, could theoretically feed an extra 3.5 billion people.”(a research report from the United Nations Environment Program, the World Bank, and others, and signed by 58 nations (UNEP IAASTD report⁷)

• Don’t let the word theoretically throw you—of course it’s theoretical because it would be impossible to conduct an experiment to test this. The conclusion is based on modeling and analysis.

“If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million.” (an analysis by a Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel⁸)

“Given the current mix of crop uses, growing food exclusively for direct human consumption could, in principle, increase available food calories by as much as 70%, which could feed an additional 4 billion people.”( Environmental Research Letters⁹)

Note: The population of the United States was approximately 335 million as of November 30, 2023. (Census Bureau¹⁰)

“Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can produce up to 20 times more nutritionally similar food on the same amount of land”(PNAS, by two environmental scientists, a physicist, and a molecular biologist¹¹)

Over 75% of the world’s grains and soy used for food are fed to animals.

According to the UN’s 2022 Food Outlook report, approximately 75% of the world’s coarse grains used for food are fed to animals. Coarse grains include corn, oats, barley, sorghum, millet, and rye.¹²

According to a 2020 report compiled by the Our World in Data group from the UN and other sources, “more than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production.” ¹³

Most of the grains and soy used for animal feed could provide good nutrition to humans.

Coarse grains are not just edible by humans, but are also contain nutrients important for maintaining human health (A PubMed Study¹⁴)

Field corn (as opposed to sweet corn) is sometimes mistakenly thought of as used only for animal feed, yet can provide human nutrition. Maize, which is essentially field corn, is eaten by humans in several cultures. (Michigan State Extension¹⁵; New York Academy of Sciences¹⁶ )

The soybeans used for animal feed are largely the same as those used for human consumption, but are processed differently.(IntechOpen report¹⁷)

The reason we can feed far more on a vegan diet is because animal agriculture is extremely inefficient.

Animal agriculture is so inefficient because most of the feed calories consumed by an animal go toward energy for daily living. Also, some energy is expended to produce body parts that are not consumed.(Applied Animal Nutrition Journal¹⁸)

Animal agriculture uses 83% of global farmland while producing only 18% of total calories and 37% of calories from protein. This according to a 2018 J Poor led study from Oxford which has been called “the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet,” having examined 38,700 farms in 119 countries representing 90% of the world’s protein and calorie consumption. (The Guardian¹⁹; “Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers”, published in Science Magazine²⁰)

• The logical converse of this startling statistic is that 17% of farmland is used to grow food for human consumption, yet produces 82% of total calories and 63% of calories from protein.

Calorie conversion: It takes on average 24 calories of plant feed to produce one calorie of food from animals. (World Resources Institute, “Creating a Sustainable Food Future”²¹)

Feed conversion: It takes on average 7 pounds of feed to produce one pound of food made from animal flesh and secretions.

• Even with the dismal feed conversion ratio of 7 to 1, such a ratio understates the inefficiency because it “improperly compares the weight of a relatively wet output [meat, dairy, and eggs] to the weight of a relatively dry input [feed grains]”. (World Resources Institute, “Creating a Sustainable Food Future”²²)

According to a University of Minnesota study, only 12% of crops fed to animals contribute to the human diet as meat and other animal products²³

According to a 2018 study published in the journal Nature, if everyone in the world were to adopt a Western-style diet high in meat and dairy, it would require 4 Earths to provide enough pastureland and cropland to feed the livestock.²⁴

Many countries export grain, or provide food for animals destined to be eaten by the more affluent, while their own children are starving or hungry.

Phillip Wollen, a  philanthropist and a former Vice-President of Citibank, said that “as I travel around the world I see poor countries sell their grain to the west while their own children die in their arms.” ²⁵

“Tragically, some 80% of the world’s hungry children live in countries with actual food surpluses, much of which is in the form of feed fed to animals which will be consumed by only the well-to-do consumers.”(Jeremy Rifkin, noted author of 23 books on the impact of global changes²⁶)

“82% of the world’s starving children live in countries where food is fed to animals that are then killed and eaten by more well-off individuals in developed countries like the US, UK, and in Europe.” (Dr. Richard Oppenlander, 2012 Book²⁷)

It seems almost criminal that starving and hungry people, be they children or adults, do not have access to food grown locally—food that is instead used to support the animal agriculture industry.