In 2020 we produced a quantity of calories sufficient to feed 15 billion people, but half have never reached our dishes:
This is the disconcerting conclusion to which a study not yet revised in Peer Review has come that denounces the inefficiency of the global food chain, mainly due to the increase in the production of cattle meat, very little efficient animals in converting the calories of which they feed in the flesh.
Inefficient cows. To reach their conclusions, scholars analyzed the data relating to the 50 crops from which 97.5 % of all calories produced in the world arrives, including basic crops such as potatoes and corn, from oil such as sunflower and rapeseed, and fruit and vegetables such as bananas and tomatoes.
They then looked at the efficiency of breeding animals in converting the food they feed on meat, milk or eggs, to understand how many calories they were lost in the process. They discovered that, despite the production of global calories had increased by about 24% between 2010 and 2020, the number of calories available on our dishes had only been 17%:
This is because more and more calories are used to nourish cattle, which are less efficient in converting what they eat in flesh compared, for example, to chickens. 45% of the calories lost in 2020, in fact, were those given to the cows; The remaining 5% of loss is due to the production of biodiesel and bioethanol, in particular to the palm oil converted to biodiesel.
How to solve the problem? A simple solution to this problem would be to consume less red meat and more white meat – whose production, however, we have recently told you about it, is not free from problems, especially ethical. It is also important to emphasize that the study did not take into account all wasted food, which is in further lost calories.
“The problems we face nowadays in feeding eight billion people do not have to do with biophysical limits”, comments to Newscientist Hannah Ritchie (University of Oxford), an expert not involved in the study: “It is not that we cannot produce more calories: the problem is their distribution, and choose how to use them”, concludes.
