So what happened to that elderly man in the picture that went viral back in March, at the onset of pandemic? Surrounded by empty supermarket shelves, he was bent over a shopping list, trying to make out its words. A sense of gloom hung over him because even if he could discern which items were on his list, most were missing from the empty shelves.
That image hit home for many people. “This is the first time lots of us have looked at shelves and thought actually I need something and I can’t have it,” says Sali Hughes, the co-founder of Beauty Banks, a nonprofit organisation that provides toiletries to homeless people. People are recently “better able to relate to people living in poverty who feel like that quite a lot of the time.”
News of the impending pandemic and lockdown initially triggered widespread panic-buying and stockpiling of canned foods, frozen produce, and other essential food items. Since the coronavirus lockdown also put a halt to many international flights and complicated the transport of goods, the supply chain of essential goods, including food, has been disrupted. As a result, grocery stores – both chains and independent retailers – struggled to restock their shelves. This supply shortage left a large number of people at risk of being short of food, and even going hungry if they could not afford to buy in bulk while supplies were still available. The coronavirus pandemic has accentuated the ongoing issues of food inequality and insecurity by highlighting how, in times of emergency, limited supplies in grocery stores are unequally distributed.
Food insecurity occurs when a person or community cannot access food on a consistent basis. During the first weeks of lockdown in the U.K., 8.1 million people experienced food insecurity – a jump from 10 percent of the population in 2019 to 12 percent in 2020. The food insecurity in the U.K. is among the worst in Europe, with more than half of food-insecure British people often not eating for entire days. One in five U.K. children lives with a food-insecure adult and faces chronic hunger. In the U.S., more than 37 million Americans experience daily hunger, with 17 percent of children living in households affected by food insecurity. Food insecurity is a global issue that affects even citizens of wealthy nations.
Hunger is a leading cause worldwide of malnutrition and death. Every day, an estimated 21,000 people die of starvation. By the time this sentence is typed, another child has died from hunger. Over 820 million people globally face chronic hunger on a daily basis. That is about 12 percent of the world population, or more than the populations of the European Union, United States, and Canada combined. Ninety-eight percent of those suffering from hunger live in developing countries, with the continent of Africa having the highest rate of hunger and India the highest number of malnourished people. The food supply disruptions related to the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns have most severely impacted countries that are already struggling to feed their populations. According to a recent Oxfam report, an additional 121 million people are facing starvation this year as a result of the pandemic. The number of food-insecure and hungry people has significantly risen since the onset of Covid-19.
The existing world hunger statistics starkly contrast with the fact that there is actually enough food for everyone in the world. Current global food production could feed 10 billion people, which is the world population expected by 2050. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, this year’s global cereal production will surpass 2019 production by 2.6 percent. Production of both cereal and soy are expected to continue to grow annually. The United States is the leading global producer of soybeans and corn, and India is one the major grain producers worldwide. Modern agriculture produces enough food to feed more than the current world population, yet people worldwide continue to starve.
A major reason for the existing food shortages is that a significant amount of global crops are currently fed to farmed animals. A relatively modest 24 percent of global crops are fed to animals, however, feed crops like maize and soybeans are calorically dense and represent 53 percent of global plant protein production. In the U.S., almost half of soy is fed to farmed animals, while in Europe the proportion is about 90 percent. India is, worldwide, among the top 15 exporters of animal feeds. The U.K. imports 50 percent of its soybeans from Brazil and about 25 percent from the U.S., however, only 45 percent is used for human consumption, while more than a third is fed to livestock; a small percentage is used for non-food products. Only 55 percent of the world’s crop calories are consumed by humans. The United Nations Environmental Programme calculates that the calories currently used to feed farmed animals could nourish an additional 3.5 billion people. Precious crops are feeding billions of livestock animals while humans starve.
Farmed animals, in addition to consuming nearly half of the global calories annually produced, require disproportionately massive amounts of land. The land used for grazing and housing livestock animals and the land used to grow animal feed occupy a combined 77 percent of land worldwide, while farmed animals produce only 18 percent of the total global calories and 37 percent of global protein. One acre of land can produce about 20,000 pounds of chicken, 250 pounds of beef, or 53,000 pounds of potatoes. Growing potatoes provides 94 times more calories than keeping cattle for beef on the same area of land. Humans’ meat consumption is clearly a major driver of global food and land shortages.
The demand for meat, despite its production inefficiencies, continues to gradually increase. Over the last 50 years, the average amount of meat annually consumed per person has risen from 23 to 43 kilograms. A main source of the growing demand is middle-income countries, especially those in East Asia. As countries’ middle classes grow and citizens become more affluent, they increasingly want to consume meat and dairy – such products previously were considered luxuries that they could not afford. The demand for meat remains high in the West, despite many people claiming to have reduced or modified their intake. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the demand for red meat has been somewhat replaced by that for poultry and processed meats, but overall demand has not declined. Europeans consume an average of 80 kilograms of meat annually and North Americans consume more than 110 kilograms – well above the global per-person average of 43 kilograms. High or rising standards of living across the globe are a major factor contributing to the demand for animal products.
Two nutritional misconceptions also significantly fuel the desire for animal protein. The first is that animal protein is superior to plant-based protein; the other is that humans require large amounts of protein to be healthy. Both myths have been welcomed by the meat industry and perpetuated by the media. The idea that plant protein is incomplete or inferior has its origins in Frances Lappe’s 1971 book Diet For a Small Planet, which states that plant foods are deficient in some essential amino acids found only in animal foods. Lappe, who was a sociologist and not a nutritionist nor a medical doctor, later retracted her book’s assertions, but the myth persists despite a lack of scientific evidence. Our society’s obsession with perceived “high-quality protein” is based on the common yet erroneous belief that more protein is always better, despite numerous studies showing that a majority of Western people daily consume more protein than is nutritionally recommended. Many Westerners actually consume almost double the recommended protein amount. Both misconceptions, by helping to drive meat consumption, adversely affect the quantity of global food available to fellow humans.
Consuming animal protein does not yield additional health benefits and in fact is detrimental to human health. The consumption of animal protein is linked to increased risks for illness and death. The higher levels of essential amino acids in animal foods, rather than being beneficial, cause increased production of the hormone Insulin-Like Growth Factor-1, which is linked to higher rates of cancer. Animal proteins are also high in saturated fat and cholesterol, which can result in hypercholesterolemia. High cholesterol is one of the main causal factors for cardiovascular disease, which is the number-one killer in the U.S. and U.K. Consuming animal protein, despite popular belief, actually damages human health and should be avoided.
Ending world hunger can be achieved only by a collective, focused effort – one that is led by the world’s governments and supported by both non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and consumers themselves. Governments can implement policies to promote the development of sustainable agriculture, ensure equitable access to land and education, and support programs that address food insecurity. Governments can also eliminate subsidies and support programs that encourage the production of crops for animal feed. International humanitarian NGOs such as Action Against Hunger and the Hunger Project can support the world’s governments by continuing to help communities to develop self-reliant strategies and organising food distributions to those in need. Consumers can follow the recommendations of the 2019 EAT-Lancet report, which asserts that reducing the consumption of animal products is an effective way to feed the growing human population and end world hunger. Consumers can also wield their votes to elect politicians who prioritise feeding hungry people and actively oppose governmental support for animal agriculture. Concrete, prolonged actions by governments, nonprofit organisations, and individuals can put an end to the unnecessary hunger and starvation of millions of humans.
During the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, major supermarkets enforced new rules to prevent bulk-buying to ensure that the most vulnerable had continued access to food. Citizens mobilised to support the elderly and lonely in their communities, in an attempt to ensure that nobody went hungry. But feeding the hungry, in times of emergency and otherwise, with chronically limited food supplies is like giving painkillers to someone with a tension headache. The pain may go away, but will surely return until the root cause is addressed. World hunger will persist so long as we continue to feed our precious crops to doomed livestock. We have the power to end our collective, unhealthy addiction to animal products and instead develop a greater appetite for the world’s abundance of delicious plants.
Image credit: Deborah Breen Whiting