Chapter 18. Chapter 18: Agriculture

Why does raising livestock often come with a higher environmental impact than plant crops?

Interactive Study Guide
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Guiding Question 18.2

Why does raising livestock often come with a higher environmental impact than plant crops?

Why You Should Care

As developing countries begin to enjoy rising standards of living, seen now in parts of India and China, the people of those countries, on average, are adding more meat to their diets. For many living in highly impoverished areas, meat is a costly luxury, and it is only natural for someone doing better financially to live a little higher on the hog. Those of us living in developed countries should be concerned about the rising global demand for meat. To know why, one can simply look at the reasons why people living in impoverished countries don’t eat meat often: resources. It takes a lot of water, food, and fossil fuels to raise cattle and other livestock. Several people could be fed with the grain used to feed one cow or by the crops that could have been grown in the fields that have instead been used to grow the grain or grass that is used to feed the cow. We in North America are fortunate to be able to give up the land and resources in order to have meat, but not all people are. By most estimates, if all countries had a meat-dominant diet like the United States, we would probably suffer worldwide food shortages and environmental degradation as more land and other resources were diverted into meat production.

Question Test Your Vocabulary

Fill in the blank with the correct term for each of the following definitions:

Rearing meat or dairy animals in confined spaces, thereby maximizing the number of animals that can be grown in a small area, is called 1gP5YIQLNDUa/vtd+fJlGSifGQFIWT5WpYDF7sIIy4XHdmeETlSQ/trk3YhYjv03FONDrnGLdgixA/6lukoUkz69xl/9QN2IFfCcXuZUu2FzN8df

7aCns1oW75pDfUOIgghXTp666Q80bbgA/VuDYbGBJHDNVgKcoLxhDbDk9hvDcq/r are how much edible food is produced per unit of feed input.

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Question 18.1

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Question 18.2

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Question 18.3

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Question 18.4

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Question 18.5

Order the following meat and dairy products from the most to the least amount of FOOD required to make one pound of meat or dairy product.

Most Food Required

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Least Food Required

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Question 18.6

Order the following meat and dairy products from the most to the least amount of WATER required to make one pound of meat or dairy product.

Most Water Required

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Least Water Required

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Question 18.7

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It’s easy to rule out beef and pork, but then it becomes tricky when it comes to chicken, eggs, and dairy. Eggs require the least water and dairy the least feed, and chicken falls between them both. Your answer would depend on whether you hold that growing feed or using water has the greatest impact.