Chapter 333. Exercise APA 3-1

ORIGINAL SOURCE

Even the most conscientious agriculture has some environmental impact, and though much food production yields greenhouse gases, raising livestock has a much higher potential for global warming than crop farming. For example: To produce one calorie of corn takes 2.2 calories of fossil fuel. For beef the number is 40: it requires 40 calories to produce one calorie of beef protein.

In other words, if you grow corn and eat it, you expend 2.2 calories of energy in order to eat one of protein. But if you process that corn, and feed it to a steer, and take into account all the other needs that steer has through its lifetime—land use, chemical fertilizers (largely petroleum-based), pesticides, machinery, transport, drugs, water, and so on—you’re responsible for 40 calories of energy to get that same calorie of protein. According to one estimate, a typical steer consumes the equivalent of 135 gallons of gasoline in his lifetime, enough for even some gas guzzlers to drive more than halfway from New York to Los Angeles, or for an energy-efficient car to make the drive back and forth twice. Or try to imagine each cow on the planet consuming almost seven barrels of crude oil.

From Bittman, M. (2009). Food matters: A guide to conscious eating with more than 75 recipes. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

[The source passage is on pages 16-17. Page 16 ends with petroleum-, and page 17 starts with based.]

Excerpt from Food matters: A guide to conscious eating with more than 75 recipes. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Reprinted by permission.

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