According to a French documentary, the highest mountains in Europe are located in the Netherlands. Europe, a continent upside down is the name of the film that will be broadcasted by Arte on 17 June. She uses the power of cards to show where the most livestock is kept. Nowhere in the world is the pig density as high as in Brabant: 1,200 pigs per square kilometer, with a doubling in De Peel. And so on the North Sea rises a Mount Everest of pigs. The same geography on the map with cattle: high mountains in the Netherlands.
Killing Fieldssomeone wrote on Twitter with the tickets, because online is Europe, un continent bouleverse already to see. That characterization probably refers to the killing of billions of animals every year, but Killing Fields inadvertently touches on that other scandal: millions of people are at risk of starvation. According to the United Nations, 41 million people are on the brink of starvation. More than 155 million – all Dutch times nine – are in acute food need.
Intensive livestock farming in the Netherlands is part of the cause. Climate change is the main problem; the Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years, and livestock farming is a major emitter of greenhouse gas (methane cow farts are 86 times more harmful than CO2). In addition, large tracts of rainforest have been cleared to produce animal feed, which is pushing global warming further.
For the sake of completeness: the import of food in poor countries has stopped due to covid. And the war in Ukraine is further jeopardizing supply, as Ukraine and Russia account for a third of the grain traded globally. But even without wheat, rye and corn from the East, we could easily feed the world’s population. If not three quarters of all agricultural land on earth was used for livestock.
The crux of the food problem is this: Animals eat, on average, six times more protein than they produce. For one kilo of chicken meat, 4.55 kilos of feed is needed. For a kilo of pork nine kilos. One kilo of beef requires 25 kilos of feed. This animal feed mainly consists of grain and soya, which can also be eaten by humans. Without the intervention of a wasting animal, a kilo of wheat is a kilo of food.
Some more figures: on average, 600 square meters of agricultural land is needed to feed someone who eats a plant-based diet (a vegan). For a vegetarian (with egg and dairy) 3 times as much. For someone who eats meat in addition to dairy and eggs, 18 times as much. Instead of one kilo of beef, a piece of farmland can provide almost 100 kilos of plant food. The earth produces food for 10 billion people.
The title of the Arte movie, Europe upside down, takes on a new meaning now that the food supply is at stake due to the war. Brussels has postponed an important nature conservation law and a pesticide regulation. At the same time, farmers are allowed to work fallow land (crucial for biodiversity) and grow crops in shorter succession (bad for the soil).
The agro-industry lobbying all the time paints a false contrast between food security and sustainability. Sustainability has now been suspended, while a shortage of food is not the cause of the shortages. That is feeding grain to animals.
And then there is another law of food security: from war comes food scarcity and from food scarcity comes war. In Egypt, therefore, the government guarantees each family three loaves of bread a day. When the Arab Spring started at the end of 2010, bread symbolized the commitment: first bread, then ideals.
A grain shortage in the Middle East is an immediate threat to stability there and here. It is now clear that conflicts on the other side of the Mediterranean lead to refugee flows that could cause problems for Western democracies. Three quarters of Egyptian grain comes from Russia and Ukraine.
Anyone who has no problem feeding animals with grain and legumes while 155 million people are starving, should see the other side. After all, it is something that flesh-eating men so lustily refer to when they suggest that Putin cannot help the war: realpolitik. (“If only Ukraine and NATO should have provided him with security.”) Well, food shortages because we prefer to give our grain to animals is just realpolitik.
Marcia Luyten is a writer and journalist and writes an exchange column with Heleen Mees every other week.