To produce 1 pound of beef, the friendly neighborhood farmer will need 13 pounds of grain and an estimated 2,500 gallons of water. If a 1,000-pound cow yields 600 pounds of beef, that cow used 1.5 million gallons of water and 7,800 pounds of grain. So, on a basic level, farming at this scale is pretty inefficient, when you could effectively feed thousands of people with just the grain and water it takes to produce that one cow. It’s not that inefficient if you’re one farmer with a few cows and chickens (though it’s more expensive to raise animals that actually graze) and just your family to feed. But even when you’re as good as Tyson Foods is at maximizing profits, it’s a mathematically unsustainable equation.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 01:33:14 +0000
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