The Ecological Hoofprint: The Global Burden of Industrial Agriculture

Abstract

When global food prices spiked upwards in 2007, the popular press explained the spike, in part, by rising demand for meat in rapidly-growing ‘emerging markets’ such as India and South Africa. Such an explanation was palpably wrong: people in rich countries consume more than three times as much meat, and more than four times as much dairy, as people in developing countries, with Americans consuming 121 kilograms of meat per person per year while South Asians and Africans consume, on average, 18 kilograms and 7 kilograms, respectively, per person per year. Thus, in 2010 countries with 12 per cent of the world’s population consumed nearly one third of global meat consumption, while countries with a little under half the world population consumed 16 per cent of meat consumption.