Page 59 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 21

Food Health

biofuels (maize, soybeans), or crops
that provide ingredients for highly
processed and unhealthy foods such
as palm oil, soy and sugar. None of
these result in nutritious food.

An interesting report by Emily
Cassidy and her colleagues at the
University of Minnesota’s Institute
on the Environment looked at what
crops are used for. They conclude
that, globally, only 55% of crop
calories feed people directly, 36% go
to feed livestock and 9% are used to
produce biofuels. In the US, where
large industrial farms dominate the
scene, the situation is much worse: Map: crops grown for food (green) versus for animal feed and fuel
only 27% of crop calories feed peo- (purple) (Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/
ple directly and 67% feed livestock.
Some 40% of the US’ biggest crop, feeding-9-billion/)
maize, is for biofuels to run cars,
and most of its second biggest crop, colleagues did the calculations and
soybean, is fed to animals. big ag exporting countries of Latin
conclude that the highly ‘produc- America. Most crops produced
tive’ US farms feed 5.4 persons per for food are in Africa, India, parts
By contrast in India, where the
farm and food provisioning sector hectare – roughly the same as India of Southeast Asia, and the lower
is dominated by small producers, (5.6 persons) and far less than China income countries of Latin America
(8.4 persons).
almost 90% of the crop calories – all dominated by small farms.
produced go directly to feeding
people. The food vs feed/biofuel divide has The conclusion is clear: big farms
clear size and geographical biases. don’t feed the world. They feed the
As a map for National Geographic pockets of investors and commodity
One could argue that calories fed to shows (below), most crops for ani-
livestock are also a contribution to traders, they feed cars and cows, and
the human diet as we end up eating mal feed and biofuels are produced they feed the highly processed and
meat and dairy. But meat and dairy in areas where big farms dominate: junk food industries.
are an extremely inefficient way of the US, Europe and some of the
producing food. It takes about 100
calories of grain to produce just
12 calories of chicken or 3 calo-
ries worth of beef, for instance. In
any case, looking at calories is a
problematic way to measure food
productivity. As we all know, the
amount of calories doesn’t neces-
sarily equal the amount of healthy
food. For many people it is the
opposite.

Cassidy’s paper comes with an
interesting proposal: rather then
measuring yields in tonnes per hect-
are, we should be looking at people
nourished per hectare. She and her Local Afrikan farmer harvesting vegetables.

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