A lot of people choose to try to help out the environment via taking shorter showers or working to waste less food. But in reality, the amount of water or food these actions save pale in comparison to everything saved by participating less in the most unsustainable part of agriculture.

Saving food is great. We throw out way too much food, at the same time that there are still people starving. But even if we stopped throwing out all of our food, 70% of grain would still be unnused for human consumption in the U.S. alone. Why? It goes to the meat industry, which is essentially taking massive amounts of food and then turning it into less food.

It's not just grain that's taken up by the meat industry - a total of 83% of all farmland is used solely for raising animals. It's estimated that 700 million tonnes of food each year go to livestock rather than humans. As a total, it makes up 26% of Earth's total land area.

Our population is growing, and despite popular fears, we could sustain it, if we laid aside our desire for meat and turned to what's feasible. Ending world hunger would never be so close, as it's estimated that we could nourish an additional 3.5 billion people just by saving this land.

Even saving grain alone would feed massive amounts. Ecologist David Pimentel of Cornell University says that "If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million."

It's not just land that makes the industry unsustainable. As mentioned before, many people take shorter showers to conserve water, but this has virtually no impact compared to skipping just a few steaks. One kilogram of steak needs up to 25 kilos of grain and 15,000 liters of water to produce. Livestock makes up 27% of global freshwater consumption at a time when many places are experiencing deadly drought.

It takes 100 to 200 times more water to produce a pound of beef than it does to raise a pound of plants. If you spared just one roast chicken, you would save 4,325 liters of water. Thus, by leaving it out entirely you would save far more water than any kind of personal water reduction would.

The meat and dairy industry also heavily pollutes the water. All the waste generated by the locked up animals has to go somewhere, and it's often concentrated in giant "waste lagoons" full of millions of gallons of animal manure. And sometimes these burst. For example, one waste lagoon in Callaway County, Missouri spilled 37,854 liters of manure into a stream, and during the exact same month a lagoon in North Carolina spilled 100,000 gallons.

All that waste isn't just unsanitary - it greatly adds to climate change. About 15% of all greenhous gas emissions are created by the meat industry, using 8 times more energy than it costs to produce plants. It's estimated that growing livestock feed requires 167 million pounds of pesticides and 17 billion pounds of nitrogen fertilizer each year. It generates nitrous oxide, which is 300 times more potent than carbon diozide. The methane from cattle generates about 20% of total U.S. methane emissions.

All this is terrible for the planet, but it's also terrible for you. Due to an overuse of antibiotics, the human race is in danger of being attacked by a superbug. This is because when bacteria encounter antibiotics they will eventually learn to adapt and evolve to be resistant to it. People use way too many antibiotics, resulting in powerful superbacteria that antibiotics can be powerless to stop.

Oftentimes it's recommended to only take antibiotics as a last resort, but the amount of antibiotics humans take for illness is nothing compared to all the antibiotics used for meat. Up to 80% of all the antibiotics are used on livestock. The antibiotic-resistant bacteria develop in the gut of these animals, and the bacteria excreted through feces then encounters food crop due to runoff and being used as fertilizer. This is then consumed by humans, or the antibiotic bacteria are directly consumed by humans via the meat.

Even without the antibiotics, participating in this industry makes you suffer. Eating red meat can heavily reduce your lifespan. In fact, it's been found that 1 additional serving of unprocessed red meat per day can raise your mortality risk by 13%. Processed red meat like hot dogs and bacon raises that risk by 20%. Substituting the red meat for other food can lower your risk of mortality by 7-19%.

Milk consumption is linked to prostate and ovarian cancer, and the idea that milk is needed to give you calcium is a lie put out by the dairy industry. Dark leafy greens, legumes, and almond milk are far healthier alternatives.

In summary, the meat industry is unsustainable. It takes up vast swathes of land that, if used for human purposes, could feed the world. It wastes incredible amounts of water, contributes to climate change, furthers the risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria epidemics, and increases your mortality rate. Solving climate change and feeding a growing population requires us to cut our meat consumption drastically, and any other actions you take to save water or food are all eclipsed by the amount of good you do even by skipping meat for one day a week. Every bit counts.

Sources:

"Calcium: What's Best for Your Bones and Health?" Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, 5 June 2018, https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/calcium-and-milk/calcium-full-story/#calcium-from-milk

"How Does Meat in the Diet Take an Environmental Toll?" Scientific American, www.scientificamerican.com/article/meat-and-environment/.

"Risk in Red Meat?" National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2 July 2015, www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/risk-red-meat.

Admin. "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - Antibiotics." Carrington, 20 Dec. 2016, carrington.edu/blog/medical/good-bad-ugly-antibiotics/.

Barclay, Eliza. "A Nation Of Meat Eaters: See How It All Adds Up." NPR, NPR, 27 June 2012, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/27/155527365/visualizing-a-nation-of-meat-eaters.

Cassidy, Emily S, et al. Redefining Agricultural Yields: from Tonnes to People Nourished per Hectare. 2013, Redefining Agricultural Yields: from Tonnes to People Nourished per Hectare, iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015.

Hoekstra, Arjen Y, and Mesfin M Mekonnen. "The Water Footprint of Humanity." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, National Academy of Sciences, 28 Feb. 2012, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22331890.

McCarthy, Joe, and Erica Sanchez. "9 Ways Veganism Is Helping the Planet." Global Citizen, 15 Oct. 2016, www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/9-reasons-why-veganism-can-save-the-world/.

Peach, Sara. "What to Do About Pig Poop? North Carolina Fights a Rising Tide." National Geographic, National Geographic Society, 20 Oct. 2016, news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141028-hog-farms-waste-pollution-methane-north-carolina-environment/.

Poore, J., and T. Nemecek. "Reducing Food's Environmental Impacts through Producers and Consumers." Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1 June 2018, science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987.

Landers, Timothy F., et al. "A Review of Antibiotic Use in Food Animals: Perspective, Policy, and Potential." Advances in Pediatrics, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2012, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234384/.

Ventola, C Lee. "The Antibiotic Resistance Crisis: Part 1: Causes and Threats." P & T : a Peer-Reviewed Journal for Formulary Management, MediMedia USA, Inc., Apr. 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/.

Vergunst, Francis, et al. "Five Ways the Meat on Your Plate Is Killing the Planet." The Conversation, 15 Mar. 2019, theconversation.com/five-ways-the-meat-on-your-plate-is-killing-the-planet-76128.