An extra two billion people could be fed every year and land almost the size of Mexico would be freed up to grow food for people if we ended the feeding of grain to factory farmed animals, according to a new report released today (16 Oct) by Compassion in World Farming. 

Released on World Food Day, the report Food not Feed: How to stop the world’s biggest form of food waste reveals the hidden scandal of our global food system – that in many countries factory farming wastes much more food than the amount wasted in the conventional sense e.g. by being thrown away by households and food businesses.

Globally, factory farming wastes more food than any other sector – including food wasted by households, food service or retailers. 

It explains that feeding grain to animals to produce meat or dairy is an inefficient way to produce food – for example, for every 100 calories of human-edible grain fed to animals, just 3-25 calories of meat are produced.  

If we reduced this waste by switching to regenerative farming, with animals fed on products humans cannot eat – such as pasture, by-products and properly treated unavoidable food waste/scraps – global food security would be vastly improved, the report explains. 

The global animal welfare and environmental NGO is now asking supporters to sign an open letter to national governments urging them to adopt policies that prioritise the production of food for people over animal feed.  

Insights from the new calculations in the report show that:  

globally, a colossal 766 million tonnes of grain are wasted each year by being fed to farmed animals – most of whom are factory farmed –- more food than is wasted by households (631m tonnes), food service (290m tonnes) or retail (131m tonnes). 
almost 15 million hectares of arable land could be released to grow food for people in the EU if the use of grain to feed factory farmed animals was ended, and in the US, more than 7 million hectares of land would be released. 
while 59 million tonnes of food are thrown away in the EU every year, almost 125 million tonnes of grain are wasted by being fed to animals – enough to feed an extra 247 million people per year.  
even more is wasted in the US, where 66 million tonnes of food are thrown away while 160 million tonnes of grain are wasted as animal feed – enough to feed almost 288 million extra people.

Worryingly, it also shows that around double the grain currently used will need to be produced to feed factory farmed animals by 2040 if we continue with business as usual.  

World’s biggest cause of food waste revealed: factory farming

World’s biggest cause of food waste revealed: factory farming 