What the problem is, by George
The Kiwi diet is bad for the planet due to the vast amount of land required to produce food for it, says environmental campaigner and author George Monbiot.
In his latest book, Regenesis: How to Feed the World Without Devouring the Planet, Monbiot explores alternatives.
Monbiot argues that organic, pasturefed beef and lamb are the world’s most damaging farm products. Half of the world's habitable land already taken to produce food, and population growth sees us needing to at least double food production by 2050.
“Every hectare of land we use for our extractive industries is a hectare of land that can't be used for wild ecosystems, such as forests or wetlands or savannahs or natural grasslands, on which the great majority of the world's species depend.”
He says the entire urban population occupies just 1 per cent of the planet’s land while farming takes up 38 per cent.
Pasture-fed meat production uses 26 per cent “by far the greatest use of land that humans have ever inflicted”.
“And yet from pasture feeding alone, from animals which are grazed entirely on pasture, we get just 1 percent of our protein, so this is a phenomenally profligate and wasteful way of producing our food and it carries a vast ecological opportunity cost.”