Robbing the Poor to Feed the Rich

Farmers in the developing world are abandoning their traditional crops in favor of raising animals to sell to meat-eaters in the first world. This means that, in some of the world's poorest nations, grain and land that could be used to feed the hungry are instead being fed to animals who end up on the dinner plates of the rich.

Eighty percent of starving children live in countries that actually have food surpluses; the children remain hungry because farmers use the surplus grain to feed animals instead of people.¹⁸ Two-thirds of the grain that the U.S. exports to other countries is used to feed farmed animals instead of people.¹⁹

For example, the famine in Ethiopia did not occur because Ethiopian farmers could not produce food. On the contrary, during this crisis, which killed tens of thousands of people, European nations were actually importing grain from the impoverished country to feed European chickens, pigs, and cows.²⁰ If the grain had been used to feed the Ethiopian people who grew it, the famine could have been averted.

According to Dr. Waldo Bello, executive director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, "[t]here is enough food in the world for everyone. But tragically, much of the world's food and land resources are tied up in producing beef and other livestock—food for the well-off—while millions of children and adults suffer from malnutrition and starvation. In Central America, staple crop production has been replaced by cattle ranching, which now occupies two-thirds of the arable land."²¹

American companies are moving into Latin American countries and buying up land and grain so that they can raise animals to sell to meat-eaters in the States. These companies use the resources that should be used to feed the local people, so millions of people in Latin America and around the world are going hungry while animals raised for food gobble up their grain and destroy the environment. In Guatemala, for instance, 75 percent of children under the age of 5 are malnourished, and yet the nation continues to produce and export 40 million pounds of meat to the U.S. every year.²² Instead of feeding the world's hungry, we take their grain and land to feed our addiction to meat, eggs, and milk.

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¹⁹ Jeremy Rifkin, "Commentary: There's a Bone to Pick With Meat-Eaters," Los Angeles Times, 27 May 2002.
²⁰ Ibid.
²¹ Jeremy Rifkin, "The World's Problems on a Plate," The Guardian Unlimited, 17 May 2002.
²² Robbins, The Food Revolution, p. 289.