Section: Quotations
Subsection: World Hunger
Last revision: December 25, 2005
Many things made me become a vegetarian, among them, the higher food yield as a solution to world hunger. -- John Denver
To be a vegetarian is to disagree -- to disagree with the course of things today. Starvation, world hunger, cruelty, waste, wars---we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statment. And I think it's a strong one. -- Isaac Bashevis Singer
It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the over-population of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat. -- Jeremy Rifkin
The fact is that there 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. -- Dr.Walden Bello
Our food system takes abundant grain, which people can't afford, and shrinks it into meat, which better-off people will pay for. -- Frances Moore Lappe
The American fast food diet and the meat eating habits of the wealthy around the world support a world food system that diverts food resources from the hungry. A diet higher in whole grains and legumes and lower in beef and other meat is not just healthier for ourselves but also contributes to changing the world system that feeds some people and leaves others hungry. -- Dr.Walden Bello
There can be no question that more hunger can be alleviated with a given quantity of grain by completely eliminating animals [from the food production process]. [ ... ] Thus, a given quantity of grain eaten directly will feed 5 times as many people as it will if it is first fed to livestock and then is eaten indirectly by humans in the form of livestock products... -- M. E. Ensminger, Ph.D., former Department of Animal Science Chairman at Washington State University
A meat-fed world now appears a chimera. World grain production has grown more slowly than population since 1984, and farmers lack new methods for repeating the gains of the `green revolution.' Supporting the world's current population of 5.4 billion people on an American-style diet would require two-and-ahalf times as much grain as the world's farmers produce for all purposes. A future world of 8 billion to 14 billion people eating the American ration of 220 grams of grain-fed meat a day can be nothing but a flight of fancy. -- Alan B. Durning and Holly Brough, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C.
The world's environment can no longer handle beef. -- Jeremy Rifkin
The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and subdivsion developments combined. -- Philip Fradkin
A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter. What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet. -- John Robbins
About a third of the world grain harvest -- the staples of the human feeding base -- is fed to animals to produce eggs, milk, and meat for American-style diets. Wouldn't feeding that grain directly to people solve the problem? If everyone were willing to eat an essentially vegetarian diet, that additional grain would allow perhaps a billion more people to be fed. -- Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich
Family farmers are victims of public policy that gives preference to feeding animals over feeding people. This has encouraged the cheap grain policy of this nation and has made the Beef Cartel the biggest hog at the trough." -- Howard Lyman