How Much Feed Per Pound of Beef
Animals Are Inefficient Converters of FoodFeed Conversion RatiosFeed:Meat RatiosMainstream Feed Conversion RatiosFCR Mainstream ExamplesMore Comprehensive FCRsEnergy Flows in the Broader Food SystemConclusion: Feed vs. Food
Animals Are Inefficient Converters of Nutrient
That farmed animals eat more nutrient than they produce is undisputed.
The question is not "IF" animals are inefficient food converters, but "HOW" inefficient are they?
How much food (calories, protein, and nutrients) is lost past cycling crops through animals for meat versus eating a plant-based diet directly? And what are the consequences to food security, personal health, and the planet?
What Are Feed Conversion Ratios?
Feed Conversion Ratios (FCRs) measure the amount of feed/crops needed to produce a unit of meat.
FCRs and related problems are mostly discussed in terms of "efficiency."
For example, chickens are more than efficient converters crops that cows. They have a lower FCR, significant that it takes less feed to create a pound of chicken than a pound of beef.
Still, given the inherent loss of crops and natural resources involved in producing meat and other fauna sourced foods (ASF), "inefficiency" is a far more accurate term.
For example, cows are far more inefficient than chickens in terms of feed ratios. Unfortunately, (spoiler alert) chickens are still very inefficient in that they swallow more than twice as many calories and poly peptide than they produce.
This is an example of the importance of language. Producing meat is inherently inefficient, but since the livestock industry creates much of the language (and math), they are able skew public perception.
Feed:Meat Ratios –> Calculating FCRs
For practical reasons, feed ratios are generally assigned based on animal species (run across beneath).
Broad estimates are sometimes fifty-fifty used to represent the entire category of meat (ex: meat requires 10x more crops than feeding people directly).
We likewise utilize these shortcuts for illustrative purposes, while acknowledging that that there is wide variation in the actual FCRs of particular animals based on age, brood, internal and external environment, type of feed, and a multitude of other factors.
Every bit interdisciplinary scientist Valcav Smil explains, "definite charge per unit is valid just for a item beast, herd, or flock." (p.146)
The department below explains some of the factors that produce vastly different published numbers and makes recommendations based on the most useful measures.
The calculations correspond FCRs for crop-fed farmed animals. In other words, how much more nutrient each beast consumes than they produce. Typical feed crops are grains and legumes: corn, soy, and wheat.
These numbers are of import every bit crop-fed, factory/conventionally-farmed animals are the norm in industrialized countries and the global growth-rate of meat is alarmingly high. Intensive (manufacturing plant) farming represents the overwhelming majority (>98%) of meat produced in the U.s.a..
SIDE NOTE: Mill farm opponents sometimes promote grass-fed cattle as an eco-friendly alternative. Unfortunately, grass-fed ruminants (cows, goats, sheep, etc) are really more destructive in terms of climate change. Grass-fed cattle emit 3x more than methane than crop-fed cattle and are the cause of massive deforestation to create grazing pastures.
Mainstream Feed Conversion Ratios
-
- Chickens – 2x-5x
- Pigs – 4x-9x
- Cows – 6x-25x
*These are mainstream/middle-range estimates.
Live weight FCRs – will take lower ratios because they represent the number of pounds in crop that animals consume to gain one pound while they are alive.
Edible weight FCRs – volition have higher ratios because they more accurately represent the amount fix-to-eat of meat produced later on slaughter and processing.
Even with edible weight, there volition be variations such equally carcass/hanging weight and final/take-home (which is roughly half of live weight for pigs and one-tertiary for cows — thus doubling and tripling the inefficiency ratios — more when boneless). See detailed nautical chart.
Most of the caloric energy animals consume is used to fuel their metabolism and to form basic, cartilage, feathers, fluids, and other not-edible parts. Thus, the inefficiencies more than double when liquid weight is removed – the weight of the water, claret, and other bodily fluids. Farther weight loss occurs with the removal of bones and other non-consumable body parts.
Ofttimes times, the nutrient industry will publish the low finish FCRs, which minimizes the perceived waste material. Those without a vested interest in beast agronomics and/or manufacture critics are more likely to publish the college (more authentic) mail-processing carcass or boneless numbers.
Even if method is held constant, there will be a variation in FCRs. Other factors that affect FCRs include: type/quality/moisture of feed, animal age, brood, action level, number of offspring, and a host of other variables.
In that location is a groovy deal of focus on improving these factors in reduce inefficiencies, merely the inherent waste matter of cycling crops through animals remains. Adjusting these factors merely shaves downward some of the numbers without addressing the core issue that feeding animals to produce food is a massive net loss of available global calories and protein.
Consider how telling it is that a two:one loss of food crops is considered very efficient and cause to celebrate. When we talk nutrient waste, would we consider losing half of all crops "good?"
FCR Mainstream Examples
Live Weight
- vi:1 – beefiness cows – Beef Mag (industry)
- 6:1 – beef cows, 3.iv:1 – pigs, 2:1 – poultry – Noble Foundation (industry)
- seven:one – beef cows, 4:1 – pigs, 2-1 – chickens – Brown (advocate)
- eight-12:i – beef cows, 5-6.5:1 – pigs, 2-2.five:1 – chickens – Smil (p.157) via Cassidy (p.6)
Edible Weight (more authentic)
- xvi:1 – beef cows – Lappe (Diet for a Modest Planet, 1991, p.69) – (frequently-cited advocate)
- 25:1 – beefiness cows, 9.4:i – pigs, 4.five:ane – chickens – Smil (EM/2008 via UKY) (researcher)
More Comprehensive FCRs
Percentage/Units of Edible Output per 100 Units of Feed
- Poultry – Calories – 11% – Protein 20%
- Pigs – Calories – ten% – Poly peptide 15%
- Cows/Beef – Calories – i% – Poly peptide – 4%
Source: World Resources Establish (w/UN & WB): Creating a Sustainable Food Future, p.37
New, more comprehensive methods testify that even the high-cease of commonly cited FCRs are highly conservative.
Perhaps the most authentic way to gauge the inefficiencies of animal sourced food production is to calculate the sector-wide phytomass (constitute biomass) energy that goes into fauna product versus how much free energy comes out in the form of animal sourced foods.
In other words, what portion of constitute energy dedicated to raising animals becomes edible calories in the form of meat, dairy, and eggs. This method looks beyond costs associated with a unmarried creature and instead at the the free energy flows in the broader food system.
By calculating the fates and flows of phytomass energy on a macro scale, it is possible to rails how and where food energy is beingness wasted in the production of various food products.
Energy Flows in the Broader Food System
The inefficiencies expressed as "units of edible output per 100 units of feed input," are lower than the previous feed conversion calculations because they are based on energy flows from plant phytomass to edible animal parts. For instance, they factor in feed that gets wasted earlier it reaches livestock animals, the plant mass that goes to not-feed purposes such as bedding, the energy grass and other forage that goes into feeding livestock, and the free energy needed to support animal production beyond just producing animals.
Many animals involved in livestock product practice non directly produce food, such as animals that are inevitably culled, that die before reaching maturity, and that are used in breeding. (Stefan Wirsenius, Homo Use of Land and Organic Materials, 2000)
Wirsenius's piece of work takes a macro await at the food system, calculating how much phytomass is appropriated for food product in the form of pasture and cropland, related to how much nutrient is produced. This method is helpful because it gets at the total nutrient energy that into animal agriculture as a organisation.
Co-ordinate to previous estimates, over two-thirds of phytomass energy appropriation is dedicated to farmed animal production, despite that the sector but produces near 13% of total food calories.
In the same way that one tin can get an authentic judge of how much a higher education will price past including the cost of housing, supplies, and other living expenses with the cost of tuition, so besides can 1 get a more accurate estimate of the inefficiency with which farmed animals convert plants to animal sourced foods past because the feed needs (including pasture and grain) of the animate being agriculture sub-sectors.
Another forcefulness in Wirsenius's method is that, dissimilar the previous feed conversion methods that simply summate conversions in terms of feed such as soy or corn, it also factors grass and provender into its calculations.
Grain weight is easier to quantify since producers tend to purchase and feed it to animals in given weights, whereas the amount of grass and forage animals consume on pasture tin can only exist roughly estimated.
In this gross free energy calculation that looks at all phytomass appropriation involved in food product, pasture land is the largest source of phytomass free energy. This, combined with the inherent feed conversion inefficiencies of cattle, are ane of the reasons why beef production is ane of the least efficient forms of food production.
While phytomass that is not in not edible to humans is often discounted in determining the crop costs and opportunity costs of using animals for food, much of the land cleared for pasture could likewise be used for crop production, and so it should be idea of as forgone found-based food production. There are as well significant environmental impacts related to clearing wilderness areas for pasture country/
But fifty-fifty if we were to accommodate these calculations to remove the phytomass energy derived from non-edible cloth, such as grass on open pasture or the straw that is used equally bedding in some fauna operations, at that place would even so be a dramatic difference in the quantity of food that can be yielded equally edible calories for homo consumption from livestock nutrient and from plant-based protein alternatives.
Conclusion: Feed vs. Food
Regardless of the exact numbers, producing crops (soy, corn, wheat, etc.) for animal feed is many times more than resource-intensive than using crops for direct man consumption. While there are perilous merchandise-offs related to fuel vs. food, a more serious concern for a diversity of reasons is feed vs. food.
With 75% of all agronomical land used for brute production—and more than a tertiary of global calories and half of global protein inefficiently used every bit animal feed —the impact of increasing global meat consumption is monumental. (ERL p.two-3)
For more on the opportunity costs of animal agriculture, please see: Cassidy's "Redefining Agricultural Yields: From Tonnes to People Nourished Per Hectare."
Additional Notes
From the Vegetarian Resources Group
"[F]eed is NOT synonymous with "concentrates" such every bit grains and legumes. Some USDA tables may use "equally-fed" feed values which means the moisture content of the feed (which may vary betwixt 7 and 70% of the feed weight itself) is included. Like tables found in other sources may be based on 'dry matter weight' which excludes all weight of the feedstuff due to water."
"A large portion of the diets of ruminant livestock, including cattle, sheep and goats, consists of feedstuffs that are not edible past humans such every bit pasture, hay and crop residues (i.eastward., corn stalks). In some regions of the earth, ruminants subsist entirely on these. Nonetheless, virtually ruminant livestock produced under intensive conditions, (i.east., feedlots), do spend a significant part of their life eating grains and soybean byproducts, such as soybean meal and soybean oil, that are human-edible."
"The situation is different with monogastric livestock, (i.east., animals with one stomach), such as hogs and poultry. Under intensive rearing weather condition that are common in the United States, their nutrition consists about exclusively of man-edible grains and legumes. So for these species, their feed is almost all grain and legume."
Recommended Sources
Cassidy, Emily et al, "Redefining Agronomical Yields: From Tonnes to People Nourished Per Hectare." Environmental Research Letters, V. 8(3). IOPScience, September 2013, p. two-3. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/034015
Smil, Vaclav, Feeding the World: A Challenge for the 21st Century, MIT Printing, 2000, p. 145-157.
Yacoubou, Jeanne, "Factors Involved in Computing Grain:Meat Conversion Ratios." Vegetarian Resources Group, last accessed Oct 2015. www.vrg.org/environment/grain_meat_conversion_ratios.php
Last updated Oct 26, 2015
Source: https://awellfedworld.org/feed-ratios/
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