Deforestation

Forests are cleared mainly for cows and their feed

By WhyStopHarmingAnimals.com

Most of the world’s tropical forest is being cut down to make room for farm animals and the crops that feed them. In the Amazon, WWF names extensive cow ranching as the number one cause of deforestation in virtually every Amazon country[1], accounting for about 80% of current deforestation[1]. Worldwide, beef is the largest single commodity behind forest loss, ahead of palm oil, soy, cocoa and rubber[2].

The farmland we have already goes to animals

About 80% of the world’s agricultural land is already used for grazing and feed[3]. Poore and Nemecek’s 2018 study in Science found that this land supplies a minority of the world’s calories, about 18%[4]. Even so, the land already farmed does not produce enough feed and pasture for the animals people want to eat, so more forest is burned and cleared to make room. Millions of species and whole ecosystems are lost for good and replaced with farm animals and the fields that feed them.

The Amazon: pasture first, then soy

Cows are the main reason the Amazon is shrinking[1]. Yale’s forest research has used the same 80% share as WWF[1][5]. Ranchers clear forest for pasture, and the forest does not come back while the cows are on it.

Soy is the other half of the story, and it is also mostly about animals[5][6]. According to Yale’s Global Forest Atlas, as cited in reporting by Green Queen, about 80% of Amazon soy is eaten by farm animals rather than people[5]. Worldwide, WWF puts the share of soy used as feed at about 80% too[6]. Mongabay’s reporting on the Brazilian Amazon names soy farming and cow ranching as the two biggest drivers of deforestation there[7], with pasture and cropland replacing tens of millions of hectares of forest and savanna since 1985[7]. Counting pasture and feed soy together, some tallies put animal agriculture near 90% of Amazon forest loss.

The global picture

The Amazon is the best-known case, and it is far from the only one. Our World in Data, drawing on Pendrill and colleagues, puts beef at about 41% of commodity-driven deforestation worldwide, the largest share of any product[2]. Pasture for cows replaced far more forest than palm oil or soy[2].

The World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Review reaches a similar ranking[8] with a different method. Pasture for cows occupied about 45 million hectares of land deforested between 2001 and 2015[8]. That was 36% of the tree-cover loss linked to agriculture in its analysis[8], and five times the area of any other commodity studied[8].

None of this is necessary. The Beyond Burger, a plant burger made to replace beef, uses about 93% less land than a quarter-pound U.S. beef burger, according to a University of Michigan life-cycle assessment by Heller and Keoleian[9].

Reading the numbers

The figures measure slightly different things. WWF’s 80% is a share of current Amazon deforestation[1]. Pendrill’s 41% is a share of commodity-driven forest loss worldwide[2]. WRI’s 36% is a share of agriculture-linked tree-cover loss over a set period[8]. The Amazon soy figure reaches us through news reporting of Yale’s atlas[5], and the combined 90% is a rougher tally than the others. Every one of them puts cows, and the crops grown to feed farm animals, at the top[1][2][5][7][8].

Letting the forest grow back

A worldwide shift to plant-based diets would cut agricultural land by about 75%, from about 4.1 billion hectares to about 1 billion. According to Poore and Nemecek, most of the land that would come back is pasture[4]. If the demand for farm animals goes, the pressure to clear more forest goes with it, and trees can grow again on land that now holds cows.