Resource scarcity

Meat production on factory farms is more prone to resource scarcity than plant-based protein production.

Consider that the land, water, pesticides, labor, seeds, and equipment that is needed to grow crops for human consumption are also required to grow crows from consumption from livestock.

If a human can eat a burger made from plants, it is inherently more efficient than eating a burger that is made from the meat of animal because that animal will have had to eat many more times the amount of plants.

This means that resource scarcity is a much bigger risk for the production of meat than it is for the production of plant-based proteins. Every big of risk of resource scarcity that is present in the production of plant-based proteins is also present in the production of meat but much worse because more resources are required.

It takes more of the following resources to produce a gram of meat protein than a gram of plant-protein:

• Water

• Land

• Labor

• Herbicides

• Pesticides

• Electricity

• Gas

• Equipment

• Infrastructure

When there is a shortage of water, that means that not only does the cost of keeping animals alive go up as they need to drink, but so does the cost of feeding them.

When the cost of the land needed to produce food goes up, it goes up more for meat production than for plant-production because the production of meat requires more land.