33% of the earth’s surface is land.

Only 71% of that land is habitable. Of which 50% is used for agriculture.

And guess what over 75% of that agricultural land is used for livestock production i.e domesticated animals for meat, milk & eggs.

This land only produces 33% of our global protein supply.

Do you see why this data is alarming?

The scale & intensity of animal production today is threatening our planetary boundaries of land use, freshwater use & non-renewable phosphate rock..which is still an underestimated aspect of the fertilizer problem.

That’s why it is said that the biological loops in aquaculture & agriculture need to be closed efficiently.

Most of the meat that we easily buy from grocery marts and all the junk delicacies that we love for eg. KFC / Mac’Donald’s / Venkey’s / Liscious e.t.c are all from factory farms. Breeding animals is an incredibly inefficient way to try to feed the world's growing population.

Most meat in the West is now produced in factory farms which, as the name implies, are production lines for animals. To meet the large demand for meat, billions of animals are kept in cramped, filthy conditions, often unable to move properly and not allowed fresh air or even natural light.

Most animal farms are unable to feed outdoors naturally, they are fed grain, oilseeds, soy, fish meal and sometimes the remains of other animals. High-quality land is used to grow grains and soybeans - land that could be used to grow crops for humans.

Are you able to visualize how unsustainable this whole cycle is!

We are heavily compromising the available landmass by growing crops that can feed the livestock. The choice of these crops is not always in sync with nature, therefore unsustainable because they do not encourage bio-diversity.

Due to this process, soil on existing agricultural land degrades, therefore now we need more land…but where are you going to get that land from? 

You may have also learnt about fishmeal being used as animal feed? Fish meal, are coarsely ground powder made from the cooked flesh of fish …mostly anchovy, menhaden or herring. Fish meal is a commercial product mostly made from fish that are not used for human consumption;

That’s a bloody unsustainable meal …and this number looks even worse when you multiply it with a significant meat-eating population.

So what can be the possible solutions?

These solutions are important, however, because it is heavily dependent on individual behaviour it may not have an immediate scalable impact.

That’s where solution no. 3 fascinates me...Here we make use of household organic waste as a platform to invite Black Soldier Flies popularly known as BSF who naturally break down the waste into compost… each fly produces hundreds of protein-rich larvae which can then be harvested and used to feed livestock.

Tune in to learn more.

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Keyword : What is a circular economy?