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The chickens squawking in a cinder-block barn near the heart of the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., don’t know it, but they play an important part in the plans of the agriculture industry. The challenge: How to feed the 2.4 billion additional people expected to join the global population by 2050. Unlike the roughly 60 billion chickens world-wide now slaughtered for meat each year, these birds are raised for their DNA. Paul Siegel, professor emeritus of animal and poultry sciences, studies how their genes influence the way they pack on pounds and fight off disease. The research helps companies seeking to breed chickens that will grow faster on less feed and require fewer drugs to stay healthy. “We’re talking about feeding the masses,” says Dr. Siegel, 83, who began breeding chickens as a teenager in the late 1940s. His office walls are lined with records charting 50 generations of chicken ancestry. “The question becomes, how do you get there?” The meat industry has long sought to breed better birds, but the work of geneticists like Dr. Siegel has taken on new urgency as the industry confronts two issues: preparing for a larger, more affluent populace with a growing taste for meat while addressing concerns about how agricultural practices affect the environment, animal welfare and human health. Food producers face a monumental task. At current consumption rates, the world would need to generate 455 million metric tons of meat annually by 2050, when the global population is expected to reach 9.7 billion, from 7.3 billion today. Given today’s agricultural productivity, growing the crops to feed all of that poultry, beef and other livestock would require every acre of the planet’s cropland, according to research firm FarmEcon LLC—leaving no room for raising the grains, fruits and vegetables that humans also need. Sources: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; Organization for Sources: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; Organization for Producing more meat will be critical because protein is an essential component of the human diet, providing cells with amino acids that the body can’t produce itself. Individually, nuts and vegetables can supply some of those amino acids, but animal-based proteins typically deliver all of them—and history shows that people consume more meat as their incomes rise. Chicken is widely expected be the main choice. Rising household incomes among rapidly growing populations of developing countries are expected to whet the world’s appetite for meat. Global meat production nearly quadrupled over the past 50 years, while the population only slightly more than doubled. Over the next 35 years the world will need to increase meat production by another two-thirds as global GDP roughly doubles, according to United Nations projections. Agribusiness executives, academics and farmers say they will be able to meet the challenge. The past half-century of agricultural development defied Malthusian doomsday predictions. The “Green Revolution”—emphasizing large-scale crops augmented by fertilizer and pesticides—and other innovations have been so successful at meeting the growing global appetite that there are now more people in the world considered overweight or obese than hungry. “Does the world have the natural resources to get there? Yes,” says Greg Page, executive director of Cargill Inc., the suburban Minneapolis-based agribusiness conglomerate. But feeding a larger population while minimizing the environmental toll will require large-scale food production and technology like genetically modified crops, he says. Big U.S. agriculture companies have spent decades industrializing the processing of crops and meat. They have bred chickens and livestock to grow bigger more quickly, and they have deployed antibiotics and other drugs and additives to prevent illness and help animals add extra flesh. They have engineered genetically modified strains of corn, soybeans and other components of animal feed to help produce more bushels per acre. And they have mechanized much of the slaughter and processing of animals. But those approaches increasingly clash with other social priorities, especially in the developed world. Consumers and public health officials in the U.S. and elsewhere are pushing livestock producers to wean animals off antibiotics, arguing that the drugs have hastened the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In recent months, meat companies like Brazil’s JBS SA and U.S.-based Tyson Foods Inc. have pledged to phase out most or all antibiotics for some of their chickens. Animal-welfare advocates have also pressed successfully in Western nations for more space and better living conditions for poultry and livestock, arousing consumer anger with video exposés targeting companies including Tyson and Hormel Foods Corp. Environmentalists and consumers who share their concerns are pressuring companies over water use: Crop and livestock production accounts for nearly 70% of the global total. Some of these groups are also battling the expansion of biotech crops, in part because of fears that they rely on synthetic pesticides and fertilizers blamed for hurting wildlife and water quality. Some groups raise concerns about the crops’ impact on human health, though major government agencies and the World Health Organization have deemed them safe to eat. In the U.S., Vermont passed a law in 2014 requiring food made with such crops to be labeled—a move that food companies fear could prompt shoppers to avoid them—and activists have been pushing similar measures in other states. More than half of European Union member countries have moved to bar cultivation of genetically engineered crops, and other countries like India heavily limit the use of such seeds. Critics of the meat giants are working to export their campaigns to developing markets. Humane Society International has opened offices and launched campaigns in countries like India and China. It will soon open an office in South Africa. Farm Animal Rights Movement is developing networks in Central America and elsewhere to steer burgeoning middle classes toward vegetarian diets. Others promote smaller-scale, localized operations that shun widespread pharmaceutical use and provide more spacious pens—or open fields, in the case of free-range chickens. Meat consumption and income are closely correlated, with people—and countries— tending to eat more meat as they become wealthier. Sources: World Bank (GDP); Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (meat consumption)
