The Future Of Food And Farming
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PETA says:
With the global population expected to jump from 6.8 billion to more than 9 billion by 2050, the [The Future of Food and Farming] report predicts that farmers will need to produce 70 percent more food while using the same amount of land. Since this will be extremely difficult—if not impossible—people will need to drastically reduce their meat consumption in order to stave off food shortages.
This is because raising animals for food is grossly inefficient: Animals consume large quantities of food but produce comparatively small amounts of meat in return. More than 70 percent of the grain that we grow in the U.S. is fed to farmed animals.
It’s worth considering. If people won’t go vegan for the animals or for the environment, maybe they’ll consider going vegan in order to prevent human starvation.
Your conclusions really don’t make much sense. While you might ask “how will we feed 9 billion people?” you might as easily ask “how do we avoid having the world’s population reach 9 billion?”
Raising animals for food is not intrinsically inefficient. In many cases it is far MORE efficient. The rocky terrain and lack of water in much of Inner Mongolia for instance is unsuitable for modern agriculture. It supports little tufts of grass spread over a large area. These tufts are inedible by humans, but can easily be collected and converted into food by free-grazing sheep. Your assertion that the Mongolians should instead change to a vegan diet would require growing vegetables in faraway places, and shipping them to the Mongolians in perpetuity.
For the vast majority of people who can and will read this website, vegan is the most efficient diet.