We already grow enough food, but much of it never reaches people

The world already grows more food than we need. In 2020, global croplands produced enough calories to feed 15 billion people. Yet only half of those calories actually reached people’s plates. The rest vanished into animal feed, fuel tanks, or other uses.

The issue isn’t about having more land – it’s about how we use it. A new analysis finds that while total food production has risen quickly, the calories actually available for people have grown much more slowly.

Between 2010 and 2020, total calories from crops rose nearly 24 percent. But calories people could actually eat rose only 16 percent.

The biggest culprit is meat, especially beef. It takes 33 calories of feed to make one calorie of beef. Chicken, eggs, and milk are far more efficient.

Researchers estimate that if wealthier countries cut back on beef and ate more chicken instead, the calories saved could feed around 850 million people.

Growing fuel cuts into food supply

In 2020, more than five percent of the world’s cropland calories went into ethanol and biodiesel. Palm oil and maize dominated this shift.

Biofuels help with energy goals, but they cut into the food supply. Land that could grow meals for families instead grows fuel for cars.

The problem is bigger than it looks. Crops used for feed at least give some calories back through meat, milk, or eggs. Biofuels give nothing back.

Once a crop becomes fuel, it’s gone from the food system completely. That means fewer calories on plates and more pressure on farmland.

With global hunger still widespread, using cropland to grow fuel creates a direct conflict between energy security and food security.

It forces a tough question: should fertile land grow food for people’s stomachs or fuel for engines? The answer will shape how we balance climate goals with the urgent need to feed billions.

Countries use food differently

How calories are used looks very different depending on where you live. In the United States, only about 23 percent of cropland calories ended up as food. Brazil fared only slightly better, at 29 percent.

In India, nearly 80 percent went directly into diets, much of it through grains and dairy. India’s efficiency comes partly because milk has a higher feed-to-food return than beef.

Globally, croplands produce enough calories to feed 12 people per hectare. After losses, that number drops to six. The gap is striking: we are growing enough food, but choices about meat, fuel, and trade decide who gets fed.

The environmental cost

Calories lost to feed and fuel aren’t just a food problem, they’re an environmental one too. Growing food already drives deforestation, drains freshwater supplies, and produces nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gases.

Beef sits at the center of this issue. It wastes the most calories and creates the most carbon. In comparison, chicken, eggs, and dairy use fewer resources and return more calories to people.

Even small dietary changes matter. Replacing some beef with other proteins could lower emissions and make more food available at the same time. That means fewer forests cleared, less water consumed, and fewer tons of carbon in the atmosphere.

It’s not about eliminating meat entirely but about shifting choices. The data shows that changing what’s on our plates can directly reduce environmental damage while improving food security. What we eat shapes not only our health, but the planet’s future too.

Food security grows from choices

“It is an important reminder that the problems we face in feeding 8 billion people today – and even in the future with a few billion more – are not about biophysical limits; it’s not that we can’t produce enough calories,” said Hannah Ritchie of the University of Oxford. “It’s about distribution and human choices on what we do with them.”

Calories alone don’t tell the whole story. Nutrition depends on proteins and micronutrients too. But the numbers already reveal how much potential is lost in the way crops are used.

Global data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations continues to track these trends. And healthy diet frameworks like the EAT–Lancet Commission show how eating differently can feed more people and ease pressure on the planet.

The study is published in the journal EarthArXiv.

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