The word “forest” brings to mind a variety of words and images. However, there are some words and images we probably never associate with forest such as: livestock agriculture, cut and clear, ecological disaster, deserts, or survival. Maybe it’s time that we did.
Because of our desire for fast-food burgers, T-bone steaks, and prime rib roasts, we have had to alter the earth’s landscape. We have had to cut down and clear away more than half of the world’s forests and rain forests, including 300 million acres in the United States, in order to accommodate livestock grazing and feed production. It takes 10 times the land to support animal agriculture as it does a vegetarian agriculture. And the practice is not static, as forests are cleared at a rate of approximately 13 million acres a year. We do need trees for raw materials such as housing and fuel; however the practice of animal agriculture accelerates forest consumption far beyond the rate of regeneration. At the current rate of deforestation the earth’s forests will eventually become the earth’s deserts.
The forests perform a number of critical roles for the earth, not unlike the vital organs do for our body. If we begin to remove organs from the body, eventually it will cease to function properly. If we begin to remove the forests from our earth eventually it will cease to function properly. Whether it’s our bodies or the earth, the result is the same for us: we will cease to exist.