“By 1900, European scientists recognized that unless a way was found to augment this naturally occurring nitrogen, the growth of the human population would soon grind to a very painful halt... After Nixon's 1972 trip the first major order the Chinese government placed was for thirteen massive fertilizer factories. Without them, China would have probably starved.”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“[Smil] estimates that two of every five humans on Earth today would not be alive if not for Fritz Haber's invention of the Haber-Bosch process.”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“Though they won't say, it has been estimated that Cargill and ADM together probably buy somewhere near a third of all the corn grown in America.”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn.”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“By far the biggest portion of a bushel of American commodity corn (about 60% of it, or some 50k kernels) goes to feeding livestock, and much of that goes to feeding America's 100 million beef cattle”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“A mere four giant meatpacking companies (Tyson subsidiary IBP, Cargill subsidiary Excel, Swift & Company, and National) now slaughter and market four of every five beef cattle born in this country”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“What gets a steer from 80 to 1100 pounds in fourteen months is tremendous quantities of corn, protein and fat supplements, and an arsenal of new drugs.”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“It was the same industrial logic- protein is protein- that made feeding rendered cow parts back to cows seem like a sensible thing to do, until scientists figured out that this practice was spreading BSE [mad cow disease].”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“Every day between now and his slaughter in six months, 534 [Pollan's steer] will convert 32 pounds of feed into four pounds of gain- new muscle, fat, and bone.”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“The ratio of feed to flesh in chicken, the most efficient animal by this measure, is two pounds of corn to one of meat, which is why chicken costs less than beef.”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals