How Does Animal Agriculture Affect the Rainforests?

Posted by Calvin on June 18, 2024

We have good news and bad news. Bad news first: The world’s rainforests are in serious trouble. 😨 Humans destroy millions of acres of rainforest every year, robbing countless animals of their homes and worsening carbon dioxide pollution along the way. The good news is that there’s a super-effective way to help save the rainforests: Reduce the demand for animal agriculture!

How Does Animal Agriculture Destroy the Rainforests?

Raising animals for meat and dairy takes up a whole lotta land. An acre of rainforest is cut down every six seconds—that’s about 14,400 acres every single day—just to farm cattle. 🤯 According to the World Bank, cattle ranching has fueled over 80% of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon since 1970.

Rainforests are home to many animal species and absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while releasing oxygen. It’s crucial that we save them, and decreasing the demand for animal-derived foods and other products is the best way to do so. The answer is clear: Help spread the vegan message. 🌱🌳

Doesn’t Growing Plants Use a Lot of Land?

When you talk to people about going vegan to help save the rainforests, you’ll prob hear them say that growing vegan food uses a lot of land. You can clap back by telling them the vast majority of crops grown these days go toward feeding animals raised for food. 👏

In the U.S., about 260 million acres of forests have been cleared to create cropland to feed animals raised for food. Brazil is the world’s top exporter of soybeans, but 80% of the ones that come from the Amazon are turned into animal feed. Although Brazil produced 16.3 million tons of soybean meal for its domestic market in 2017, over 90% of it was used to feed animals in the meat and dairy industries. 😶

Growing food for humans to eat isn’t the culprit behind mass deforestation—animal agriculture is.

Vegan Is the Way!

If everyone went vegan, we’d reduce the land used globally for farming by more than 75% and still feed the entire world. 🌎 We’re not asking you to convince everyone on Earth, but you can make a massive difference by encouraging people in your life to make the change. Let’s all do our part to help save the rainforests—hype the importance of living vegan, and share this article with others to kickstart their journey. 💪

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Going vegan is much easier to accomplish with the right support. Hand out 50 copies of our “Guide to Going Vegan” over summer break to help make the transition smoother for others. By doing so, you’ll earn 75 peta2 points in our Rewards Program.