According to a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) statistical bulletin, 80% of the agricultural land in the US is used to raise animals.  Time Magazine reports that we feed 10% of the grains and cereals grown in the US to livestock.  This is very inefficient because most of the feed gets wasted and only a small amount of the protein is converted into flesh.  Animals require many times more calories---in the forms of grain, soybeans, oats, and corn--than they return in the form of meat. 

The FAO reports that livestock now use 30% of the Earth’s entire land surface---mostly permanent pasture, but also including 33%  of the arable land, which is used to produce feed for the livestock.  The University of Chicago notes that the raising of animals for food requires 10 times as many crops as we would need if we simply ate the grains directly. 

If we were not using all that land to grow crops to fatten chickens, pigs, and cows, we could reforest millions of acres in the US alone. Or, we could use the grains that are not wasted on livestock to feed all the starving people in the world many times over.

I urge you to protect federal and state reserves of land by not aiding and abetting the agriculture industry to continue to abuse our federal and state land reserve, and use our protected lands wisely to produce food to help feed the hungry.