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Type Paper
Cite as Citation reference for the source document. Theresa K. Meyer, Alexis Pascaris, David Denkenberger, Joshua M. Pearce. U.S. Potential of Sustainable Backyard Distributed Animal and Plant Protein Production During and After Pandemics. Sustainability 2021, 13(9), 5067; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13095067 open access Preprint

To safeguard against meat supply shortages during pandemics or other catastrophes, this study analyzed the potential to provide the average household's entire protein consumption using either soybean production or distributed meat production at the household level in the U.S. with: 1) pasture-fed rabbits, 2) pellet and hay-fed rabbits, or 3) pellet-fed chickens. Only using the average backyard resources, soybean cultivation can provide 80%-160% of household protein and 0%-50% of a household's protein needs can be provided by pasture-fed rabbits using only the yard grass as feed. If external supplementation of feed is available, raising 52 chickens while also harvesting the concomitant eggs or alternately 107 grain-fed rabbits can meet 100% of an average household's protein requirements. These results show that resilience to future pandemics and challenges associated with growing meat demands can be incrementally addressed through backyard distributed protein production. Backyard production of chicken meat, eggs, and rabbit meat reduces environmental costs of protein due to savings in production, transportation, and refrigeration of meat products and even more so with soybeans. Generally, distributed production of protein was found to be economically competitive with centralized production of meat if distributed labor costs were ignored.

Keywords[edit | edit source]

food security; global catastrophic risk; resilience; pandemic; existential risk; COVID-19; soybeans; agriculture; chickens; rabbits; distributed production

See also[edit | edit source]

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Feeding Everyone No Matter What
Foodweb.png

Additional Information[edit source]

Davos IDRC Conference[edit source]

In the news[edit | edit source]

  1. For the Love of Meat–Balancing America’s High Meat Consumption with Health and Environmental Consciousness Fox 41
  2. SF Weekly
  3. The TO news
  4. The Observer
  5. Iosco News
  6. The W Herald
  7. Time Tribune
  8. Ground News
  9. Schelby News
  10. A globe[
  11. Douglas Budget
  12. many more

See also COVID-19 resources from MOST[edit | edit source]

FA info icon.svg Angle down icon.svg Page data
Authors Joshua M. Pearce
License CC-BY-SA-4.0
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 50 pages link here
Impact 325 page views
Created April 28, 2021 by Joshua M. Pearce
Modified February 23, 2024 by Maintenance script
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