Organisms that eat the primary consumers are meat eaters (carnivores)Īnd are called the secondary consumers. The primary consumers are herbivores (vegetarians). They tend to be small in size and there are many of them. These organisms areĬalled the producers, and they get their energy directly from sunlight and inorganic nutrients. On land and phytoplankton (algae) in the oceans. The organisms at the base of the food chain are photosynthetic plants The Food Chain: The answer has to do with trophic levels. Recent studies suggest that only ~10% of energy is converted to biomass from one trophic level to the next! The loss of energy between trophic levels may also be even higher. This means that when we eat the meat from the cow, we're at the tertiary level or higher. A common practice to grow cattle faster is to feed them ground up animal protein. To feed the people grain, but a whole acre if you feed the grain to Way of looking at it is that it would only take a half acre of land If 50% of the energy is lost to the cattle, you could feed twice as many people if you fed them the grain What would everyone need to eat? To answer that question, download this excel spreadsheet and try plugging in some numbers.Įxample: One acre of a grain crop could be used to feedĬattle, and then the cattle could be used to feed people. The big question really is: If we want to feed everyone, The Earth's population is "only" about 7 billion. That it's not because there isn't enough food currentĪgricultural capacity, based on current technology, exists to feed as many as 10 billion people. Hungry? It's a complex issue, but it might surprise you to learn Have you ever wondered why we can't seem to feed the world's
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