Topsoil depletion is not to be taken lightly. Overgrazing and trampling destroy the plants and roots that anchor the soil. Rain and wind then wash it away. Over- cultivation of croplands to feed the tremendous number of animals bred by design for human consumption results in additional loss of topsoil. The World Watch Institute has estimated that it costs 35 pounds of topsoil for every pound of beef produced today.
Desertification is another serious soil-related problem.
230 million people currently live on land so impoverished that they cannot support themselves. This is a serious problem in places where intensive cattle ranching occurs the western half of the United States, Australia, Central and South America and sub-Saharan Africa. Feeding cattle is a grossly inefficient use of the world's steadily diminishing croplands. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of feedlot beef. Livestock currently consume enough grain and soybeans to feed over 5 times the current population of the U.S. American feed takes so much energy to grow counting fuel for farm machinery and for making fertilizers and pesticides that it might as well be a petroleum byproduct.