Our action project focused on the factory farming of beef, with a main goal of making people aware of the mass amounts of resources factory farming practices consume. To do this we decided to make an art installation, in which we hung 225 cups that each represented 2 gallons of water and then showed how this amount of water (450 gallons) is consumed to produce a quarter pound of beef. We mostly got the reaction we wanted in that people were very shocked at this fact, but we also learned that the vast majority of people rather not be bothered in learning things that would make them feel bad about their eating habits.
Our art installation was most related to the topic we learned in class: virtual water. Virtual water is the water people are “consuming” unknowingly by eating or using products that required water to produce it. Beef is an excellent example to use when talking about virtual water because one pound of beef is equal to 1,800 gallons of virtual water.
Lastly, our project related to the overarching idea of world hunger because we are using mass amounts of land to grow mass amounts of food to feed cattle. One cow eats thousands of pounds of corn feed in just a few months. Also, these cows produce miniscule amounts of beef for the thousands of pounds of feed they are consuming. So, we are using our limited amounts of farmland to produce food that isn’t even going to feed people but cattle. Also beef is expensive so the mass amounts of food that is used to feed cattle is only benefiting the people that can afford to buy beef, and leaving the rest of people with less land produce food, and less food period.
