If we want to be able to feed the world’s population now and with the inevitable increase in the future, and reduce agriculture’s land use and harmful emissions, there is only one real answer. We need to eat less animal products.
Who says so?
A publication from Science, the most respected and authorized publication in the entirety of research highlighted how reducing animal product consumption is the most helpful change for the planet in terms of land use efficiency, water efficiency, nutrition, food wastage, and emissions.
Aren’t other parts of the food supply network more influential?
They investigated the entire food supply network to find out what food products, in what geographic areas, using which methods, have the best nutritional use with the least detrimental factors. Though they acknowledged organic methods, local supply, and farming methods suited to the natural environment generally having positive effects, the results varied drastically between individual farms practicing each across the world. The change that applied universally was reducing animal products.
How big of an impact does food have for the world anyway?
In the grand scheme of the entire world, food production systems have a huge impact on our planet. The entire food supply network generates ~13.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (about 26% of all greenhouse gas emissions). About 43% of land not desert or ice covered is used by agriculture and 2/3 of freshwater usage is for irrigation. Food production creates ~32% of global terrestrial acidification and ~78% of eutrophication.
What is terrestrial acidification and eutrophication?
Terrestrial acidification is when harmful emissions that include nitrogen and sulfur combine with water particles which creates acid rain, harming forests and all of earth’s ecosystems.
Eutrophication is the over addition of nutrients which is particularly problematic in streams, rivers, and lakes because excesses of algae grows, lowering oxygen content of the water, killing fish, and decreasing biodiversity.
Recent news related to eutrophication. It causes harm to people in addition to ecosystems directly.
But don’t we need the nutrition of the animal products?
The researchers then found, of all that usage “meat, aquaculture, eggs, and dairy use ~83% of the world’s farmland and contribute 56 to 58% of food’s different emissions, despite providing only 37% of our protein and 18% of our calories.” It is the least efficient use of resources, not to mention the health benefits of protein rich plants like legumes and whole grains.
Why does it use so many resources?
These high numbers are partially because all of the feed for animals with its associated land use, water use, and transportation are also a part of the supply chain of the animal products. Feed for livestock alone makes up 67% of deforestation. Additionally animals, especially cows, directly create emissions through waste and bodily functions.
So what’s the difference if people eat animal products or not?
The entire world moving from current diets to ones that exclude animal products would reduce agriculture’s land use by approximately 3.1 billion hectacres (a 76% reduction) and greenhouse gas emissions by 6.6 billion metric tons of C02 equivalents (a 49% reduction) acidification a 50% reduction, eutrophication a 49% reduction, and scarcity-weighted freshwater withdrawals a 19% reduction. Additionally as the land no longer needed for agriculture returns to natural vegetation it could remove ~8.1 billion metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year over 100 years. In the US, where meat consumption is 3 times the worldwide average, the effects would be felt the most drastically.
What about geographic areas that are better suited for livestock grazing than crop growing?
This question assumes that land is intended for our use. One of the goals of reducing animal product intake is to increase land returning to its natural vegetation, which sequesters carbon and will keep animal species alive, increasing biodiversity. Also, even with reductions, there will still be livestock agriculture for many years, and grassland areas suited for a reasonable and sustainable amount of animals is where it should remain. Currently, this is not the case. As just one example, the Brazilian beef market is expanding drastically, leading to cattle ranchers cutting (or more accurately burning) deeper and deeper into the rainforest.
I’ve been eating this my whole life, so how would I stop now?
It is difficult to make sudden dietary changes, but even minor de-escalations of animal product consumption can have an impact. Even switching half of animal products with vegetable alternatives still achieves 71% of the greenhouse gas emissions reduction stated before (a decrease of 4.87 billion metric tons directly or 10.4 billion including the reductions of regrowing vegetation of previously used land) along with a 67% of the land use, 64% of the acidification, and 55% of the eutrophication reductions.
The purpose of me writing this article is not to instantly make you vegan. It is near impossible to make such a huge transition so quickly, but hopefully these statistics will convince you to switch your hamburgers with bean burgers, chicken for tempeh, dairy milk for coconut or oat milk (almond milk has very high irrigation use) every now and then. Then if you start to get the hang of it, keep doing one switch and then another. Pretty soon, with people working together, we can have a healthier, happy planet with more healthy and happy people.
Works Cited
Barclay, Eliza. “Eating To Break 100: Longevity Diet Tips From The Blue Zones.” NPR, NPR, 11 Apr. 2015, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/04/11/398325030/eating-to-break-100-longevity-diet-tips-from-the-blue-zones.
“Fertilisers – The Nitrogen Cycle, Minerals and Eutrophication (CCEA) – GCSE Biology (Single Science) Revision – CCEA – BBC Bitesize.” BBC News, BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z8fypbk/revision/3.
Godfray, H. C. J., et al. “Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People.” Science, vol. 327, no. 5967, 2010, pp. 812–818., doi:10.1126/science.1185383.
Gold, A.j., and J.t. Sims. “Eutrophication.” Encyclopedia of Soils in the Environment, 2005, pp. 486–494., doi:10.1016/b0-12-348530-4/00093-x.
Grossi, Giampiero, et al. “Livestock and Climate Change: Impact of Livestock on Climate and Mitigation Strategies.” Animal Frontiers, vol. 9, no. 1, 2018, pp. 69–76., doi:10.1093/af/vfy034.
Ingraham, Christopher. “Analysis | How Beef Demand Is Accelerating the Amazon’s Deforestation and Climate Peril.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 27 Aug. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/27/how-beef-demand-is-accelerating-amazons-deforestation-climate-peril/.
Irvine, Irina C., et al. “Terrestrial Acidification and Ecosystem Services: Effects of Acid Rain on Bunnies, Baseball, and Christmas Trees.” Ecosphere, vol. 8, no. 6, 2017, doi:10.1002/ecs2.1857.
Lawler, ByMoira. “10 Best Plant-Based Protein Sources: Everyday Health.” EverydayHealth.com, www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition/best-plant-based-sources-of-protein.
Poore, J., and T. Nemecek. “Reducing Food’s Environmental Impacts through Producers and Consumers.” Science, vol. 360, no. 6392, 2018, pp. 987–992., doi:10.1126/science.aaq0216.
Vivanco, David Font, et al. “Scarcity-Weighted Global Land and Metal Footprints.” Ecological Indicators, vol. 83, 2017, pp. 323–327., doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2017.08.004.