12įood is responsible for approximately 26% of global GHG emissions. The visualization shown here – based on data from the meta-analysis by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in Science – summarizes food’s share of total emissions and breaks it down by source. And it’s a problem for which we don’t yet have viable technological solutions. 11īut the global food system, which encompasses production, and post-farm process such as processing, and distribution is also a key contributor to emissions. Indeed, energy, whether in the form of electricity, heat, transport or industrial processes, account for the majority – 76% – of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. When it comes to tackling climate change, the focus tends to be on ‘clean energy’ solutions – the deployment of renewable or nuclear energy improvements in energy efficiency or transition to low-carbon transport. But also for livestock: animals fed on crops with very high yields will need less land. This is certainly true for crops: higher yields mean they need less land. The land use of foods are largely dependent on the intensity of farming. But the range across producers is huge: spanning from 7 m 2 to 369 m 2. The median footprint for beef is 104 m 2 per 100 grams of protein. The height at each point in the curve represents the amount of global production with that specific footprint.
#Bad food processing methods full#
The visualization shows the median footprint – highlighted by a small white circle for each food product.īut since there are large differences between producers, this chart also shows the full spectrum of land use – from the lowest to highest producers. Land use here is measured in meters squared (m 2) of agricultural and – which includes pasture and land for crops or animal feed – per 100 grams of protein. 10 In this study, the authors looked at data across more than 38,000 commercial farms in 119 countries. The data is from the largest meta-analysis of global food systems to date, published in Science by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018). Let’s take a look at the full range of land footprints for protein-rich foods. This is a useful comparison, but could mask large differences in land footprints depending on where and how they are produced. Most charts which compare the land footprint of different food products look at the average value for each. With solutions from both consumers and producers, we have an important opportunity to restore some of this farmland back to forests and natural habitats. Crop yields have increased significantly in recent decades, meaning we have spared a lot of land from agricultural production: globally, to produce the same amount of crops as in 1961, we need only 30% of the farmland. 9 But we also know that we can reduce these impacts – both through dietary changes, by substituting some meat with plant-based alternatives and through technology advances. It has transformed habitats and is one of the greatest pressures for biodiversity: of the 28,000 species evaluated to be threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List, agriculture is listed as a threat for 24,000 of them. The expansion of agriculture has been one of humanity’s largest impacts on the environment. While livestock takes up most of the world’s agricultural land it only produces 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of total protein.
If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land. There is also a highly unequal distribution of land use between livestock and crops for human consumption. This leaves only 37% for forests 11% as shrubs and grasslands 1% as freshwater coverage and the remaining 1% – a much smaller share than many suspect – is built-up urban area which includes cities, towns, villages, roads and other human infrastructure. Half of all habitable land is used for agriculture.
6 This leaves what we call ‘habitable land’. 10% of the world is covered by glaciers, and a further 19% is barren land – deserts, dry salt flats, beaches, sand dunes, and exposed rocks. In the visualization we see the breakdown of global land area today. If we rewind 1000 years, it is estimated that only 4 million square kilometers – less than 4% of the world’s ice-free and non-barren land area was used for farming. Over the last few centuries, this has changed dramatically: wild habitats have been squeezed out by turning it into agricultural land. For much of human history, most of the world’s land was wilderness: forests, grasslands and shrubbery dominated its landscapes.
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