Food and climate change

Our food system is responsible for 25% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, 70% of freshwater use, it is the world’s top water polluter and is a major cause of deforestation.

Today, half of the world’s ice-free and desert-free land is used for agriculture, of which 75% is for grazing or growing crops to feed livestock. Meat and dairy provide 18% of our calories and 37% of our protein.

To feed everyone sustainably we need to reduce the amount of land we use. In poorer countries croplands and pastures are still expanding, often at the cost of forests. From over-hunting animals for food and claiming their habitats for farmland to killing off ecosystems with pesticides and fertilizers, food production is the biggest pressure on the world’s wildlife.

In 1900, wild mammals comprised 17% of terrestrial biomass, humans 23% and livestock 60%. Today, wild mammals are 2%, humans 35% and livestock 63%. All the cows alone weigh 10 times as much as all wild mammals combined. All chickens weigh twice as much as all wild birds.

Current worldwide food production yields more than twice what humans require but because of global inequality, hundreds of millions of people don’t get enough to eat. We are losing half the food we produce before it reaches our plates because we feed livestock and cars, not people.

About 75% of the world’s soy feeds chickens, pigs and cows, and of the three billion tonnes of cereals produced every year, 41% is fed to livestock and 11% is used in industry, mostly for biofuels.

To build a food system that feeds everyone without ruining the planet, we need to rethink our relationship with meat. Smaller animals are more efficient—fish and chickens are the most efficient, then pigs, then sheep and then cows. Every 100 calories we feed a cow produces three calories of meat. For lamb it’s 4%, pigs 10% and chicken 13%. Meat and dairy are complete protein sources, while cereals are not. However, peas, beans and soy are very good protein sources and, as long as you are also eating grains, you can meet your complete protein requirements.

Building a more sustainable food system would require the following:

1. Improve crop yields using appropriate amounts of fertilizer, improved seed varieties and irrigation. Improved seed varieties need less fertilizer and pesticides, are more tolerant to heat, need less water and have higher yields.

2. People, in general, need to eat less meat. Whether it’s greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, or water pollution, the hierarchy is nearly always the same—beef and lamb are the worst, followed by dairy, pork, chicken and then plant-based foods, such as tofu, peas, beans and cereals. We could have a massive impact on emissions, land use and water use if half of us went meat-free two days a week or switched from beef to chicken or fish.

3. Meat-substitute brands, such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, are widely accepted. Ninety-eight per cent of U.S. consumers who bought plant-based meats also bought meat products. Switching from a beef burger reduces emissions by 96%.

4. Hybrid burgers blend beef with chicken, soy or other protein and in blind taste tests people preferred hybrid burgers to beef or meat-substitutes. If just McDonald’s and Burger King made all their burgers a 50-50 blend of beef and soy, it would save three million cows from being slaughtered every year.

5. Oat, soy, almond and rice-based milk generate 1/3 fewer GHG emissions, use about 10% of the farmland, 5% of the water and decrease water pollution compared to cow’s milk.

6. Waste less food. Buy what you need and eat it, choose “uglier” fruits and vegetables, don’t buy one,get one free unless you eat it, and understand that “best before” means it will be tastiest and freshest before that date but is still fine afterwards.

Don’t stress about eating local. Foods grown under optimal conditions are best. Transport contributes around 5% of GHG emissions, most of which comes from regional or local road delivery. Long distance shipping contributes 0.2% of emissions. Eating local can be worse for the environment.

For instance, growing tomatoes in Swedish greenhouses uses 10 times the energy of importing tomatoes from Spain in season.

Also, don’t worry about plastic packaging. We would waste more food without plastic packaging. The carbon footprint of plastic packaging is tiny compared to the food inside.

Avoid packaging when you can and recycle but for many foods, packaging ensures safety and freshness, which makes a bigger difference.

Janet Parkins is a former pharmacist, member of Climate Action Now! and Frack Free BC.