Food and agriculture have a significant impact on our planet, particularly in terms of carbon emissions, water withdrawals, and land use.
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all the water use in poore-nemecek 2018 (the source for this chart) is dubious. they treat each end product as though all the inputs were made only for that end product AND as though the inputs wouldnt have been produced (and wasted) anyway as the result of some other process. it has no contextualization of the broader systems of production.
Also like… Cheese is where you take all the valuable stuff out of milk and through away the water that constitutes most of it’s mass. Of course it’s a poor water to weight ratio because most of the weight of milk is water. But in terms of water usage to available dietary nutrition I can’t see it being very different to milk.
It makes the exception for land use change for chocolate, but isn’t almost all agricultural land a land use change which contributes? Most soybean and other crops aren’t as effective at sequestering carbon as the natural grasslands they took over. Orchards and other crops also took over forests and turned them into pastures and fields.
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The absence of palm oil–or any cooking oil–is pretty dubious.
While it’s not perfect I think emissions per calorie is a better measurement than emissions per kg (even more importantly for making comparisons of water usage.)
This infographic brought to you by the oil industry™
Please focus on this infographic and curbing your own satisfaction, so we can continue to be the biggest polluter AND make money hand over fist.
I mean not really.
Live stock accounts for 60% of land usage, but only 2% of calories consumed. Much of that land is growing feed for cattle. They eat millions more calories in grain than is harvested.
Meat is just such a luxury with how many resources it uses. Like the world doesn’t have enough space for everyone to eat meat like the US does.
It also feels very cruel to grow so much feed for cows when people are starving.
But people love Meat and have it part of their culture so people won’t stop no matter what.
So fingers crossed for lab grown meat so this debate can just vanish.
most cows mostly eat grass. what crops are given to livestock is usually plants (or parts of plants) that people can’t or won’t eat.
I think what they’re getting at is that the land being used to grow that grass and inedible plants could instead be used to grow plants that humans can eat.
grasslands usually aren’t suitable for growing crops.
most of the crops that are fed to animals are just the parts of the plants that people can’t or won’t eat. soybeans, for instance: 85% of all the soybeans in the world go through an oil press, and after extracting the oil, we feed the industrial waste to livestock.
Most cows eat grass. True. But most cows are fed grains, not grass.
So growing grain, using the seeds for feeding humans and using the rest for raising additional food for humans is a good idea and was practiced for millenia. But this way our ancestors got a pig or a cow per year per family, not a steak a day.
cows are fed grains
i never said they aren’t. i’m saying the bulk of what makes a cow is grass. grain finishing isn’t that big of a deal (in my opinion). certainly, the whole food system accounts for ~20% of our emissions, so we could be focused on other sectors instead of food which people eat.
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There are tons of sources that show agriculture and food pale in comparison to the emissions of other sectors.
I’m happy that you could pass Biology, but you failed Statistics. Try again.
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It would seem this entire discussion stems from your misunderstanding of my initial comment.
I pointed out that there are other industries that have a much greater environmental impact and you got butthurt about it. I wanted to help you understand that other industries (e.g. oil/transport) have a much greater impact, which it looks like I’ve accomplished. I’m glad I could help you see the bigger picture, but you might want to check your own reading comprehension before throwing a tantrum in the future.
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Not eating red meats is the single most impactful change an individual can have on their carbon footprint
i doubt it.
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Guess what though, that’s what the literature supports.
that claim is beyond the scope of that study, which didn’t actually consider any source of ghg emissions except agriculture.
i didn’t downvote anything.
poore-nemecek 2018 is pretty low-quality. they attribute everything fed to livestock as emissions necessary in rearing livestock, but that’s just not true: much of what is fed to livestock would outherwise be waste, so feeding it to livestock is a conservation of resources, and not a net emission.
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This can be misleading. For instance: raising dairy cattle in lush and water rich areas with no or limited dependency on fossil water is very different than dairy cattle being raised in the desert with 90% of the food being trucked in and the cheese also being made in the desert using extremely limited fresh water.
Beef is certainly super high impact, generally but how we go about it super matters.
Does it really make that much difference if 70% of grown plants globally are fed to animals?
70% of grown plants globally are fed to animals
they’re not.
Seems like a weasel-y statement. Grass is a plant. Growing grass in places where it just grows itself and the animals eat it directly is disimilar to hauling grown, fertilized herbicide treated, insecticide treated, harvested, processed, trucked grains to feed animals.
The environmental impacts are wildly different.
It excludes the fact that animal-based farming contributes greatly to water pollution, too.
The source paper does a lot of napkin math without context apparently.
Have you read the original study?
Have you? I’m going by what I heard people say about it.
Yes, many times. I’ve linked it in this thread.
The original study does show water pollution, even going so far as to split it between acidification and eutrophication.
Good find. Yes, the original study accounts for water pollution, but this chart (conveniently) excludes it.
When you include the water pollution, the impact to the environment are FAR, FAR worse than this chart suggests.
I don’t think it’s really an “exclusion” to show the relative carbon impacts. A more comprehensive infographic could certainly be made, but there’s nothing wrong with a simple one that focuses on a specific topic.
I guess that depends on the definition of “environmental impact”, but you’re right about nothing wrong with focusing on a specific topic. 👌
Methane with cow-based agriculture too
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If fish and prawn use so much water, we should figure out how to raise them aeroponically.
Lets focus on billonaires using their luxury private jets first then we can worry about going after things that feed people
Why not both? This is something that each individual can change by themselves. And it’s not hard.
Mainy due to the fact that when trying to stop agriculture or food production it puts the blame on indivisuals who can’t afford to change their habits or lifestyles i do know that some are able to change and live differently however those changes for others can lead to large amounts of stress, normally people will correlate the stress of this change to the idea of climate change which causes them to reject the idea of it completely (think of the most stubborn person you know and what they would do if you told them to not do something because of a thing they can’t immediately see)
The reason i say that going after billionaires and their jets is more important is because its something that a large amount of people can agree with which means that we can get momentum on that movement better, itll cause stress to less people which means less pushback and the amount of pollution that comes from their jets is absolutely massive like its insane how bad iirc
This isn’t saying that we shouldn’t work on ways to make farming more ecofriendly (because more ecofriendly actually benefits everyone in the long run not just due to the effects on the environment but it also helps the food taste better and grow more) although it is saying that if we keep blaming individuals and their miniture actions itll just turn more people over to climate denialism
Great video, and I watched it to the end. Thanks for sharing! I’ll definitely show this one to my students and kids, too.
That said, they did conclude the video saying that we can individually contribute at the polls (should be obvious) and with our wallets, by:
- Eating less meat
- Flying less
- Shifting to electric vehicles (and heat pumps and so on—from earlier in the video, by buying low-emission technologies when they’re a bit more expensive to further their development and bring down the costs of production)
Sure, individuals can’t effect huge change in systems by shifting their individual consumer choices, but developed-nation governments are selected by individuals at the polls. We need to make it a political death sentence to ignore climate change.
Thanks for the very well put and thought through answer. Certainly a lot more than I contributed. Just wanted to know it’s appreciated. Have a great Friday! ❤️
"lets focus on this thing im not responsible for and wont do anything about so we dont have to focus on the thing my actions directly affect and I also wont do anything about "
Nah lets focus on the thing so tiny that it wont do jack and let billonaires continue ruining the planet with their greed, that’ll sure help.
Animal agriculture is literally the largest cause of environmental destruction on the planet. Beef alone is the single greatest cause of deforestation. Private jets need to be abolished and billionaires need to go too. But this is absolutely the bigger issue by an order of magnitude. But we can actually do BOTH things. They arent mutually exclusive. The difference is fighting animal ag means you actually have to walk to walk so people fight against it and focus on things they can pretend they have no influence on so they can keep doing nothing but still feel good about themselves
Yeah beef being a magnitude order bigger issue is just wrong https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/26/flying-shame-the-scandalous-rise-of-private-jets
The highest thing on the chart is beef which is 99kg of emmissions per kilogram of beef, to make up for 1 hour of a single private flight it would require about 20 kilograms (44lbs) of beef. Now throw in the fact that there are thousands of these flights going through multiple hours of the day and hey you can see what is the way larger problem paticularly due to the fact that these flights aren’t benefitting anyone where as the beef actually feeds people.
But im curious why is it more important for you that billions of people immediately change in the way you view as better (so many peoples entire livelyhood is invested in the beef industry paticularly because there are so many byproducts that are also useful, leather, bonemarrow, glue ect.) rather then the few hundred thousand making a small change that barely effects them at all (this change is only billonaires learning to take public planes like the rest of us)?
Dude do you…do you know how many cows there are? 44lb of beef is less than one cow and theres BILLIONS of cows
Even if we end the private jets (we should) that doesnt remove the beef problem. Even in some idealic socialist utopia that doesnt change the fact that our planet’s ecosystems are being annihilated for animals and their feed. Ethically problematic and environmentally devastating habits are a problem no matter how many people are doing them. It doesnt matter if billions of people do something, its still a problem, its only amplified by how many people are doing it.
But you keep making up this idea I’m opposed to fighting billionaires and their jets even though i keep agreeing with you. It sounds like you’re pretending i have a problem with it so you can ignore my other point, and the marvelous fact human beings can work towards more than one goal at a time.
Yes there are billions of cows. No i dont think focusing on the cows will get us anywhere and infact i think itll make more people into climate change deniers.
You only agreed with me on billionaires being abolished once not “keep agreeing with me” (in previous posts) infact you keep ridiculing me more " keep doing nothing so they can feel good about themselves" and your entire first comment is just you ridiculing me. Even the comment about “idealic socialist society” is ridicule as im not asking for perfect im asking for us to focus our efforts on billionaires as i see the usa doing something about billionaires as more realistic then dealing with the international mess that it would be to stop ranching at all.
Why dont we take a step back and discuss our thoughts without insulting the other.
I’ll start and none of this is meant to insult you.
Its been a political nightmare to stop people injecting bleach in the usa or drinking raw milk and getting sick (due to our gut biomes not being adapted to raw milk) every time in the past we’ve told them no please stop that they just do it more. No matter what we do the 360 million that we have wont listen to anyone that trys to take away a single comfort including food, beef is a heavy comfort food for a lot of americans. The thing that im trusting will solve the emission output of farm animals is the cloning food tech that we are barely getting out and i dont want to scare the 360 million by talking about it as some of them are already afraid of the word clone. I cannot imagine the nightmare of trying to convince any country that isnt hindi (iirc hindi is the correct way to say hindu in this context but brahmin are sacred in their culture and religion so thats why i brought it up) to not ranch cattle. Now recently ive come to the conclusion that the whole “reduce your carbon footprint” campaign has been an effort to try to shift the blame of climate change from the corporations onto the consumer which causes the consumers to fight eachother instead of rallying against corporations. But ive also noticed that alot of climate change deniers will start being climate change deniers when they are made to feel like everything is their fault for buying comfort food.
TLDR: Let scientists take care of the beef emmissions, everyone else fight the selfish billionaires that are the cause of all the unnecessary emmissions and halt of progress everywhere else.
Also apologies if i was rude at all with debating, im up way too late (grave shift) thanks for the debate and have a good day.
Does this include shipping? For example coffee does not grow in Europe and needs to be shipped. Even more so for fruits.
The original study does include shipping. You can even see it divided out here.
I was like where the hell is chicken… then saw “poultry”
Why is soy not mentioned? Not all soy is turned into tofu.
I get the point of the guide. However, it’s kind of funny and obvious the fish and prawns would be in the top 5 consumers of water. I would expect nothing less.
Pork and chicken it is then!
It’s informative, but 1kg of beef and 1kg of coffee beans is not a meaningful comparison :D
