Animal Agriculture Is Eating the Earth

Source: The rise of plant-based diets

From Herbivore Club

Humanity uses half of the planet’s habitable land for agriculture. Most of that land is not used to grow food for humans. It is used to graze animals or grow crops to feed them. We flatten forests, drain wetlands, degrade peatlands, and cover entire regions with monocultures. Then we feed much of what we grow to animals, kill the animals and call this an efficient food system. It is an ecological disaster held together by subsidies, political cowardice and the refusal to question humanity’s assumed entitlement to use other animals.

A major study published in Nature has modelled what could happen if the world moved towards healthier, more plant-rich diets by 2050, while improving agricultural productivity and halving food waste. The results are enormous.

Compared with continuing along the current path, agriculture-related carbon dioxide emissions from land-use change could fall by 76%. Compared with 2020, they could fall by 85%. Direct methane and nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture could fall by around a third.

Global agricultural land use would shrink. Hundreds of millions fewer cows, sheep and goats would be used for food. Tens of billions fewer chickens and pigs would be bred and killed than under business as usual.

This is not a model of global veganism. It does not propose ending the use of animals. It merely limits the consumption of animal flesh, dairy and eggs while increasing the production of vegetables, fruit, nuts and legumes. Even that would radically reshape the planet.

Feeding Humans Instead of other Animals

The study compared business as usual with a transformation built around three changes: healthier diets, improved agricultural productivity and a 50% reduction in food loss and waste. Under business as usual, animal numbers continue rising. More land is cultivated. More fertiliser is used. More greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere.

Under the transformation scenario, animal agriculture contracts and a greater share of crops goes directly to humans instead of being diverted into animal feed.

Animals are not machines capable of converting every calorie they consume into food for humans. They use energy to breathe, move, maintain their bodies and stay alive. Much of the nutritional value in animal feed never reaches a human plate. Growing crops to feed animals so humans can eat their bodies adds an unnecessary and wasteful stage to the food system.

The study found that agricultural production would be 17% lower than under business as usual, largely because less animal feed and fewer animal products would be produced. But the overall value of agricultural production would remain roughly comparable with 2020. In other words, humanity could feed a larger population without endlessly expanding agriculture. We could simply stop wasting so much land and food on animals.

The Industry That Would Shrink

The economic value of animal agriculture would fall by 60% compared with business as usual, dropping from a projected $2.2 trillion to $870 billion. The industry will present this as a threat. It is a threat. To them.

For the climate, wildlife, forests, rivers and animals imprisoned on farms, it is an opportunity.

The value of vegetable, fruit, nut and legume production would increase by 23%. Their share of agricultural output would rise from 34% under business as usual to 58% in the transformed system. This is not the destruction of farming. It is a transition from using vast amounts of land to breed and feed animals towards growing food for humans.

Some rural economies have been built around animal agriculture, and workers should not be abandoned. Governments have spent decades paying farmers to maintain destructive systems. They can pay them to leave those systems. Public money could support farmers to grow legumes, vegetables, fruit, nuts and grains for direct human consumption. It could fund habitat restoration, peatland recovery, woodland expansion and new plant-based industries.

The choice is not between preserving every existing animal farm and condemning rural communities to poverty. The choice is whether governments manage the transition fairly or continue delaying until ecological collapse forces a much more brutal one.

Soya Is Not the Problem

Nowhere is the waste of feeding crops to animals clearer than in Brazil. Soya cultivation has expanded across the Amazon and Cerrado, covering more than half of Brazil’s arable land. Nearly 80% of soya beans are used to feed animals in agriculture and aquaculture. This expansion is commonly blamed on vegans eating tofu. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of soya is not eaten directly by humans. It is fed to cows, pigs, chickens and farmed fish. Demand for animal flesh drives demand for animal feed. Even when soya is planted on land previously cleared for cattle grazing, it can still push destruction deeper into the forest. Mechanised crop farms take over pasture, cattle ranching moves into previously untouched areas and land prices rise in anticipation of future deforestation.

The damage does not end at the edge of the plantation.

Expanding soya production creates pressure for more roads, railways, ports, storage facilities and dredged rivers. Nearly 95% of Amazon deforestation in Brazil occurs within three miles of highways. Every mile of major road can generate many more miles of secondary roads, spreading forest clearance and degradation even further.

Communities become surrounded by plantations. Residents report tasting clouds of pesticides, followed by tingling skin, dizziness and difficulty breathing. This is what the alleged efficiency of animal agriculture looks like from the ground.

Forests are not being destroyed because humanity lacks enough farmland. Brazil already has vast areas of previously deforested land. Forests are destroyed because an expanding industry demands more land, more feed and more infrastructure.

Britain Pays for Destruction

The same basic failure can be seen in Britain’s uplands.

On Dartmoor, only 0.1% of surveyed protected land was found to be in an ecologically favourable condition. Blanket bogs and heathlands have been damaged by drainage, peat extraction, burning and grazing.

Sheep continue eating the remaining vegetation and preventing habitats from recovering. This activity is not even economically viable on its own. Each ewe grazed on the Dartmoor commons reportedly loses the farmer £16.90.

The public pays to keep it going.

More than £32 million was paid to Dartmoor commoners through environmental stewardship schemes over a decade. Not one common improved. Many became worse. This land also makes a minimal contribution to food production. Dartmoor is within the least productive 20% of English farmland, which produces less than 3% of England’s food. We are subsidising a loss-making industry to damage protected habitats while pretending this is necessary for food security.

It is difficult to design a more absurd system.

Restored blanket bogs could store carbon, reduce flooding and support wildlife. Instead, taxpayers fund sheep grazing that degrades them.

Animal agriculture is defended as an essential use of the countryside even when it produces little food, loses money and destroys the very landscape the public is supposedly paying to protect.

The Largest Land Recovery in 2,000 Years

Under the transformation model, agricultural land could contract by 274 million hectares by 2050.

The researchers describe this as the largest absolute reduction in agricultural land in more than 2,000 years. Grazing land would fall by 10% compared with 2020. Some cropland would expand to produce more fruit, vegetables, nuts and legumes, but total agricultural land would still shrink.

There would be more than 400 million fewer cows, sheep and goats used for flesh than in 2020, and 800 million fewer than under business as usual. There would also be 32 billion fewer pigs and chickens than under business as usual. Every number represents living individuals who would not be bred into confinement and slaughter. Fewer animals means fewer forests cleared for feed. Less grazing pressure. Lower methane emissions. Less manure. Less fertiliser. Less water consumed by a system designed to turn plants into animal products.

It also means less suffering.

The environmental argument and the animal rights argument are not competing concerns. They point towards the same conclusion because the same industry is responsible for both forms of destruction.

Business as Usual Is the Expensive Option

Defenders of animal agriculture often frame transition as a reckless experiment. Business as usual is the experiment.

It asks whether humanity can continue expanding an inefficient food system on a finite planet while temperatures rise, habitats collapse and billions of animals are bred into lives of exploitation.

The current food system already produces around a third of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions by conservative calculations. It is helping push the planet beyond multiple ecological boundaries. A third of food is lost or wasted. Poor diets contribute to millions of premature deaths.

Governments continue subsidise animal agriculture, build infrastructure around it and protect it from meaningful change. The Nature study warns that powerful industries are likely to resist, block or co-opt transformation. Of course they will. A system worth trillions will not dismantle itself because the evidence says it should. It will demand weaker targets, longer deadlines, more public money and technological distractions that allow animal numbers to remain high. It will promise lower-emission cows, more efficient feed and marginally less destructive farms.

Anything except fewer animals.

But fewer animals are the central reason this model produces such enormous gains. The future food system does not require more efficient exploitation. It requires a drastic reduction in the number of animals bred, confined and killed. Even a cautious, “flexitarian” model could cut land-use emissions by 76%, release vast areas of land and prevent tens of billions of animals from entering the farming system.

Imagine what we could achieve if we stopped treating animal exploitation as an unavoidable part of food production.

The problem is not that humanity cannot feed everyone.

The problem is that we are feeding the planet to animals.

The two biggest single things you can do to reduce emissions is to become vegetarian, with plant-based milk, and replace your petrol car with an EV.   A third of emissions come from agriculture (land clearing plus methane).  And 20% come from land transport.  Optimistically, you could therefore cut your personal contribution to global emissions by 50%.   We face climate catastrophe.  You can do something to stop it.

Deforestation is 3rd largest source of emissions

Vegetarian/vegan food is much less environmentally damaging than meat.

From Elena Sgarbossa

A vegan burger uses less than 10% land in its production than production of a beef burger does.

Which means that less forest is cleared.  And if tropical deforestation was a country, its emissions would be behind only China and the USA.  

Moreover, to the emissions produced by land clearing, you have to add in the methane directly produced by beef and mutton.  The rise in atmospheric methane is responsible for 1/3rd of the rise in global temperatures since 1850-1900.  The biggest step you can take to personally help cut emissions and global temperatures is to give up meat and milk.

Preventing a climate calamity is still possible.

 This is an informative video from Climate Adam.  He uses an analogy I've used before: a bathtub.  Virtually every year since 1850, the CO2 we push out into the atmosphere has risen.  Because the outflow from the atmosphere (natural carbon sinks) is less than what we're pumping into the air, the level of CO2 has risen.  Emissions have flatlined over the last 10 years, but they're still more than the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere via carbon sinks.  Using the analogy, the level of water (CO2) in the tub (atmosphere) is continuing to rise, just more slowly.  And thus temperatures continue to rise.  But if we could cut emissions so that they are the same as outflows, the level of water (CO2) would stop rising, and so would temperatures.

Adam makes the point that carbon sinks (where CO2 gets sucked out of the atmosphere) take up around 50% of emissions.  This is only a temporary help, because the carbon sinks (the sea, forests and marshes) are taking less and less out of the atmosphere.  They're filling up.  But it does mean that if we could cut emissions by 50%, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, and therefore temperatures, would stop rising (or at least, rise more slowly), though we would still need to cut emissions over time to near zero.  It used to be thought that temperatures would go on rising for decades even after we achieved zero emissions, but this is no longer the scientific consensus.

Now, the good news is that together, emissions from electricity generation and land transport, on average across the world, are roughly 50% of total CO2 emissions.  If we could replace coal and gas in electricity generation, and convert the global car, lorry and bus fleets to electricity, we would have cut emissions by 50%.  In other words, stopping temperatures rising is achievable, and achievable over the next decade.  We would still have to achieve zero emissions, because with the oceans, the carbon sink reduction (the oceans offset and bury CO2) is offset by their thermal inertia — they will continue to release heat into the atmosphere as long as they are cooler than the atmosphere.   But switching to renewables and EVs would give us time to cut emissions from all the other more difficult sectors like cement, steel, air and sea transport and agriculture.

The other climate-warming gas Adam talks about is methane.  Methane comes from gas leaks, rubbish dumps, and cattle and sheep.  Methane has been rising fast, and shows no signs of peaking.  Over a ten-year time frame, methane is 80 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2.  But it quickly decays into CO2, so if we could cut methane emissions, the effects would be rapid.  One third of the rise in temperatures since pre-industrial times is from methane.  So, as we replace gas in electricity generation (and we will for now still need 5 - 10% gas generation to cover dunkelflaute events, because we don't have workable long-term storage), gas leaks will fall.  There are super emitters of methane from rubbish dumps.  And that's easy to stop: just cover your rubbish dumps with a thick layer of earth.  Finally, each of us can avoid beef, mutton and milk.  That's something we can directly do to cut emissions.  Turning vegetarian could be your single biggest step to cutting emissions!  (Buying an EV is another.)

The moral of all this is that we are far from helpless.  CO2 emissions have peaked.  Our task is to bend that curve down, until the level of CO2 in the atmosphere also peaks.  We have to turn the CO2 and methane taps off, and then we will actually be able to avoid a catastrophic climate future.

(One really scary factor driving increasing emissions is AI datacentres.  We need to stop their construction.  Now.)

Global warming *has* accelerated

 From Open Mind (Tamino)

I won't repeat the whole article.  Read it in full here.

My paper with Stefan Rahmstorf showing that global warming has accelerated was published in Geophysical Research Letters today. The main result is that global warming is NOT proceeding at the same old rate it has been since 1975. It’s going faster.

In this data set [from Berkeley Earth], 2025 turned out to be the 3rd-warmest year on record (as in the other data sets except NASA, where it came in 2nd). When I adjust the data to remove the estimated impact of el Niño, volcanic eruptions, and solar variation, I get this:

The trend is unaffected, but the noise level is much reduced, which enables us to estimate warming rates with less uncertainty. I’ve added a red line to this graph which is a modified LOWESS smooth of the adjusted data.

To test for acceleration we isolated the data since 1975, and the simplest way to test for it is to fit a parabola to the data; if the quadratic term is statistically significant, we can reject the null hypothesis, that the signal is just a straight line. Of course we must correct for autocorrelation of the noise, but still the quadratic term turns out to be strongly significant. We can safely reject the null hypothesis: there has been acceleration.

According to this model, the warming rate right now is the slope at the endpoint of the parabola, which is 0.28 ± 0.05 °C per decade (i.e. between 0.23 and 0.33 °C per decade, 95% CI). I will emphasize that this is the “best estimate” and those are the correct uncertainty levels IF (and this is a BIG IF) the data actually follow a parabola plus stationary noise. If not (which is the overwhelmingly likely case), we can consider the estimate good but not best, and the uncertainty levels are a lower bound on the actual uncertainty.

Another test for acceleration is to find the best fit of a continuous piecewise-linear function which is allowed to change slope at a time chosen by changepoint analysis. This is a challenge to evaluate statistically because we have to allow for autocorrelation and account for the extra degree of freedom to choose the changepoint time. But it can be done, and the best-fit model again turns out to be strongly statistically significant.

Both those models serve excellently to demonstrate the presence of acceleration. But I doubt they are best to estimate what the warming rate is right now, and what it will be in the near future. For that, I offer yet another model, which I will apply to the data since 1880, a continuous piece-wise linear fit (PLF) which is allowed to change its slope every 15 years from 1905 through 2010. I call this model “PLF15”

The PLF15 model not only estimates the signal value, it conveniently gives us an estimate of the average warming rate over each segment between the knots. I can plot the warming rate itself (which for this model is constant during each segment) along with light blue shading to show the uncertainty range.

All these graphs plot the warming rate in °C per year, but when quoting numbers I have followed the custom these days to talk about the rate in °C per decade. According to this analysis, the current estimated rate is 0.31 ± 0.07 °C/decade.

Which estimate is best? I don’t know, but I do know that even 0.24 °C per decade will take us past 2 °C right around the year 2050. The whole point of the Paris agreement is: DON’T GO THERE. My advice: fasten your seat belt, things are going to get ugly.

We need to redouble efforts to cut emissions, or things will get very ugly.  What can we do?

• Set a renewable energy target in every country.  The percentage of renewables+nuclear needs to rise by 6-8% a year, at least.  This will cut emissions by 27% (emissions from electricity generation are +-30% of total global emissions) within a decade.  We may not yet be able to go above 90 or 95% renewables in the grid, because we don't have long-term storage to offset periods of dunkelflaute, but we will have cut most emissions from electricity generation.  
• We must tax imports from countries which do not have an R.E.T. or a price on carbon.  (See my posts on a carbon border tax)
• We need to accelerate the replacement of petrol/diesel vehicles (ICEVs) with EVs.  This is a problem, because even when we reach 100% of sales being EVs, it will take 10-20 years for all ICEVs on the roads to be replaced.  This is too long.  Most countries are nowhere near 100% EV sales.   We could, for example, ban the import of new or second-hand ICEVs, or slap 100% taxes on them.   Ethiopia has already done this.  This policy should apply to two and three-wheeled vehicles, too.  Countries which do this deserve reduced carbon border taxes.
• In rich countries, we need to replace oil- or gas-based household and industrial heating with heat pumps.  Because they have high up-front costs, they will require government subsidy to start the revolution rolling.

All of these combined will cut emissions by 50 to 60%.  If we also switch to low-emission steel and cement, the emissions cuts could reach 70%.

That will leave (mostly) agriculture.  Put that in the too-hard basket for now--people love their meat too much to give it up.  But it won't go away.  When we've cut emissions by 70%, agriculture will dominate what's left over.  And action will no longer be postponable.

Denmark introduces a carbon tax on agriculture

Source : Vegconomist

 From Vegconomist

Denmark looks set to introduce what is claimed to be the world’s first carbon tax on agriculture, following negotiations between the government, farmer organisations, trade unions, industry, and environmental NGOs.

The agreement is expected to be formally approved by the Danish parliament in August, and will see a tax of DKK 300 per tonne CO2e introduced on livestock emissions from 2030. This will rise to DKK 750 per tonne CO2e in 2035, but with a basic deduction of 60%; this means that the effective tax will be DKK 120 (€16) per tonne in 2030 and DKK 300 (€40) per tonne in 2035.

“We are investing in the future of our agricultural sector”

The proceeds raised by the tax in 2030-31 will be returned to the industry as a support fund to aid the green transition. The tax is expected to reduce emissions by 1.8 million tonnes of CO2e by 2030, enabling Denmark to achieve its legally binding target of cutting emissions by 70%.

Additionally, 250,000 new hectares of forest will be established in the coming years, and targets have been set to protect at least 20% of nature. Fees for slaughterhouses will be raised by DKK 45 million (€6 million) annually from 2029, and funding will be allocated to upskill labour.

The agreement has been reached despite Europe-wide backlash from farmers against proposed EU environmental policies, which led to some targets being dropped earlier this year. New Zealand has also recently scrapped plans for a tax aimed at tackling livestock emissions.

With the new tax, Denmark continues on its trajectory of progressive agricultural policies. In 2021, the country allocated 580 million DKK to farmers who produce plant-based foods; this was said to be the first time in history that plant foods had been given priority in an agricultural agreement.

In October 2023, Denmark became the first country worldwide to publish a national action plan for plant-based foods. The plan aims to strengthen and promote the country’s plant-based sector as part of the shift toward climate-friendly diets. Its publication came just a few months after a report found that Denmark’s financial sector currently lacks the objectives, knowledge, and ambition to invest in sustainable foods.

In March of last year, the Danish Climate Council recommended that two-thirds of the meat consumed by Danes should be replaced by plant-based foods, and suggested that high-emission foods such as beef should be taxed.

Beef and mutton produce the most methane in agriculture, and methane is 80 times as potent a greenhouse gas over 10 years as CO2 (it takes 12 years for methane to decay into CO2).  Also, expanding beef production means more land clearing, though obviously not in Denmark.  Globally, these two factors make agriculture a major source of greenhouse gases.  In 2024, 88% of Denmark's electricity came from renewables.   And 56% of Denmark's car sales are EVs/PHEVs.   Agriculture is the logical next step to cut emissions.  Heat pumps are another.  Compared to the rest of Scandinavia and Europe, Denmark has fewer heat pumps installed per 100,000 people, partly because its heat pump subsidies are smaller.  Heat pumps are far more efficient for heating in terms of energy use than old-fashioned gas or oil boilers.

The livestock lobby wages war on Lab-Grown meat

Source: The Guardian

From George Monbiot at The Guardian

For many years, certain car manufacturers sought to obstruct the transition to electric vehicles. It’s not hard to see why: when you have invested heavily in an existing technology, you want to extract every last drop before disinvesting. But devious as in some cases these efforts were, they seem almost innocent in comparison with the concerted programme by a legacy industry and its tame politicians to suppress a far more important switch: the essential transition away from livestock farming.

Animal farming ranks alongside fossil fuel production as one of the two most destructive industries on Earth. It’s not just the vast greenhouse gas emissions and the water and air pollution it causes. Even more important is the amount of land it requires. Land use is a crucial environmental metric, because every hectare we occupy is a hectare that cannot support wild ecosystems.

Wild ecosystems are crucial for the survival of most species on Earth, and of Earth systems themselves: for example, the rainforest and cerrado of South America help to regulate weather systems. The Amazon rainforest is being destroyed above all by cattle ranching, whose expansion is driven in part by the foodie fad for “grass-fed” beef. The cerrado is being trashed primarily by soy farming to produce feed for pigs and chickens.

Feeding ourselves with animal products is a fantastically profligate and inefficient way of using land, swallowing at least four times as much as all the other food we grow while providing just 17% of our calories. More than any other factor, it drives the destruction of forests, wetlands, savannas, rivers and other habitats. Weaning ourselves off these products is as important as weaning ourselves off oil, gas and coal.

How can this be done? Moral suasion – seeking to convince people to switch to a plant-based diet for ethical reasons – is going nowhere: globally, meat-eating continues to rise while the percentage of vegans remains in low single figures in all but a few countries. I’ve long been convinced that the only effective strategy is to produce alternative products that are in effect indistinguishable from meat, dairy and eggs, but are cheaper and healthier. Around the world, scientists and startups are working on it.

There is a wide range of developing technologies, which are often misleadingly reduced to “lab-grown meat” or “cell-cultured meat”. What these terms originally meant was growing whole cuts in a bioreactor on a collagen scaffold. After initial enthusiasm, I came to see this as a dead end: it is simply too complicated and too expensive. Now the terms are often used to cover all new alternatives, including far simpler and cheaper technologies such as brewing microbes.

Such new-protein technologies are the leading threat to the global livestock industry, because they could be used to replace animal sources for everything from cheese and ice-cream to sausages, burgers, eggs, fish and steak, as well as creating a vast new range of foods we cannot yet imagine. Because the protein content is so high and the range of microbes so great, some of these foods could be produced with less processing than the animal-based products they compete with. Unhealthy components such as saturated fats can be excluded, and healthy ones, such as long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, can be bred in.

Last spring Solar Foods, the company in whose lab I first ate a pancake made from bacterial protein, opened its first factory, near Helsinki. The transition to such new-protein sources could be as profound in its impacts as the shift from hunter-gathering to agriculture. If done right, it could massively reduce demand for land and farm chemicals.

Unlike farming, it could ensure that neither inputs (such as fertiliser) nor outputs (such as manure) leak into ecosystems. It could greatly reduce demand for fresh water: indeed, some microbes can be grown in saltwater. It could allow food to be produced in places that can no longer feed their people, as there is insufficient fertile land and rainfall. In doing so, as long as governments prevent large corporations from monopolising the new technologies, it could greatly enhance food security and food sovereignty.

If you doubt the potential of these technologies, you have only to look at the effort deployed by meat corporations and their tame politicians to shut them down. At the behest of livestock lobby groups, lab-grown meat has been banned in Florida, Alabama and Italy. Politicians in France, Romania, Hungary and other US states are seeking to follow suit.

Given the confusing terms used in these laws, legislators don’t appear to be entirely sure what they are banning. But some officials are trying to ensure that the entire new-protein sector is stopped in its tracks. An attempt by the EU to green the food supply by encouraging alternative proteins was crushed by the agriculture commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski.

Governments seeking to ban alternatives to animal products have scarcely sought to disguise their motivation: protectionism. Several politicians and officials have openly admitted that they’re trying to defend established industries – meat and dairy – against competition. In every other sector they claim to favour “free markets”, and protectionism attracts major penalties. In this sector, it is enforced by legislation.

Now, according to Greenpeace’s investigative outlet, Unearthed, a new campaign funded by the livestock industry and fronted by a former meat executive is pressing for an EU-wide ban. As the far-right Hungarian government has the presidency of the European Council, the campaign could succeed. The UK government’s support for new proteins is a very rare benefit of Brexit.

None of the US and EU moves are subtle. They’re the exercise of brute legacy power. They are reinforced by an outrageous allocation of public spending. Research published in the journal One Earth found that the US government spends 800 times more on subsidising animal products than on subsidising new proteins, and the EU spends 1,200 times.

A new investigation by Kenny Torrella for Vox magazine reports that, far from contesting this anti-environmental market rigging, some of the leading environment groups in the US – WWF, the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund – are participating in meat industry greenwashing campaigns. Why? The answer seems to be sheer cowardice: their justifications suggest they are terrified of upsetting livestock farmers. Greenpeace UK is highly unusual in seeking to defend the new technologies against the old ones.

We should recognise self-serving corporate propaganda when we see it, confront protectionism and neophobia, and support the technologies that could be our last, best hope of averting environmental catastrophe.

Right now, you could massively reduce your impact on our planet by giving up meat.  Start today.

How much emissions are produced by food/agriculture?

 From Our World in Data  (by Hannah Ritchie)

There are a wide range of estimates for how much of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions come from food. Some studies say this figure is one-quarter, some say it’s more than one-third.

Where do these differences come from? There are three reasons why some of these estimates vary so much:1) some studies do not include emissions from cooking and food waste;2) different studies disagree about the emissions from land use change and deforestation; 3) some, but not all, studies include non-food agricultural products such as cotton, wool, leather and biofuels

The specific number that answers this question depends on these three factors, but the range of possible answers is not too large: around 25% to 30% of global emissions come from our food systems, and this rises to around one-third when we include all agricultural products.

People are becoming increasingly aware that their diet comes with a climate cost. But just how much of our greenhouse gas emissions comes from food?

In a previous article I looked at where greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the food system came from – ranging from deforestation and land use, through to transport and packaging. The study my article was based on was published by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek, estimated that the food system was responsible for one-quarter (26%) of global emissions.1 A new study, published by Monica Crippa and colleagues in Nature Food estimates a higher share: one-third (34%) of emissions.2

In this article I want to explain where the differences in these estimates come from. You can explore the results of the study by Crippa et al. (2021) on our work on the environmental impacts of food.

It is nothing new that estimates of food emissions span a wide spectrum. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Land reports a range from 10.8 and 19.1 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) emissions per year.3 That’s between 21% to 37% of global total emissions. Quite a big difference. We’ll soon see where these disagreements come from.

In light of this, the difference in estimates from Poore and Nemecek (2018) of one-quarter, and Crippa et al. (2021) of one-third are not that surprising. They fall right in the middle of this wide range. Given that they are using very different methods to get to these numbers it is actually encouraging, from a research perspective, that these estimates are so close to each other. But we should still try to figure out where the differences come from.

In the chart here I’ve shown the results of these two studies side-by-side. I’ve grouped emissions into their comparable parts of the food chain:

• Land use: this includes deforestation, peatland degradation and fires, and emissions from cultivated soils.
• Agricultural production: this includes emissions from synthetic fertilizers (and the energy used to manufacture them); manure; methane emissions from livestock and rice; aquaculture; and fuel use from on-farm machinery.
• Supply chain: this includes all emissions from food processing, packaging, transport, and retail, such as refrigeration.
• Post-retail: this is all the energy used by consumers for food preparation, such as refrigeration and cooking at home. It also includes emissions from consumer food waste.

Poore and Nemecek, shown on the left, estimated that food was responsible for 13.6 billion tonnes of CO2e. Crippa et al. estimate 17.9 billion tonnes of CO2e. So, there’s a difference of around 4 billion tonnes. Where does it come from?

• Consumer cooking and waste are not always included in Poore and Nemecek: the easiest difference to spot is that Poore and Nemecek only quantify emissions up to the retail stage of the supply chain. They don’t include energy use by consumers or consumer waste. As we see from the chart, this amounts to 2.1 billion tonnes CO2e.
• Land use emission estimates differ: the biggest difference is in land use emissions. Crippa et al. (2021) estimate emissions to be 2.5 billion tonnes CO2e higher. This can be largely explained by differences in the attribution of deforestation. They allocate all of global deforestation to agriculture. However, the authors note that this is a main limitation of their approach, since only around 80% of deforestation is driven by agricultural expansion (the rest driven by urban development, mining and other human land use change). So their deforestation estimate is possibly a bit too high. Poore and Nemecek only allocated 60% of deforestation to food systems. This might be a bit of an underestimate. Land use emissions due to agriculture are likely to be somewhere in the middle of these two values.
• Food vs. non-food agricultural products: the other main difference is that Poore and Nemecek only include food products in their 13.6 billion tonnes CO2e figure. Non-food agricultural products such as cotton, wool, leather, rubber and biofuels are not included. They do also provide a separate estimate which includes non-food products; this estimates that agricultural products as a whole contributes 33% to global emissions. Crippa et al. (2021) do include at least some of these non-food agricultural products in their estimate.

Comparing these two studies is useful because they highlight the main differences we see across the range of studies on food emissions. The big differences are: what stages of the supply chain are covered (some studies include consumer cooking and waste, some don’t); whether non-food agricultural products such as biofuels and textiles are included; and the biggest uncertainty is emissions from deforestation and land use change. The uncertainty in deforestation emissions estimates from the UN FAO can be as high as 50%, and over 100% for emissions from peatlands.4 Deforestation can also vary a lot from year-to-year, so decadal average values are often used.

How much of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food systems? The amount of uncertainty in these estimates means it’s helpful to understand where the differences come from, and that they all fall within a reasonably narrow range. If someone asks me, my response is usually “around 25% to 30% from food. Around one-third if we include all agricultural products.”

2.9 billion birds gone

From Climate & Capitalism

Worldwide, 49 percent of all wild bird species are in steep decline. BirdLife International’s authoritative report, State of the World’s Birds 2022, estimates that there are now nearly three billion fewer wild birds in Canada and the U.S. than a few decades ago, and about 600 million fewer in the European Union. Less comprehensive data is available for the global south, but studies in some South American, African and Asian countries have shown similar declines.

Many accounts of bird population decline simply list multiple possible causes for the decline — wind turbines, urbanization, climate change, logging, wildfires, hunting and even domestic cats. The absence of data on which factors are most important has been a convenient excuse for doing nothing to save the birds.

An important study published in the May 15 issue of PNAS — the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — takes that excuse away. Its title clearly states its principal finding: Farmland Practices Are Driving Bird Population Decline across Europe. The study “provides strong evidence of a direct and predominant effect of farmland practices at large continental scales.”

This is by far the most extensive study to date of bird population dynamics. Over fifty ornithologists, zoologists, biologists and ecologists analyzed decades of population data for 170 bird species in over 20,000 sites in 28 European countries, measuring them against four known pressures on bird populations: agricultural intensification, change in forest cover, urbanization and temperature change.

Between 1980 and 2016 European bird populations as a whole fell by a quarter, but the number of farmland birds dropped by more than half. Areas dominated by large farms saw bigger declines than areas where most farms are smaller.

The single biggest cause of bird declines is chemical-intensive farming. Some birds are killed by pesticides or herbicides, but the most important impacts are loss of food, especially insects and other invertebrates that most bird species depend on, and the spread of fertilizer-intensive monocultures that eliminate shelter and nesting areas. Insect-eating populations declined more than any others.

In short, the collapse of farmland bird populations is closely related to the Insect Apocalypse in the Anthropocene, discussed here recently. The mass slaughter of insects is killing masses of birds.

Industrial agriculture is not, of course, the only driver. Loss of habitat resulting from urban growth and deforestation caused declines, in those areas, of 27.8% and 17.7% respectively. Climate change had mixed effects — northern, cold-preferring birds fell 39.7%, and southern, warm-preferring bird species dropped 17.1%. Overall, however, the most important bird killer is large-scale capitalist agriculture.

The study concludes:

“Considering both the overwhelming negative impact of agricultural intensification and the homogenization introduced by temperature and land-use changes, our results suggest that the fate of common European bird populations depends on the rapid implementation of transformative change in European societies, and especially in agricultural reform.”

Fungi store one third of all CO2 emissions annually

From The University of Sheffield

The vast underground network of fungi beneath our feet stores over 13 gigatons of carbon around the world, roughly equivalent to 36 per cent of yearly global fossil fuel emissions, according to new research.

It is widely believed that mycorrhizal fungi could store carbon, as the fungi form symbiotic relationships with almost all land plants and transport carbon, converted into sugars and fats by the plant, into soil, but until now the true extent of just how much carbon the fungi were storing wasn’t known.

The discovery by a team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Sheffield, that fungi are storing over a third of the carbon created from fossil fuel emissions each year indicates that it could be crucial as nations seek to tackle climate change and reach net zero. Work is now being undertaken to see whether we could increase how much carbon the soil underneath us can store.

Mycorrhizal fungi have been supporting life on land for at least 450 million years and make up vast underground networks all around us - even forming beneath roads, gardens, and houses, on every continent on Earth.

The international team of scientists, including experts from the University of Sheffield’s School of Biosciences, conducted a meta-analysis of hundreds of studies looking at plant-soil processes to understand how much carbon is being stored by the fungi on a global scale.

Their findings, published in Current Biology, revealed that an estimated 13.12 gigatons of CO2 is transferred from plants to the fungi annually, transforming the soil beneath our feet to a massive carbon pool and the most effective carbon capture storage unit in the world.

The amount of carbon stored equates to roughly 36 per cent of yearly global fossil fuel emissions - more than China emits each year.

Researchers are now calling for fungi to be considered in biodiversity and conservation policies, given its crucial role in cutting carbon emissions. At the current rate, the UN warns that 90 per cent of soils could be degraded by 2050, which could be catastrophic for not only curbing climate change and rising temperatures, but for the productivity of crops and plants too.

Professor Katie Field, Professor of Plant-Soil Processes at the University of Sheffield and co-author of the study, said: “Mycorrhizal fungi represent a blind spot in carbon modelling, conservation, and restoration - the numbers we’ve uncovered are jaw-dropping, and when we’re thinking about solutions for climate we should also be thinking about what we can harness that exists already.

“Soil ecosystems are being destroyed at an alarming rate through agriculture, development and other industry, but the wider impacts of disruption of soil communities are poorly understood. When we disrupt the ancient life support systems in the soil, we sabotage our efforts to limit global heating and undermine the ecosystems on which we depend.

“More needs to be done to protect these underground networks - we already knew that they were essential for biodiversity, and now we have even more evidence that they are crucial to the health of our planet.”

The researchers are now investigating how long the carbon is stored by the fungi in the soil, and are seeking to further explore the role that fungi plays in Earth’s ecosystems.

Dr Heidi Hawkins, lead author of the study from the University of Cape Town, said: “We always suspected that we may have been overlooking a major carbon pool. Understandably, much focus has been placed on protecting and restoring forests as a natural way to mitigate climate change, but little attention has been paid to the fate of the vast amounts of carbon dioxide that are moved from the atmosphere during photosynthesis by those plants and sent belowground to mycorrhizal fungi.

“A major gap in our knowledge is the permanence of carbon within mycorrhizal structures. We do know that it is a flux, with some being retained in mycorrhizal structures while the fungus lives, and even after it dies. Some will be decomposed into small carbon molecules and from there either bind to particles in the soil, or even be reused by plants. And certainly, some carbon will be lost as carbon dioxide gas during respiration by other microbes or the fungus itself.”

Professor Toby Kiers, senior author from Vrije University Amsterdam and co-founder of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, said: “The paper is part of a global push to understand the role that fungi play in Earth’s ecosystems. We know that mycorrhizal fungi are vitally important ecosystem engineers, but they are invisible to most people.

“Mycorrhizal fungi lie at the base of the food webs that support much of life on Earth, but we are just starting to understand how they actually work. There’s still so much to learn.”

One of the projects which is now investigating the role of mycorrhizal fungi in soil carbon and other nutrient cycles in more detail is being led by the University of Sheffield’s School of Biosciences. Using simulated future climates in specialised outdoor field experiments, the NERC-funded study aims to improve our understanding of the critical role of soil fungi, alongside other microbes, in moving carbon belowground and how this will be impacted by future climate change.

If we reduce the land we use for agriculture, then we'll not just store carbon with vegetation but with fungi too.  Become vegetarian!

Many conspicuous fungi such as the fly agaric form ectomycorrhiza with tree rootlets.
(Source: Wikipedia)

First taste of lab-grown meat

Chef Zach Tyndall prepares Good Meat’s cultivated chicken at the Eat Just office in Alameda, Calif., Wednesday, June 14, 2023. The Agriculture Department issued final approvals Wednesday, June 21 to California firms Upside Foods and Good Meat to sell the products, known as “lab grown” or “cultivated” meat. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

From Associated Press

When I told friends and family I was reporting on the first chicken meat grown from animal cells, their first comment was “Eww.” Their second comment was: “How does it taste?”

The short answer (you’ve probably heard this sentence before in other contexts): Tastes like chicken.

The longer answer, which folds in the “Eww” response, is more nuanced. Yes, it’s strange to think of eating a totally new kind of meat — chicken that doesn’t come from a chicken, meat that will be sold as “cell-cultivated” chicken after the U.S. Agriculture Department on Wednesday gave the green light to two California firms, Upside Foods and Good Meat.

But it’s also interesting (and exciting!) to taste test the first offerings of a new era in meat production, which aims to eliminate harm to billions of animals slaughtered for food — and to dramatically reduce the environmental effects of grazing, growing feed for those animals and dealing with their animal waste.

I’m a lifelong meat eater. I’m also a victim of the “meat paradox,” a term scientists use to describe the psychological conflict that occurs in people who like to eat meat but don’t like to contemplate the animals that died providing it.

As someone who has reported on food-borne illness outbreaks and slaughterhouse safety, I’m keenly aware that the chicken on my dinner plate probably suffered to get there. And that fact makes me uneasy if I dwell on it too much.

So I was open to trying a different kind of meat — and also curious to see if it would taste like the real thing.

I’ve tried plant-based options like the Beyond Meat sausage and the Impossible Burger and liked them, even though I didn’t think they were perfect substitutes. To be honest, the Beyond Meat sausage tasted good, but a little mealy. And the Impossible Burger was dry, although I may have cooked it too long. In both cases, I enjoyed the taste of the products but was still aware that I wasn’t actually eating pork or beef.

What about the artificiality of it all? It didn’t bother me that this new cultivated meat is made from cells that grow to epic proportions in big steel vats, only to be shaped and formed — “extruded” is the somewhat unfortunate verb that came to mind — into familiar cutlets, filets and nuggets that would look right at home on the dinner table.

But as with all food, in the end it would come down to taste. And in this case, to the larger question behind it: Is this new material in fact chicken, or is it an impostor?

In January, I traveled to the Upside Foods manufacturing plant in Emeryville, California. There, chef Jess Weaver sauteed a cultivated chicken breast in a white wine butter sauce with tomatoes, capers and green onions.

The aroma was enticing, just like any filet cooked in butter would be. And the taste was light and delicate with a tender texture, just like any chicken breast I’d make at home – if, that is, I were a chef trained at the Culinary Institute of America.

Last week, I visited the Alameda, California, plant where Good Meat is poised to begin production of its chicken products. Chef Zach Tyndall was ready with a smoked chicken salad with mayonnaise, golden raisins and walnuts. He followed it with a chicken “thigh” dish — darker meat served on a bed of potato puree with a mushroom-vegetable demi-glace, golden beets and tiny purple cauliflower florets.

The taste was richer than a chicken breast, more like the dark meat of a thigh. And the texture was both tender and chewy, like a well-cooked chicken thigh should be.

That, says Tyndall, is the whole point.

“It needs to be as lifelike as possible for it to catch on,” he said.

While “lifelike” is an interesting word, from my side of the fork I think this will catch on. There are still huge hurdles — how to scale up manufacturing and pare back costs, experts say, and the lingering question of whether chicken without the bird is, in fact, chicken — but if you’re basing it on authentic taste, I’ll leave you with this:

Please pass the “chicken.”

Meat production is a significant contributor to global warming.   As for saying "ewww" when you hear it's mad in a factory, have you seen what a slaughterhouse looks like?  Have you seen the filth animals on farms live in?  Vat meat is an obvious next step in agriculture, one that is less cruel, less polluting and produces fewer greenhouse gases than the "natural" method.   But can vat meat be called vegetarian, I wonder?  

Super climate action tipping points

When I saw the headline, I thought of climate tipping points. But these are tipping points in things which will reduce and reverse emissions.

With wind and solar and batteries and EVs, there were steep learning curves. Initially, the new technologies were very expensive, and volumes produced/sold were very low. In fact, they had to be subsidised at first, with wind and solar receiving high feed-in tariffs and EVs getting tax refunds or subsidies. But the learning curve processes worked. As production expanded, costs fell, which allowed sales to increase which led to further cost declines, and so it went. Today, wind and solar are the cheapest source of bulk energy. In Australia, early and vigorous support for rooftop solar led to precipitous declines costs as everybody in the system (electricians, local councils, the grid managers, panel/inverter importers) learnt how to install solar panels, connect them to the grid, etc. Today, rooftop solar is widespread and "normal" in Australia.

I have seen the argument that if we had started the subsidies for wind and solar and EVS earlier, we'd have started moving down the learning curve earlier, and we'd be closer to a zero-carbon grid. And I think that's true. What the Guardian's piece suggests is that we can repeat this process with other sources of emissions. Which makes a lot of sense (try telling that to the Right, though)

Three “super-tipping points” for climate action could trigger a cascade of decarbonisation across the global economy, according to a report.

Relatively small policy interventions on electric cars, plant-based alternatives to meat and green fertilisers would lead to unstoppable growth in those sectors, the experts said.

But the boost this would give to battery and hydrogen production would mean crucial knock-on benefits for other sectors including energy storage and aviation.

Urgent emissions cuts are needed to avoid irreversible climate breakdown and the experts say the super-tipping points are the fastest way to drive global action, offering “plausible hope” that a rapid transition to a green economy can happen in time.

The tipping points occur when a zero-carbon solution becomes more competitive than the existing high-carbon option. More sales lead to cheaper products, creating feedback loops that drive exponential growth and a rapid takeover. The report, launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said the three super-tipping points would cut emissions in sectors covering 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Speedy action is vital to help avoid triggering disastrous tipping points in the climate system. Scientists said recently that global heating had driven the world to the brink of multiple tipping points with global impacts, including the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap and a key current in the north Atlantic.

“With time running out, there is a need for action to be targeted,” said Mark Meldrum, at the consultancy Systemiq, which produced the report with partners including the University of Exeter, UK. Each super-tipping point crossed raises the chance of crossing others, he said. “That could set off a cascade to steer us away from a climate catastrophe.”

The tipping point for electric vehicles is very close with sales soaring, the report says. Setting dates around the world for the end of sales of fossil-fuel powered vehicles, such as the 2030 date set for new vehicles by the UK and 2035 in China, drives further growth, the report adds.

This scale-up means the batteries used will become cheaper and these can be deployed as storage for wind and solar power, further accelerating the growth of renewables. More green energy means lower electricity bills, in turn making heat pumps even more cost-effective.

The second super-tipping point is setting mandates for green fertilisers, to replace current fertilisers, which are produced from fossil gas. Ammonia is a key ingredient and can be made from hydrogen produced by renewable energy, combined with nitrogen from the air.

Governments requiring a growing proportion of fertiliser to be green will drive a scale-up and cost reductions in the production of green hydrogen, the report says. That then supports long-distance aviation and shipping, and steel production, which will rely on hydrogen to end their carbon emissions. Mandates are being considered with India, for example, targeting 5% green fertiliser production by 2023–24 and 20% by 2027–28.

The third super-tipping point is helping alternative proteins to beat animal-based proteins on cost, while at least matching them on taste. Meat and dairy cause about 15% of global emissions. Public procurement of plant-based meat and dairy replacements by government departments, schools and hospitals could be a powerful lever, the report says.

Increasing uptake would cut the emissions from cattle and reduce the destruction of forests for pasture land. A 20% market share by 2035 would mean 400m-800m hectares of land would no longer be needed for livestock and their fodder, equivalent to 7-15% of the world’s farmland today, the report estimated. That land could then be used for the restoration of forests and wildlife, removing CO2 from the air.

Tipping points already passed within countries include electric car sales in Norway and the plunge in coal-powered electricity in the US in the past decade.

“We need to find and trigger positive socioeconomic tipping points if we are to limit the risk from damaging climate tipping points,” said Prof Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter. “This non-linear way of thinking about the climate problem gives plausible grounds for hope: the more that gets invested in socioeconomic transformation, the faster it will unfold – getting the world to net zero greenhouse gas emissions sooner.”

The same argument potentially applies to things like small modular reactors (SMRs), electric planes, green steel production, etc.