Food For thought — the ecological cost of feeding 8 billion people

In my previous posts (here), I shared unequivocal scientific evidence behind human-induced climate change and discussed some underlying reasons for elevated CO2 levels in our atmosphere. In this post, I will focus on the environmental cost of producing food for eight billion humans. I will discuss following topics:

• Food-related emissions
• Deforestation
• How do we feed 8 billion people today?
• Food wastage epidemic
• What can you do to help?

Food production is responsible for . Considering food is the most basic of human needs, this isn’t so bad, right? Unfortunately, the problem becomes evident when we look at absolute numbers. Global food production contributes nearly 14 billion tons of per year — at this rate, our food supply alone would use up the by 2045. There is no way to achieve our climate goals without cutting food emissions.

50–60% of all food related emissions are associated with livestock (meat and dairy); however, we only get 20% of our daily calorific intake from animal sources.

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Methane emissions from cattle and landfills, CO2 emissions from burning rice straw are well known problems regarding food production. But you may not have heard of ‘Land use’ emissions. , ‘Human activities related to land use influence the exchange of greenhouse gases between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere and hence have an impact on climate change’. When forests are cut down by humans, the trees release their stored carbon into the atmosphere in the form of CO2, resulting in ‘land use’ related emissions.

Deforestation — causes and impact

The following illustration took me by surprise. Nearly 50% of all habitable land on Earth’s surface is used by humans for agriculture. Even more shockingly, 77% of all agricultural land is used for producing meat and dairy.

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This may be wishful thinking, but if humans stopped consuming animal products and instead switched to a plant-based diet, we could ‘rewild’ 30% of Earth’s habitable land (equal to five Amazon rainforests). Rewilding is the process of letting nature do its thing — look what happened in after humans abandoned the city due to the nuclear tragedy in 1986.

Here’s another disturbing fact: all the giraffes, cheetahs, lions, tigers, bears, wildebeest, zebras, elephants, and countless other wild mammals put together make up only 6% of Earth’s mammal biomass (excluding humans); rest is all from livestock. We have decimated the biodiversity on our planet.

Source: ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

As I was recovering from COVID last week, my mind went back to the origins of the deadly disease. The UN environment chief said this in April 2020: “Nature is sending us a message with the coronavirus pandemic. Failing to take care of the planet means not taking care of ourselves”. Maybe you don’t feel as strongly about saving endangered plant/animal species but saving humans from deadly diseases should motivate you to stop deforestation.

Climate change and deforestation are a deadly combination. Human land-use for agriculture and oil production results in deforestation and biodiversity loss, which in-turn reduces Earth’s ability to sequester or absorb carbon. According to the , ‘Irreplaceable ecosystems like parts of the Amazon rainforest are turning from carbon sinks into carbon sources due to deforestation’. As the globe warms, rising land and ocean temperatures lead to even more, creating a vicious cycle. We must stop deforestation right away and instead start the process of rewilding large swathes of land that are currently used to support livestock.

We need to address the cow in the room…

Despite the CO2 emissions and deforestation associated with the meat industry, proponents of meat & dairy always talk about it as the only viable source of protein. So, I decided to compare a few common sources of protein on three different metrics — CO2-eq emissions, land-use, and freshwater use (see plot below). As you’ll notice, anything remotely to do with cows (beef and dairy) has a ginormous ecological footprint compared to other meat options and particularly compared to plant-based proteins. It takes 2500 sq.ft. of land and 2500 liters of water to create one hamburger!

Plot created using raw data from

How do we feed 8 billion people?

Chances are, you’ve never heard of the ‘’. These two German scientists changed the course of humanity when they discovered and productized the use of ammonia fertilizers in the early 20th century. Due to WWII, widespread adoption of synthetic fertilizers truly began in the 1950s. Consequently, agricultural yields increased sharply resulting in three-fold increase in global food production over the last 50 years — in the same timeframe, total agricultural land increased by 15%. Our farmers are growing 3 times more food per hectare since 1960! If someone tells you that the iPhone is the best invention since WWII, tell them about the Haber-Bosch process.

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If we digest this more carefully, there are a couple of surprising observations:

1. Organic vs non-organic: Like me, you may have contemplated whether to buy organic or non-organic version of your favorite fruit in the supermarket. Common thought process is — ‘If I can afford it, I’ll buy organic as it must be healthier and better for the planet’. However, as reported in , ‘The common perception that organic food is by default better, or is an ideal way to reduce environmental impact is a clear misconception. Across several metrics, organic agriculture actually proves to be more harmful for the world’s environment than conventional agriculture’. Although regenerative and organic farming is definitely part of the solution, today the yields in an organic farm are than inorganic farms. For now, we cannot feed the world with organic farming alone — just look at what happened in last year.
2. Food per capita has increased: From the graph above, we see that food production per capita has increased by 40–50% over the last 50 years. It is true that fewer people are undernourished today than they were , but that has more to do with socio-economic equality. The underlying reason may be related to obesity and food wastage. The following plot shows how obesity has increased in recent decades. Food wastage is mankind at its worst and deserves a separate section.

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Food wastage — humanity’s dumbest problem

According to , ‘In the U.S., a staggering 38% of all food goes unsold or uneaten. It’s valued at $444 billion, roughly 2% of U.S. GDP, and it has the same climate footprint as the entire U.S. aviation industry (passenger, commercial, and military)’. According to the , nearly 30% of harvested food is lost globally. At the same time, 250 million people (4% of human population) are living on the verge of starvation. In the developed world, food wastage is primarily related to consumer habits while in the developing world, a lot of food is lost due to lack of refrigeration and supply chain spoilage.

Imagine walking out of the supermarket with 4 bags and dropping one of them before you reach your car. This is a problem unique to humans, a problem of abundance and overconsumption. We can not claim to be the smartest creatures on the planet until we fix this problem.

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A staggering 6% of global greenhouse emissions are associated with production of food that is never eaten. Half of that is related to consumer waste which is completely in our control. The other half has to do with supply chains; you might think you have no control over this, but you can help by eating locally produced food. Look for fruits and veggies that are locally grown during your next visit to the grocery store.

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According to , 20% of global methane emissions are associated with landfills — methane is responsible for 25% of global warming. If we add up the emissions due to uneaten food and landfills. The food wastage epidemic is responsible for 8-10% of CO2-eq emissions globally. That’s the same amount as all ! How did we get here?!

What are the most promising solutions?

I do not have a degree in Agriculture, so, I will let experts explain the path towards ensuring a sustainable food supply. I really like this article by c. Here’s their five-step approach to reducing food emissions:

1. Step One: Freeze Agriculture’s Footprint
2. Step Two: Grow More on Farms We’ve Got
3. Step Three: Use Resources More Efficiently
4. Step Four: Shift Diets
5. Step Five: Reduce Waste

What can you do?

Changing food habits is very difficult. Some of you may have evolved to eat more meat or consume more dairy. Maybe you have limited food options in your supermarket. However, humans have changed their diets many times, from the time of hunter-gatherers, to the first agricultural revolution that resulted in mass cultivation of crops 10,000 years ago, to the sugar-rich and processed food diet of the modern era. “What makes us human is our ability to find a meal in virtually any environment”, says biological anthropologist William Leonard of Northwestern University. Read more about evolution of human diet in this fascinating article here.

Here are some things you can do to reduce your food-related ecological footprint:

1. Stop eating beef, lamb and mutton. When the urge to eat meat is too great, eat smaller portions or eat plant-based meat. Reducing meat consumption is better for the environment and your personal health. Watch ‘’ on Netflix if you are on the fence about quitting meat.
2. Reduce consumption of dairy. If everyone on the planet consumed 3 cups of dairy every day (as recommended by ), we would emit 7 billion tons of CO2 (14% of global emissions) and require 1/5th of all habitable land on Earth to produce milk alone.
3. Poultry has the least footprint among all animal products; if you must be a carnivore sometimes, eat these living dinosaurs and feel proud of being on top of the food chain!
4. Chocolate and coffee are absolutely delicious, but they are also quite . Consider replacing one cup of coffee with a cup of loose leaf tea — I am personally trying to reduce my coffee intake these days. A latte or Indian filter coffee is significantly worse than black coffe/tea due to, you guessed it, milk. Every small step matters.
5. Minimize consumption of rice if you can — methane from flooded rice paddy fields and burning rice straw are a big source of food emissions. Wheat and maize haveper calorie compared to rice.
6. STOP WASTING FOOD. Buy what you need and be prepared to walk/run/bike/drive to the supermarket if you run out of food at home. It’s better to have an empty fridge than an overstocked one.

Hopefully I was able to convince you that we cannot achieve our climate goals without changing what you eat, how much you eat and what you discard. My family has been 95% vegan since 2018; 5% cheat days are still reserved for Napolitana pizza or Shahi paneer! Our daughter is growing up without drinking a glass of milk every day and her bones seem to be doing fine. We give her lots of tofu, mushrooms, lentils, veggies, fruits to make sure she is eating a balanced diet. We hardly throw away any food. We compost food scraps in our backyard.

There are many things about climate change that are scary and not directly in our control — for example, can we improve solar efficiency further, can we find lithium ion battery alternatives before the mines are exhausted, can we revamp power grids to deliver renewable energy on demand, can we replace concrete with sustainable materials in construction — but the one aspect that’s completely in your control is your diet. No one can stop you from lowering your food-related ecological footprint. Making minor tweaks to your diet can have a major impact in our fight against climate change. In my next post, I will discuss a difficult subject — can capitalism and environmentalism co-exist? Stay tuned.

If you have reached the end of this article, thank you for sparing five minutes of your time. But for those who scrolled to the end and prefer a visual medium (I am in that boat too, by the way), here’s a nice video by vox.com that explains food related emissions in a simple way. I learned a lot from watching this.