Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet.
In the most comprehensive study on the matter to date, scientists at the University of Oxford (UK) and Agroscope, an agricultural research institute in Switzerland, analysed data covering 40 different agricultural goods produced by more than 38,000 farms in around 120 countries. Together, the farms studied account for around 90% of the food that is consumed throughout the world.
Researchers examined a range of environmental factors, including greenhouse gas emissions, ocean acidification, water pollution, and land and water use, and assessed the products’ impacts from farm to table.
The results, published in Science, showed that if meat and dairy consumption were eliminated, global farmland could be cut by more than 75% and still provide enough food for the world’s population.
“A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use, and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions."
“Agriculture is a sector that spans the multitude of environmental problems,” Poore continued. “Really, it is animal products that are responsible for so much of this. Avoiding consumption of animal products delivers far better environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable meat and dairy.”
The analysis showed that meat and dairy have an outsized environmental impact compared to their contributions to a person’s diet. Although meat and dairy products provide only 18% of total calories and 37% of protein, they use 83% of farmland and account for 60% of the greenhouse gases emitted by agricultural activities, according to the study.
Researchers found that environmental impacts varied significantly within the same products. Raising beef cattle on deforested land, for example, generates 12 times the amount of greenhouse gases and uses 50 times more land than raising cattle in natural pastures.
“Two things that look the same in the shops can have very different impacts on the planet,” Poore said in a statement.
The study found that even sustainably produced meat and dairy products had a bigger environmental impact than plant-based products. “Impacts of the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes,” the study states. For example, even the lowest impact beef contributes six times more greenhouse gases and uses 36 times more land than plant proteins such as peas.
The new research has received strong praise from other food experts. Professor Gidon Eshel, at Bard College, US, said: “I was awestruck. It is really important, sound, ambitious, revealing, and beautifully done.”
He said previous work on quantifying farming’s impacts, including his own, had taken a top-down approach using national level data, but the new work used a bottom-up approach, with farm-by-farm data. “It is very reassuring to see they yield essentially the same results. But the new work has very many important details that are profoundly revealing.”
Full text available here [accessed 05/06/2018]
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The views expressed by our Research News contributors are not necessarily the views of The Vegan Society.
The views expressed by our Research News contributors are not necessarily the views of The Vegan Society.
