Veganism: the new way to save the planet?

Within the last decade, a movement known as veganism has swept across many developed countries. For example, in the UK, the number ofpeople who opt for a plant-based diet has increase by threefold, reaching to542000 in 2106, equivalent to 0.85% of British Population. Among those people, the younger generation from 15-34 are the majority (42%) while the older generation (>65) only just reach 14%. It is said that social media, with the likes of Instagram, youtube videos, and blogs that espouses the benefits of having a plant-based diet is the major driving force of this trend. There are countless products in stores and contents online about ‘juice cleanse’ and ‘detox’ with plant based diets. As healthy, moral and environmental friendly as the vegan movement allegedly claim the plant-based diets are, it is important to understand the environmental implication of converting to a vegan.

The idea that plant-based diets are more sustainable partly stemmed from the concept of feed conversion e.g. - it would take greater than10 kilograms of grain to produce a kilogram of factory-farmed beef and theformer would have feed more people. This is supported by the fact that 90% of the energy is lost between each trophic level within the food chain. By opting for a plant-based diet, following this line of logic, you can save the energy that would have been lost. Additionally, livestock production often is painted with negative images of chickens, pigs and cows crowded in little space with their faecal matter, which in the public imagination is immediately linked to pollution. The crop agriculture in comparison is usually associated with the idyllic countryside with clean air and freshwater. Thus in the realm of public popular discourse, adopting a plant-based diet seems to be a much more environmental friendly option, not to mention its care for animal and alleged health benefits.

While researching for the environmental impact of plant based diets, I found that most journals do point to the possible reduction in the carbon dioxide emission and environmental impact and this is one component to achieve sustainability. For example, in this journal article, they claim that to avoid the collision of food security and food sustainability at current trends of consumption and environmental degradation, it will be necessary to dramatically reduced the consumption of meat and dairy products across the globe. In the journal article written by Pimentel and Pimentel (2003), their results show that more energy, land, and water resources are used to support a meat-based diet than a lactoovo-vegetarian one, when the calories of the food are controlled at 3533kcal per person.  According to Vanham et al (2016), for the Dutch urban citizens, by making a shift a pesco-vegetarian or vegetarian diet would reduce the water footprint by around 40%. Additional similar statistics could be found on countless web sources that suggest the positive environmental impact that plant-based diet bring.

As a geography student, I have learnt it is important to deconstruct and examine these ‘stats’ critically. So far my research has largely points to the positive side of the plant-based diet. Personally, because of this, I have tried to be vegetarian one meal per day. However, I am also aware of some negative implications this could have on the environment e.g. use of chemicals and large scale monocultural farming and the issue is definitely not as simple as the statistics itself suggest. In the next post, I will explore the more uncomfortable side of the plant-based diet that are not often mentioned in the mainstream media.

Welcome!

Surprise surprise! The Agricultural and Food Industry, according countless number of scientific journals, is a driver to the exploitation of natural resources, environmental degradation and release of greenhouse gas emission. This is hardly shocking at all and here’s why.

The impact of agriculture has long affected the natural environment and this could be traced back to as far as 8000 years ago during the Neolithic period. At the time, the agricultural revolution was already altering the environments on earth significantly. Large areas of forest were being felled and burnt to improve agricultural land. It is said that this led to an overall increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which contributed to small but sustained elevated global temperatures (Ruddiman, 2003). In addition, around 3000 years ago, the cultivation of rice in paddy field in southeast Asia contributed to a rise in methane concentration globally. Furthermore, Ruddiman (2013) suggested that the farming practices may have delayed the onset of the ice age and this is the first time this has happen in 3 million years (Fig1)!

The impacts described above pale in comparison to the impacts during and after the industrial revolution however. The onset of industrial revolution and associated exploitation of fossil fuel allowed the nitrogen in the air to be converted and utilised as fertiliser for the first time. What came after was the rapid expansion of agricultural productivity. In the post WW2 era, the Europe Union Heavily subsidised the agricultural sector. There were intense land use and application of fertiliser. The negative ramification in this period not only includes the rise in greenhouse gas globally, but also regional impacts such as eutrophication, alteration of biogeochemical flow (e.g. phosphorus and nitrogen) and decline in biodiversity (Steffen et al 2015).

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) stated that the agricultural land takes up around 40% of the world's land area in 2011. In the Amazon region 17% of the forested area has been cleared at the expense of cattle ranching in the from 1960s onwards.  The intensification of agricultural practices has led to both global and regional impacts. For example, the ammonia caused by intensive livestock rearing has led to local impacts such as eutrophication of aquatic and terrestrial environment and global impacts such as disruption of nitrogen cycle and microbiological processes. This adds onto the hotly debated topic of whether we have departed from the Holocene and entered the epoch of Anthropocene.

According to Stenfeld et al (2006), the global meat production itself accounts for up to a quarter of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, roughly 6 x 10⁹ t year-1 of GHGs as CO2-equivalents, contributing further to climate change. The emissions begin at the minute when fossil fuel is used for the clearance of forest, production of fertiliser and transportation of food, not to mention the manufacturing and packaging side of food processing. The list goes on.

There is no doubt that the anthropogenic impact of agriculture and food production has had significant impact on the environment. One might think we are basically all doomed. There seems to be no escape to our inevitable self-destruction as we continue in a business-as-usual manner. Perhaps there is still a glimpse of hope that we could mitigate or perhaps reverse such worsening trends, despite the growing population and rising proportion of middle class in the developing countries. 

It is the goal of the blog to examine such possibilities through the exploration of the rise of veganism. I will seek to explain both the local and global impacts of this trend on the environment and discuss what the future holds for us and what we, as individuals, could do to help mitigate the environmental damage caused by agricultural activities.