British People Can Make It Happen!

Feeling defeated from the findings from the last post, I have decided to look at the situation for the Europeans and see what difference it makes if dietary changes are made to reduce meat consumption. Also, I will again try to put the findings into context when compared to the overall carbon emission and other forms of carbon mitigation strategy.

The results from this review of many studies show that the potential to reduce GHG emissions from food consumption through dietary change can be substantial in regions with affluent diet. The reduction potential seems mainly to depend on the amount and type of meat and animal products included in the diet. Diets in which all animal products (vegan), meat (vegetarian) or ruminant meat are removed have the lowest GHG emissions. See figure 1. This confirms the general consensus that going vegan is good. But how effective is this in reality? 

Percentage wise, going vegan in EU has a greater impact on its overall GHG emission than the US. The review shows that food consumption accounts for 15-35% of European climate impact whereas in the US it is less than 10%. (This is based on the following figures. The CO2 emissions per capita per year is around 0.9-1.7 for processes of production and 1.4-3.2 tons if including transport and retail. According to EEA (2012), each EU citizen is responsible for 9 tons of CO2 emission every year). If the whole of EU undergoes dietary change to adopt either vegetarian or vegan diet or even just avoid eating beef and lamb, there could be a 4-20% reduction in GHG emissions per capita. This is very exciting and promising indeed!

For example, according to the committee on climate change in the UK, we have done extremely well so far. Not only has the first carbon budget target been met, the reduction rate currently also means we may deliver even more reduction in the second and third phase. However, the projection shows that we are not on track to meet the fourth, which covers the period 2023-27. 

To be able to meet the target of fourth carbon budget, there needs to be a reduction of 594m tons of CO2 in total, which is equivalent to an annual reduction of 118.8m tons. Given the population will increase to around 70m in 2025, a reduction of 4-20% of GHG emissions per capita means dietary change could help meet 21%- 106% of the required reduction! Therefore, at least for the UK alone, dietary change is indeed very promising!

Meat Free Monday in the US! Feel good or bad?

During my last post, I promised to explore some of the dark side of switching from an omnivorous diet to ones that are either vegetarian or vegan. I have to admit, as the majority of the research articles do generally conclude that reducing meat, particularly red meat, is more environmental-friendly, that it was a bit difficult to find counter arguments. Luckily, I came across some research papers that provide a different point of view. Notably, the researches published by Dr. Capper Jude are pro-meat and her arguments do raise some interesting aspects that I have not thought of. Click here to see her series of lectures on meat and sustainability (http://wsu.academia.edu/JudeCapper). Over the next few post, I will examine critically her comments and against a wholesale change to plant-based diets. This post will focus on whether reducing meat consumption will have a significant or negligible effect upon greenhouse gas emission in the US.

According to Dr. Capper Jude in this study, she claims that movements such as ‘Meat free Monday’ will do nothing to help the environment as the reduction in US national GHG emission will only be as low as 0.3%. Let’s give her the benefit of doubt and suppose her statistics are correct, what does the reduction of 0.3% in US national GHG emission mean when put into context? The US commitment to reduce GHG emissions under President Obama's administration targeted to reduce emissions by 2020 to 17 percent below 2005 levels. Given the emission level in 2005 was 6,741 million tons, the emission would have to be decreased to 5595 million tons in 2020. Therefore, the rate of reduction will have to be 67.5 m tons of CO2 reduction roughly every year from 2005 to 2020.  In contrast, a reduction of 0.3% in annual US national GHG emission means that 20.2m tons of CO2 reduction every year. Note that the former statement is focusing on the rate of decrease while the latter is simply a reduction of constant. Therefore, from this point of view, it does seem that by going meat free Monday, there will be limited effect on reducing GHG emissions. Nonetheless, it is some progress. If the whole of US stop producing meat, following her statistics, around 141m tons of CO2 equivalent would be saved each year. This is equivalent to 63 % of the amount of GHG emissions saved by a constant increase in fuel efficiency of 5% each year from 2017 to 2025, which is kind of impressive.

Personally I find her statistics somewhat questionable, partly due to her affiliation with many meat industries and organisations, and partly because the figure she quoted from US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA 2012) only includes limited aspects through which livestock farming could contribute to GHG emissions.

Her figure is likely to be underestimated for two reasons. Firstly, as it only includes the GHG emissions from US national meat production and does not include meat that are imported from other countries such as Brazil. Not only would this increase the carbon footprint of meat consumption through increasing mileage, it also shifts environmental burden e.g. eutraphication, pollution, and land conversion to other country. However, it is known that carbon footprint weighs less significantly for meat product. Buying local meatonly reduces carbon footprint by 1-3%. Secondly, the analysis of agriculture GHG emissions only include aspects such as agricultural soil management, enteric fermentation, manure management and rice cultivation. It does not include aspects such as process of land conversion to croplands and grasslands. They amount to 5.9 and 23.9 Tg CO2 equivalent annually respectively, which are around 30m tons collectively every year. This figure pushes the CO2 saving upto 170 tons roughly, however dwarfed shyly in comparison to other sectors in the US.

So overall, with the information that I have researched so far, it does seem that going vegan has somewhat limited effect in reducing CO2 emission. 

To be honest, I am fairly disappointed by the findings so far, as much as I’d like to convince myself that eating more vegetables and less meat is helping the environment. However, it must be noted that this is partly due to the fact that the carbon emissions per capita in the US is significantly larger than other countries and the food industry does not take up as much proportion of the carbon emission in comparison. The saving in carbon emissions through having less meat is still comparable to carbon emissions in other countries. Additionally, in the UK and other countries whether developed or developing, there might be a different story to be told!

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.