Transforming meat based to plant based diet is addressing food security and climate crisis in this millenium: A review
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
All leaders of the world are at least climate-change aware, if not literate. All nations’ state leaders who participated in the recently concluded 77th United Nations General Assembly consider climate change as the most challenging concern of this century. It is the aim of this paper to present how 50% reduction in global green house gas emissions by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050 can be achieved to avoid a 1.5 degree centigrade rise in global temperature and its twin effects of global food shortage and hunger. Transforming meat based to plant- centric diet by reducing meat intake is the way forward. Meat is a very “resource use intensive” food. It takes 75 times more energy to produce meat than corn, 4 to 5 times more water than rice, about 8 to 10 times more land for one person to be nourished. The 3.5 billion pastures and meadows that are used for grazing ruminants animals can be freed and 56 % of the 1.2 billion grains produced annually and fed to animals (that include the pets-dogs, cats)and 90% of all soybeans are fed to animals can be used directly as human food. This implies that we do not need to increase food production by 60% or more when the population in 2050 reach about 9.1 billion or more. Animals are the main cause of deforestation and deforestation is the main cause of biodiversity loss, soil erosion/land degradation, loss of watershed led to disrupted hydrologic cycle, diminishing the supply of fresh/clean water in rural areas which are not serviced by local water utilities. Protein-based meat production is very inefficient, resource-use wise. Meat production requires lots of land, water, nutrients and energy, thus high energy footprint and ecological footprint in general. About 350 million tons of meat is consumed yearly which require slaughtering 80 billion animals per year. The greenhouse gas emissions equivalent in consuming this much meat is 72 % of the 31, 5 billion tons of CO2eq.emissions.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
References
Alfodi, T., Niggli, U., Spiess, E. and Besson, J. M. (1995). Input and output of energy for different crops in bio dynamic bio organic and conventional production systems in a long term field trial in Switzerland. Bulletin SGPW/SSA, No. 4, pp:38.
Badgley, C., Moghtader, J., Quintero, E., Zakem, E., Chappell, M. J., Avile´s-Va´zquez, K., Samulon, A. and Perfecto, I. (2006). Organic agriculture and the global food supply. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 22:86-108.
Byjoel, B. (2022). Global Food Crisis Looms As Fertilizer Supplies Dwindle. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/global-food-crisis-looms-as-fertilizer-supplies-dwindle Accessed : Sept.19, 2022.
Campari, J. (2018). How our food system is eating away at nature, and our future. World Economic Forum blog post. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/we-must-rethink-our-food-systemfrom-planet-to-plate . Accessed: 9.8.2022.
Carolan, M. (2018). The real cost of cheap food. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264975179_The_Real_Cost_of_Cheap_Food Accessed : Oct.5, 2022.
CLARK, J. (2009). TheHaber Process.http://www.chemguide.co.uk/physical/equilibria/ haber.html.Accessed : July 10, 2022.
Clark, M. and Tilman, D. (2017). Comparative Analysis Of Environmental Impacts Of Agricultural Production Systems, Agricultural Input Efficiency, And Food Choice. Environmental Research Letters, 12(6), [064016]. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6cd5 Accessed: Sept.10, 2022.
Edwards, C. A. (1987). The Concept of Integrated Systems In Lower Input Sustainable Agriculture. American Journal of Alternative Agriculture, 2:148-152.
Gundogmus, E. and Bayramoglu, Z. (2006). Energy Input Use on Organic Farming: A Comparative Analysis on Organic versus Conventional Farms in Turkey. Journal of Agronomy, 5:16-22.
Follett, R. F., Kimble, J. M. and Lal, R. (2001). The potential of US grazing lands to sequester carbon and mitigate the greenhouse effect. Boca Raton, FL, USA: Lewis Publishers. https://www.routledge.com/The-Potential-of-US-Grazing-Lands-to-Sequester-Carbon-and-Mitigate-the/Follett-Kimble/p/book/9781566705547. Accessed : Sept .24, 2022.
Geels, F. W., McMeekin, A., Mylan, J. and Southerton, D. (2015). A critical appraisal of Sustainable Consumption and Production research: the reformist, revolutionary and reconfiguration positions. Global Environmental Change, 34:1-12.
Guinto, R. R. (2021). The Planetary Health Diet: Advancing Human Nutrition and Safeguarding the Environment in the Anthropocene. Plenary paper discussed during the 9th ICST (International Conference on Integrating Science and Technology for Sustainable Development) held on November 2021 at Bankok ,Thailand.
GRAIN, Greenpeace International & Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) ( 2021). New research shows 50 year binge on chemical fertilisers must end to address the climate crisis. https://grain.org/en/article/6761-new-research-shows-50-year-binge-on-chemical-fertilisers-must-end-to-address-the-climate-crisis. Accessed January 8,2022.
GRAIN (2009). The International Food Systems and the Climate Crisis. Climate Crisis Sp.Issue. Seedling Oct 2009.www.grain .org. The complete references used by Grain technical persons can be accessed at http:www.grain.org/go/ climatecrisisrefs Accessed : Sept.10, 2022.
IPCC (2019). Climate Change and Land: An IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems; IPCC: Geneva, Switzerland, 2019.
Konuma, H. (2018). Status and Outlook of Global Food Security and the Role of Underutilized Food Resources: Sago Palm, 3-16 p. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-5269-9_1. Accessed: Sept.30, 2022.
Lampkin, N. and Padel, S. (1994). The Economics of Organic Farming an International Perspective. CAB International, Oxford, pp.480.
LaSalle, T. J. and Hepperly, P. (2014). Regenerative Organic Farming: A Solution to Global Warming. Rodale Institute. https://rodaleinstitute.org/education/resources/regenerative-agriculture-and-the-soil-carbon-solution/.pdf Accessed : Oct.1, 2022
Ozkan, B., Kurklu, A. and Akcaoz, H. (2003). An Output Input Energy Analysis In Greenhouse Vegetable Production A Case Study For Antalya Region Of Turkey. Biomass Bioenergy, 26:189-195.
Magdoff, F. and Weil, R. R. (2004). Soil organic matter in sustainable agric. CRC Press LLC, pp. 398.
Oo, M. S., Mendoza, T. C., Paelmo, R. F. and Organo, N. D. (2021). Comparative Energy Bill Of Inbred And Hybrid Rice Genotypes Grown Under Conventional And Organic Production System In Bay, Laguna, Philippines. International Journal of Agricultural Technology, 17:169-184.
McLaughlin, N. B, Hiba, A., Wall, G. J. and King, D. J. (2000). Comparison of energy inputs for inorganic fertilizer and manure-based corn production. Canadian Agricultural Engineering, 42:1-14.
Montemayor, L., Mendoza, T. C. and Villegas, P. (2021). Need For Progressive Transition From Chemical-Based To Organic Agriculture. In: Conference Zoom Conference on National Organic Agriculture Programat: Philippines. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351303638_0 Accessed :Sept.10, 2022.
Melero, S., Ruiz Porras, J. C., Herencia, J. G. and Madejon, E. (2005). Chemical and biochemical properties in a silty loam soil under conventional and organic management, Soil and Tillage Research, 90:162-170.
Mendoza, T. C. (2021). True, Full, Fair Costs Accounting of Rice: The Staple Food of Half the People of the World. Plenary paper discussed during the 9th International Conference on Integration of Science and Technology for Sustainable Development 2021 (9th ICIST 2021) through Webinar-zoom 19 November 2021, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL), Bangkok, Thailand.
Mendoza, T. C. (2010). Organic Agriculture: The Logical sequence to Chemical, Agriculture. Annals of Tropical Research, 32:112-129.
Mendoza, T. C. (2005). An Energy-Based Analysis Of Organic, Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA) and Conventional Rice Production In The Philippines. Philippine Agricultural Scientist, 88:257-267.
Muller, Alexander, Prakash, A. and Lazutkaite, E. (2022). Hunger - 4 C's Converge Into Unprecedented Food Crisis.https://www.thecitizen.in/health/hunger-4-cs-converge-into-unprecedented-food-crisis-320711
Ted, N. and Shah, S. (2022). In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong. Retried from https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farming-crisis/). Sept.11, 2022.
Pathak, B. and Binning, A. S. (1985). Energy Use Pattern and Potential For Energy Saving In Rice Wheat Cultivation. Energy in Agriculture, 4:271-278.
Ritchie, H. (2021). If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares. Retried from https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets. Accessed : Sept.18, 2022.
Winkler, K., Fuchs, R. and Rounsevell, M. (2021). Global land use changes are four times greater than previously estimated. Nature Communications, 12:2501.
