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From Phys.org:
Global food consumption and production is seriously unbalanced. In the UK alone we threw away 4.4 million tonnes of "avoidable" food waste in 2015 – that is food that was edible before it was discarded – which equates to £13 billion worth of food wasted, or £470 per household. Meanwhile, nearly 800 million people globally are chronically undernourished.
The world population is projected to grow to 9 billion people by the middle of this century. We face a huge challenge in finding ways to adequately feed this rapidly growing population whilst also protecting the natural environment.
However it is not just the amount of food production and the balance of its distribution that are key concerns for sustainably feeding the planet. We also need to think about what we are eating.
Presently western diets are characterised by a high proportion of animal foodstuffs, and this is a problem not just for our health, but for the environment. The Hunger Project has cited climate change as one of the hidden sources of hunger. In doing so it highlights how food production and the environment are inextricably linked.
Meat and dairy production requires more land, more water and has higher greenhouse gas emissions than plant based alternatives. As the global population continues to grow, we will need to be ever more prudent with the resources that are required for food production. We must consider whether the proportion of resources currently devoted to meat and dairy production is optimal given the numbers needing to be fed and the environmental impacts such diets can cause.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @04:55PM (2 children)
thank you for the clarifications. I can't tell if you agree with the GP though, and I'm curious.
the IPCC says growing cattle for meat is worse for the environment than growing vegetables.
I thought the main two reasons were (1) methane and (2) water consumption.
as you explain, my example is bad because I didn't think of practicalities.
is the IPCC wrong, or is it just my example that's broken?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @11:04PM
The problem is that it is a complicated situation. For example, you can recycle the waste from cows to make things useful, but most figures don't factor that in. In addition, they usually compare feedlot cows on an FC-rich diet, which drastically increases methane production of the cows compared to a grass-based diet, and that is even more over a pasture cow. Plus, various estimates include and exclude various externalities.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday June 03 2017, @01:16AM
Ok look the capital of the EU is Belgium. Small country, very high population density, lots of water, rich soil. They export both pigs and beef, lots of it, and this stuff is probably pretty accurate for them, because the land they have in livestock production could do other things. They subsidize the livestock, because they don't want to be dependent on a foreign supply and find it's all been infected (for example.) If they let go of that safety net and eliminated subsidies, their livestock industry, which has a history stretching back continuously for tens of thousands of years, would essentially die. They'd import beef and pork from other areas that are less able to do other things, and improve their overall efficiency, but even a die-hard libertarian like myself can understand why they might hesitate to do this.
Most countries that are large meat exporters don't really fit that pattern though. Lots of meat is actually coming from areas that can't grow typical food crops.
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