Driver, Kelly, and JH Health. “Food And Climate Change”. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School Of Public Health, 2021, http://www.foodsystemprimer.org/food-production/food-and-climate-change/.
So what exactly does it mean to say that we’re eating our planet to death? As we all know by now, climate change is having a big impact on everyone, and some people are more fortunate than others. But how is they way we eat have anything to do with this? Well, there’s a lot more connection than what meets the eye.
The modern diet of the human is truly the pinnacle of evolution, but we couldn’t have gotten to where we are now without agriculture. And agriculture has always been subjected to the climate, which determines what you can grow and where; in the past the climate has been rather predictable and stable. Recently the climate, and more short term, the weather is becoming more and more unpredictable and surprisingly the way we’ve industrialized agriculture has a direct impact on this. Industrialized agriculture relies heavily on inputs of fertilizer, monoculture crop systems, and intensive animal husbandry, which reduce the wild biodiversity and emit greenhouse gases. It’s been shown that ruminant animals like sheep and cattle, the animals we call the red meat animals are responsible for producing up to 30% of the greenhouse gases associated with agriculture production (Driver, and Health).
All this intensive agriculture across the globe has created a negative and viscous feedback cycle. As the climate and weather destabilize, and cause crop failure and food scarcity, the more and more farmers are drawn to extreme measure of agriculture, relying more and more on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and turing to intensive animal rearing, all this to take advantage of the ever increasingly scarce farmable weather. But this is where the cycle comes in, the more these drastic measures are taken, the more greenhouse gases are put into the atmosphere, and the more the climate and weather destabilize.
However as bleak as this all sounds there is hope! Our hope is to move to a more plant-centric diet. I know this is a tired old mantra but it’s true. If we look at the total greenhouse gases produced in agricultural production, a total of 83%, the other 17% is transportation and retail, producing crops is relatively low (Driver, and Health). If we switched over to a plant-based diet we have the potential to greatly reduce our emissions, as crop production will produce about 18% of the total emissions on production compared to intensive animal husbandry at about 48% total production emission (Driver, and Health).
Or if going vegetarian isn’t quite your jam, then this is the alternate option- regenerative agriculture. This system of farming seeks to bring back the biodiversity in the landscape. With using multiple species of crops grown together they compliment each other and the best part? This method helps take CO2 out of the atmosphere. But this system also needs the animals too! As they provide the manure for this whole system to work. So in this case, you eating animal products helps the environment.
Like I said before, the future isn’t as bleak as it sounds, there are solutions and the small changes really do add up. So go ahead and try that veggie dish you’ve always wanted to try, and support those new, hip, and eco friendly farms, after all you’re saving the planet.