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29601	Environmental Impacts of Food Production	environmental-impacts-of-food	page	publish	<!-- wp:html --> <!-- formatting-options toc:false bodyClassName:topic-page --> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:owid/sticky-nav --> <!-- wp:navigation-link {"label":"Introduction","url":"#introduction","kind":"custom","isTopLevelLink":false} /--> <!-- wp:navigation-link {"label":"Key Insights","url":"#key-insights-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food","kind":"custom","isTopLevelLink":false} /--> <!-- wp:navigation-link {"label":"Data Explorer","rel":"","url":"#explore-data-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food","title":"","kind":"custom","isTopLevelLink":false} /--> <!-- wp:navigation-link {"label":"Research \u0026amp; Writing","url":"#research-and-writing","kind":"custom","isTopLevelLink":false} /--> <!-- wp:navigation-link {"label":"Charts","url":"#interactive-charts-on-environmental-impacts-of-food-production","kind":"custom","isTopLevelLink":false} /--> <!-- wp:navigation-link {"label":"Endnotes","url":"#endnotes","kind":"custom","isTopLevelLink":false} /--> <!-- wp:navigation-link {"label":"Cite This Work","url":"#citation","kind":"custom","isTopLevelLink":false} /--> <!-- wp:navigation-link {"label":"Reuse This Work","url":"#licence","kind":"custom","isTopLevelLink":false} /--> <!-- /wp:owid/sticky-nav --> <!-- wp:owid/front-matter --> <!-- wp:columns {"className":"front-matter"} --> <div class="wp-block-columns front-matter"><!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column" id="introduction"><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Agriculture has a significant environmental impact in three key ways. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>First, it requires large amounts of <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress">fresh water</a>, which can cause significant environmental pressures in regions with water stress. It needs water as input and pollutes rivers, lakes, and oceans by releasing nutrients.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>It is a crucial driver of climate change, responsible for around one-quarter of the world’s <a href="http://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions">greenhouse gas emissions</a>.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Finally, agriculture has a massive impact on the world’s environment due to its enormous <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/land-use">land use</a>. Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Large parts of the world that were once covered by <a href="http://ourworldindata.org/forests-and-deforestation">forests</a> and wildlands are now used for agriculture. This loss of natural habitat has been the main driver for reducing the world’s <a href="http://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity">biodiversity</a>. Wildlife <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/europe-mammal-comeback">can rebound</a> if we reduce agricultural land use and allow natural lands to restore.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Ensuring everyone has access to a nutritious diet sustainably is one of the most significant challenges we face. On this page, you can find our data, visualizations, and writing relating to the environmental impacts of food.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --></div> <!-- /wp:column --> <!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:group {"className":"related-topics"} --> <div class="wp-block-group related-topics"><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Related topics</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/land-use">Land use</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity">Biodiversity</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment">Hunger and Undernourishment</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions">CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions</a></li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --></div> <!-- /wp:group --></div> <!-- /wp:column --></div> <!-- /wp:columns --> <!-- /wp:owid/front-matter --> <!-- wp:owid/key-insights-slider {"title":"Key insights on the Environmental Impacts of Food","slug":"key-insights-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food"} --> <!-- wp:owid/key-insight {"title":"Food production has a large environmental impact in several ways","slug":"food-plays-a-large-role-in-many-environmental-impacts"} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>What are the environmental impacts of food and agriculture?</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The visualization here shows a summary of some of the main global impacts:</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li>Food production accounts for <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions">over a quarter</a> (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}<br></li><li>Half of the world’s habitable land <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture">is used for</a> agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free.<br></li><li>70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture{ref}FAO. (2011). The state of the world’s land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW) – Managing systems at risk. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome and Earthscan, London.{/ref}.<br></li><li>78% of global ocean and freshwater eutrophication is caused by agriculture.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} Eutrophication is the pollution of waterways with nutrient-rich water.<br></li><li>94% of non-human mammal biomass is livestock. This means livestock outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 15-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506">The biomass distribution on Earth</a>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref} This share is 97% when only land-based mammals are included.<br></li><li>71% of bird biomass is poultry livestock. This means poultry livestock outweigh wild birds by a factor of more than 3-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506">The biomass distribution on Earth</a>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref}<br></li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Tackling what we eat, and how we produce our food, plays a key role in tackling climate change, reducing water stress and pollution, restoring lands back to forests or grasslands, and protecting the world’s wildlife.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:image {"id":57954,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} --> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-57954"/></figure> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/key-insight --> <!-- wp:owid/key-insight {"title":"Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture","slug":"half-of-habitable-land-is-used-for-agriculture"} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Around half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. This is what the visualization shows.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Agricultural land is the sum of pasture used for livestock grazing, and cropland used for direct human consumption and animal feed.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Agriculture is, therefore, the world’s largest land user, taking up more area than forests, or wild grasslands.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Three-quarters of this agricultural land is used for livestock, which is pasture plus cropland used for the production of animal feed. This gives the world just 18% of global calories, and 37% of its protein. The other quarter of land is for crops for human consumption, which provide the majority of the world's calories and protein. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:owid/prominent-link {"title":"","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture","className":"is-style-thin"} /--> <!-- wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":5} --> <h5>What you should know about this data</h5> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li>Other studies find similar distributions of global land: in an analysis of how humans have transformed global land use in recent centuries, Ellis et al. (2010) found that by 2000, 55% of Earth’s ice-free (not simply habitable) land had been converted into cropland, pasture, and urban areas.{ref}Ellis, E. C., Klein Goldewijk, K., Siebert, S., Lightman, D., & Ramankutty, N. (2010). <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00540.x">Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000</a>. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19(5), 589-606.{/ref} This left only 45% as ‘natural’ or ‘semi-natural’ land.<br></li><li>The study by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018) estimates that 43% of ice- and desert-free land is used for agriculture. 83% of this is used for animal-sourced foods.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}<br></li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li>The difference in these figures is often due to the uncertainty of the size of ‘rangelands’. Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. The intensity of grazing on rangelands can vary a lot. That can make it difficult to accurately quantify how much rangelands are used for grazing, and therefore how much is used for food production.<br></li><li>But as the review above showed, despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to converge on an estimate of close to half of habitable land being used for agriculture.</li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- /wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:image {"id":29757,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} --> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic.png" alt="" class="wp-image-29757"/></figure> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/key-insight --> <!-- wp:owid/key-insight {"title":"Food is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s emissions","slug":"food-responsible-for-one-quarter-of-emissions"} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Food systems are responsible for around one-quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This includes emissions from land use change, on-farm production, processing, transport, packaging, and retail.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>We can break these food system emissions down into four broad categories:</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>30% of food emissions come directly from livestock and fisheries</strong>. Ruminant livestock – mainly cattle – for example, produce methane through their digestive processes. Manure and pasture management also fall into this category.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>1% comes from wild fisheries</strong>, most of which is fuel consumption from fishing vessels. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Crop production accounts for around a quarter of food emissions. </strong>This includes crops for human consumption and animal feed.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions.</strong> Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%).</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Finally, <strong>supply chains account for 18% of food emissions</strong>. This includes food processing, distribution, transport, packaging, and retail.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Other studies estimate that an even larger fraction – up to one-third – of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.{ref}Crippa, M., Solazzo, E., Guizzardi, D., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Tubiello, F. N., & Leip, A. J. N. F. (2021). Food systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Nature Food, 2(3), 198-209.{/ref} These differences come from the inclusion of non-food agricultural products – such as textiles, biofuels, and industrial crops – plus uncertainties in food waste and land use emissions.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:owid/prominent-link {"title":"","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions","className":"is-style-thin"} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/prominent-link --> <!-- wp:owid/prominent-link {"title":"","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food","className":"is-style-thin"} /--> <!-- wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":5} --> <h5>What you should know about this data</h5> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analysis of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. In this study, CO<sub>2</sub>eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- /wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:image {"id":28080,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} --> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food.png" alt="" class="wp-image-28080"/></figure> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/key-insight --> <!-- wp:owid/key-insight {"title":"Emissions from food alone would take us past 1.5°C or 2°C this century","slug":"food-emissions-climate-targets"} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food">One-quarter to one-third</a> of global greenhouse gas emissions come from our food systems. The rest comes from energy.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>While energy and industry make a bigger contribution than food, we must tackle <em>both</em> food and energy systems to address climate change.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Michael Clark and colleagues modeled the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be emitted from food systems this century across a range of scenarios. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In a business-as-usual scenario, the authors expect the world to emit around 1356 billion tonnes of CO<sub>2-we</sub> by 2100.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>As the visualization shows, this would take us well beyond the carbon budget for 1.5°C – we would emit two to three times more than this budget. And it would consume almost all of our budget for 2°C.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Ignoring food emissions is simply not an option if we want to get close to our international climate targets.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow – an impossibility – we would still go well beyond our 1.5°C target, and nearly miss our 2°C target.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:owid/prominent-link {"title":"","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/food-emissions-carbon-budget","className":"is-style-thin"} /--> <!-- wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":5} --> <h5>What you should know about this data</h5> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Michael Clark et al. (2020), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Clark, Michael A., Nina GG Domingo, Kimberly Colgan, Sumil K. Thakrar, David Tilman, John Lynch, Inês L. Azevedo, and Jason D. Hill. “<a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/705">Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2° C climate change targets</a>.” <em>Science</em>, 370, no. 6517 (2020): 705-708.{/ref}<br></li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li>Their ‘business-as-usual’ projection makes the following assumptions: global population increases in line with the UN’s medium fertility scenario; per capita diets change as people around the world get richer (shifting towards more diverse diets with more meat and dairy); crop yields continue to increase in line with historical improvements, and rates of food loss and the emissions intensity of food production remain constant.<br></li><li>This is measured in global warming potential CO<sub>2</sub> warming-equivalents (CO<sub>2-we</sub>). This accounts for the range of greenhouse gasses, not just CO<sub>2</sub> but also others such as methane and nitrous oxide. We look at the differences in greenhouse gas metrics at the end of our article<strong> </strong>on <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane"><strong>the carbon footprint of foods</strong></a>.<br></li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- /wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:image {"id":43395,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} --> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits.png" alt="" class="wp-image-43395"/></figure> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/key-insight --> <!-- wp:owid/key-insight {"title":"What we eat matters much more than how far it has traveled","slug":"food-emissions-local"} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But it’s often a misguided one.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Transport tends to be a small part of a food’s carbon footprint. Globally, transport accounts for just 5% of food system emissions. Most of food’s emissions come from land use change and emissions from their production on the farm.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Since transport emissions are typically small, and the differences <em>between</em> foods are large, <em>what</em> types of food we eat matter much more than how far it has traveled. Locally-produced beef will have a much larger footprint than peas, regardless of whether it’s shipped across continents or not.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The visualization shows this.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Producing a kilogram of beef, for example, emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gasses (CO<sub>2</sub>-equivalents). The production of a kilogram of peas, shown at the bottom of the chart, emits just 1 kilogram of greenhouse gasses. Whether the beef or peas are produced locally will have little impact on the difference between these two foods.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The reason that transport accounts for such a small share of emissions is that most internationally traded food travels by boat, not by plane. Very little food is air-freighted; <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-food-miles-by-method">it accounts</a> for only 0.16% of food miles.{ref}’Food miles’ are measured in tonne-kilometers which represents the transport of one tonne of goods by a given transport mode (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterways, pipeline etc.) over a distance of one kilometer. Poore & Nemecek (2018) report that of the 9.4 billion tonne-kilometers of global food transport, air-freight accounted for only 15 million. This works out at only 0.16% of the total; most foods are transported by boat.{/ref} For the few products which <em>are</em> transported by air, the emissions can be very high: flying emits 50 times more CO<sub>2</sub>eq than boat per tonne kilometer.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Unlike aviation, shipping is a very carbon-efficient way to transport goods. So, even shipping food over long distances by boat emits only small amounts of carbon. A classic example of traded food is avocados. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO<sub>2</sub>eq in transport emissions.{ref}We get this footprint value as: [9000km * 0.023kg per tonne-kilometer / 1000 = 0.207kg CO2eq per kg].{/ref}This is only around 8% of avocados’ total footprint. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:owid/prominent-link {"title":"","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local","className":"is-style-thin"} /--> <!-- wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":5} --> <h5>What you should know about this data</h5> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. In this study, CO<sub>2</sub>eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- /wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:image {"id":29928,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} --> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage.png" alt="" class="wp-image-29928"/></figure> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/key-insight --> <!-- wp:owid/key-insight {"title":"Meat and dairy foods tend to have a higher carbon footprint","slug":"meat-dairy-food-carbon-footprint"} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>When we compare the carbon footprint of different types of foods, a clear hierarchy emerges.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Meat and dairy products tend to emit more greenhouse gasses than plant-based foods. This holds true whether we compare on the basis of <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-kg-poore">mass (per kilogram)</a>, <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore">per kilocalorie</a>, or per gram of protein, as shown in the chart.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Within meat and dairy products, there is also a consistent pattern: larger animals tend to be less efficient and have a higher footprint. Beef typically has the largest emissions; followed by lamb; pork; chicken; then eggs and fish.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:owid/prominent-link {"title":"","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local","className":"is-style-thin"} /--> <!-- wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":5} --> <h5>What you should know about this data</h5> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li>This data presents global average values. For some foods – such as beef – there are large differences depending on where it is produced, and the farming practices used. Nonetheless, the lowest-carbon beef and lamb still have a higher carbon footprint than most plant-based foods.<br></li><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. For CO<sub>2</sub>eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- /wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- /wp:owid/key-insight --> <!-- wp:owid/key-insight {"title":"There are also large differences in the carbon footprint of the same foods","slug":"differences-carbon-footprint-foods"} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the food system is to change <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local"><em>what</em> we eat</a>. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Adopting a more plant-based diet by reducing our consumption of carbon-intensive foods such as meat and dairy – especially beef and lamb – is an effective way for consumers to reduce their carbon footprint.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>But there are also opportunities to reduce emissions by optimizing for more carbon-efficient practices and locations to produce foods. For some foods – in particular, beef, lamb, and dairy – there are large differences in emissions depending on how and where they’re produced. This is shown in the chart.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Producing 100 grams of protein from beef emits 25 kilograms of carbon dioxide-equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq), on average. But this ranges from 9 kilograms to 105 kilograms of CO<sub>2</sub>eq – a ten-fold difference.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Optimizing production in places where these foods are produced with a smaller footprint could be another effective way of reducing global emissions.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:owid/prominent-link {"title":"","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat","className":"is-style-thin"} /--> <!-- wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":5} --> <h5>What you should know about this data</h5> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. For CO<sub>2</sub>eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- /wp:owid/technical-text --> <!-- wp:image {"id":29926,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} --> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-29926"/></figure> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- /wp:owid/key-insight --> <!-- /wp:owid/key-insights-slider --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>Explore data on the Environmental Impacts of Food</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe class="wp-block-full-content-width" src="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/food-footprints?facet=none&Commodity+or+Specific+Food+Product=Commodity&Environmental+Impact=Carbon+footprint&Kilogram+%2F+Protein+%2F+Calories=Per+kilogram&By+stage+of+supply+chain=false&country=Bananas~Beef+%28beef+herd%29~Beef+%28dairy+herd%29~Cheese~Eggs~Lamb+%26+Mutton~Milk~Maize~Nuts~Pig+Meat~Peas~Potatoes~Poultry+Meat~Rice~Tomatoes~Wheat+%26+Rye~Tofu+%28soybeans%29~Prawns+%28farmed%29&hideControls=false" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; min-height: 740px; max-height: 950px; height: 100vh; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:owid/research-and-writing --> <!-- wp:group {"className":"wp-block-research-and-writing"} --> <div class="wp-block-group wp-block-research-and-writing"><!-- wp:heading --> <h2 id="research-and-writing">Research & Writing</h2> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:group {"className":"research-and-writing__top"} --> <div class="wp-block-group research-and-writing__top"><!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local","mediaId":47098,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/environmental-impacts-food-thumbnail.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But transport tends to account for a small share of greenhouse gas emissions. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it’s come from?</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:group {"className":"research-and-writing__top-right"} --> <div class="wp-block-group research-and-writing__top-right"><!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"Food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions","mediaId":54161,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>One-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food’s emissions?</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:group --> <div class="wp-block-group"><!-- wp:group {"className":"research-and-writing__shorts"} --> <div class="wp-block-group research-and-writing__shorts"><!-- wp:heading {"level":5} --> <h5>More key articles on the Environmental Impacts of Food</h5> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:group --> <div class="wp-block-group"><!-- wp:heading {"level":6} --> <h6><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat">Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint</a></h6> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --></div> <!-- /wp:group --> <!-- wp:group --> <div class="wp-block-group"><!-- wp:heading {"level":6} --> <h6><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks">Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts?</a></h6> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --></div> <!-- /wp:group --> <!-- wp:group --> <div class="wp-block-group"><!-- wp:heading {"level":6} --> <h6><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/yields-vs-land-use-how-has-the-world-produced-enough-food-for-a-growing-population">Yields vs. Land Use: How the Green Revolution enabled us to feed a growing population</a></h6> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --></div> <!-- /wp:group --></div> <!-- /wp:group --></div> <!-- /wp:group --></div> <!-- /wp:group --></div> <!-- /wp:group --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Food production and climate change</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:owid/grid {"className":"research-and-writing__sub-category"} --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"Food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions","mediaId":54161,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"How much of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food?","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food","mediaId":41749,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"Emissions from food alone could use up all of our budget for 1.5°C or 2°C – but we have a range of opportunities to avoid this","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/food-emissions-carbon-budget","mediaId":43414,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"\u003cstrong\u003eWhat are the carbon opportunity costs of our food?\u003c/strong\u003e","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-opportunity-costs-food","mediaId":41836,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- /wp:owid/grid --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Food miles and transport</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:owid/grid {"className":"research-and-writing__sub-category"} --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local","mediaId":47098,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"Very little of global food is transported by air; this greatly reduces the climate benefits of eating local","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/food-transport-by-mode","mediaId":48477,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- /wp:owid/grid --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Environmental impacts of meat and dairy</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:owid/grid {"className":"research-and-writing__sub-category"} --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat","mediaId":54164,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts?","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks","mediaId":47861,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"The carbon footprint of foods: are differences explained by the impacts of methane?","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane","mediaId":54160,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets","mediaId":41319,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- /wp:owid/grid --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Land use and deforestation</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:owid/grid {"className":"research-and-writing__sub-category"} --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"Cutting down forests: what are the drivers of deforestation?","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/what-are-drivers-deforestation","mediaId":40140,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"After millennia of agricultural expansion, the world has passed ‘peak agricultural land’","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/peak-agriculture-land","mediaId":50490,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"To protect the world’s wildlife we must improve crop yields – especially across Africa","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/yields-habitat-loss","mediaId":44764,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/Biodiversity-habitat.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture","mediaId":54171,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- /wp:owid/grid --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Other articles on food impacts</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:owid/grid {"className":"research-and-writing__sub-category"} --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"Food waste is responsible for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/food-waste-emissions","mediaId":54212,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- wp:owid/card {"title":"Is organic r\u003cstrong\u003ee\u003c/strong\u003eally better for the e\u003cstrong\u003environment\u003c/strong\u003e th\u003cstrong\u003ea\u003c/strong\u003en conventiona\u003cstrong\u003el\u003c/strong\u003e agriculture?","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agriculture-better-for-the-environment","mediaId":54330,"mediaUrl":"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail.png","mediaAlt":""} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- /wp:owid/card --> <!-- /wp:owid/grid --></div> <!-- /wp:group --> <!-- /wp:owid/research-and-writing --> <!-- wp:owid/all-charts /-->	{ "id": "wp-29601", "slug": "environmental-impacts-of-food", "content": { "toc": [], "body": [ { "left": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Agriculture has a significant environmental impact in three key ways.\u00a0", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "First, it requires large amounts of ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress", "children": [ { 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", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ", 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Tackling what we eat, and how we produce our food, plays a key role in tackling climate change, reducing water stress and pollution, restoring lands back to forests or grasslands, and protecting the world\u2019s wildlife.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Around half of the world\u2019s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. This is what the visualization shows.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Agricultural land is the sum of pasture used for livestock grazing, and cropland used for direct human consumption and animal feed.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Agriculture is, therefore, the world\u2019s largest land user, taking up more area than forests, or wild grasslands.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Three-quarters of this agricultural land is used for livestock, which is pasture plus cropland used for the production of animal feed. This gives the world just 18% of global calories, and 37% of its protein. The other quarter of land is for crops for human consumption, which provide the majority of the world's calories and protein. ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture", "type": "prominent-link", "title": "", "description": "", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "What you should know about this data", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "list", "items": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Other studies find similar distributions of global land: in an analysis of how humans have transformed global land use in recent centuries, Ellis et al. (2010) found that by 2000, 55% of Earth\u2019s ice-free (not simply habitable) land had been converted into cropland, pasture, and urban areas.{ref}Ellis, E. C., Klein Goldewijk, K., Siebert, S., Lightman, D., & Ramankutty, N. (2010). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00540.x", "children": [ { "text": "Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19(5), 589-606.{/ref} This left only 45% as \u2018natural\u2019 or \u2018semi-natural\u2019 land.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The study by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018) estimates that 43% of ice- and desert-free land is used for agriculture. 83% of this is used for animal-sourced foods.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216", "children": [ { "text": "Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ", 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "list", "items": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The difference in these figures is often due to the uncertainty of the size of \u2018rangelands\u2019. Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. The intensity of grazing on rangelands can vary a lot. That can make it difficult to accurately quantify how much rangelands are used for grazing, and therefore how much is used for food production.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "But as the review above showed, despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to converge on an estimate of close to half of habitable land being used for agriculture.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "Global-land-use-graphic.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Food systems are responsible for around one-quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216", "children": [ { "text": "Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ", 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This includes emissions from land use change, on-farm production, processing, transport, packaging, and retail.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "We can break these food system emissions down into four broad categories:", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "text": "30% of food emissions come directly from livestock and fisheries", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "text": ". Ruminant livestock \u2013 mainly cattle \u2013 for example, produce methane through their digestive processes. Manure and pasture management also fall into this category.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "text": "1% comes from wild fisheries", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "text": ", most of which is fuel consumption from fishing vessels.\u00a0", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "text": "Crop production accounts for around a quarter of food emissions. ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "text": "This includes crops for human consumption and animal feed.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "text": "Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "text": " Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%).", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Finally, ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "supply chains account for 18% of food emissions", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "text": ". This includes food processing, distribution, transport, packaging, and retail.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Other studies estimate that an even larger fraction \u2013 up to one-third \u2013 of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.{ref}Crippa, M., Solazzo, E., Guizzardi, D., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Tubiello, F. N., & Leip, A. J. N. F. (2021). Food systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Nature Food, 2(3), 198-209.{/ref} These differences come from the inclusion of non-food agricultural products \u2013 such as textiles, biofuels, and industrial crops \u2013 plus uncertainties in food waste and land use emissions.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions", "type": "prominent-link", "title": "", "description": "", "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food", "type": "prominent-link", "title": "", "description": "", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "What you should know about this data", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "list", "items": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The source of this data is the meta-analysis of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ".{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216", "children": [ { "text": "Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ", 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": "eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": ". In this study, CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": "eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "100", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": ").", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food", "children": [ { "text": "One-quarter to one-third", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " of global greenhouse gas emissions come from our food systems. The rest comes from energy.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "While energy and industry make a bigger contribution than food, we must tackle ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "both", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " food and energy systems to address climate change.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Michael Clark and colleagues modeled the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be emitted from food systems this century across a range of scenarios.\u00a0", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In a business-as-usual scenario, the authors expect the world to emit around 1356 billion tonnes of CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2-we", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": " by 2100.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "As the visualization shows, this would take us well beyond the carbon budget for 1.5\u00b0C \u2013 we would emit two to three times more than this budget. And it would consume almost all of our budget for 2\u00b0C.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Ignoring food emissions is simply not an option if we want to get close to our international climate targets.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow \u2013 an impossibility \u2013 we would still go well beyond our 1.5\u00b0C target, and nearly miss our 2\u00b0C target.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/food-emissions-carbon-budget", "type": "prominent-link", "title": "", "description": "", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "What you should know about this data", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "list", "items": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Michael Clark et al. (2020), published in ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ".{ref}Clark, Michael A., Nina GG Domingo, Kimberly Colgan, Sumil K. Thakrar, David Tilman, John Lynch, In\u00eas L. Azevedo, and Jason D. Hill. \u201c", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/705", "children": [ { "text": "Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5\u00b0 and 2\u00b0 C climate change targets", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ".\u201d ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ", 370, no. 6517 (2020): 705-708.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "list", "items": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Their \u2018business-as-usual\u2019 projection makes the following assumptions: global population increases in line with the UN\u2019s medium fertility scenario; per capita diets change as people around the world get richer (shifting towards more diverse diets with more meat and dairy); crop yields continue to increase in line with historical improvements, and rates of food loss and the emissions intensity of food production remain constant.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This is measured in global warming potential CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": " warming-equivalents (CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2-we", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": "). This accounts for the range of greenhouse gasses, not just CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": " but also others such as methane and nitrous oxide. We look at the differences in greenhouse gas metrics at the end of our article", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": " ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "text": "on ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane", "children": [ { "children": [ { "text": "the carbon footprint of foods", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ".", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "\u2018Eat local\u2019 is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But it\u2019s often a misguided one.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Transport tends to be a small part of a food\u2019s carbon footprint. Globally, transport accounts for just 5% of food system emissions. Most of food\u2019s emissions come from land use change and emissions from their production on the farm.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Since transport emissions are typically small, and the differences ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "between", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " foods are large, ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "what", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " types of food we eat matter much more than how far it has traveled. Locally-produced beef will have a much larger footprint than peas, regardless of whether it\u2019s shipped across continents or not.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The visualization shows this.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Producing a kilogram of beef, for example, emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gasses (CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": "-equivalents). The production of a kilogram of peas, shown at the bottom of the chart, emits just 1 kilogram of greenhouse gasses. Whether the beef or peas are produced locally will have little impact on the difference between these two foods.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The reason that transport accounts for such a small share of emissions is that most internationally traded food travels by boat, not by plane. Very little food is air-freighted; ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-food-miles-by-method", "children": [ { "text": "it accounts", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " for only 0.16% of food miles.{ref}\u2019Food miles\u2019 are measured in tonne-kilometers which represents the transport of one tonne of goods by a given transport mode (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterways, pipeline etc.) over a distance of one kilometer. Poore & Nemecek (2018) report that of the 9.4 billion tonne-kilometers of global food transport, air-freight accounted for only 15 million. This works out at only 0.16% of the total; most foods are transported by boat.{/ref} For the few products which ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "are", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " transported by air, the emissions can be very high: flying emits 50 times more CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": "eq than boat per tonne kilometer.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Unlike aviation, shipping is a very carbon-efficient way to transport goods. So, even shipping food over long distances by boat emits only small amounts of carbon. A classic example of traded food is avocados. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": "eq in transport emissions.{ref}We get this footprint value as: [9000km * 0.023kg per tonne-kilometer / 1000 = 0.207kg CO2eq per kg].{/ref}This is only around 8% of avocados\u2019 total footprint.\u00a0", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local", "type": "prominent-link", "title": "", "description": "", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "What you should know about this data", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "list", "items": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ".{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216", "children": [ { "text": "Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ", 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": "eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": ". In this study, CO", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "2", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": "eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "100", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-subscript" }, { "text": ").", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "When we compare the carbon footprint of different types of foods, a clear hierarchy emerges.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Meat and dairy products tend to emit more greenhouse gasses than plant-based foods. This holds true whether we compare on the basis of ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-kg-poore", "children": [ { "text": "mass (per kilogram)", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ", ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore", "children": [ { "text": "per kilocalorie", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ", or per gram of protein, as shown in the chart.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Within meat and dairy products, there is also a consistent pattern: larger animals tend to be less efficient and have a higher footprint. Beef typically has the largest emissions; followed by lamb; pork; chicken; then eggs and fish.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local", "type": "prominent-link", "title": "", "description": "", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "What you should know about this data", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "list", "items": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This data presents global average values. For some foods \u2013 such as beef \u2013 there are large differences depending on where it is produced, and the farming practices used. 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1, "heading": 17, "owid/card": 18, "owid/grid": 5, "paragraph": 76, "navigation-link": 8, "owid/all-charts": 1, "owid/sticky-nav": 1, "owid/key-insight": 7, "owid/front-matter": 1, "owid/prominent-link": 7, "owid/technical-text": 7, "owid/key-insights-slider": 1, "owid/research-and-writing": 1 }, "htmlTagCounts": { "p": 76, "h2": 1, "h3": 1, "h4": 5, "h5": 7, "h6": 3, "ul": 10, "div": 12, "figure": 6, "iframe": 2 } }	2022-12-02 04:00:00	2024-06-03 15:46:39		[ "Hannah Ritchie", "Pablo Rosado" ]	What are the environmental impacts of food production? How do we reduce the impacts of agriculture on the environment?	2020-05-17 10:23:56	2023-08-03 14:48:34	https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/environmental-impacts-of-food-production-thumbnail.png	{ "toc": false, "bodyClassName": "topic-page" }	Agriculture has a significant environmental impact in three key ways. First, it requires large amounts of [fresh water](https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress), which can cause significant environmental pressures in regions with water stress. It needs water as input and pollutes rivers, lakes, and oceans by releasing nutrients. It is a crucial driver of climate change, responsible for around one-quarter of the world’s [greenhouse gas emissions](http://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions). Finally, agriculture has a massive impact on the world’s environment due to its enormous [land use](https://ourworldindata.org/land-use). Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Large parts of the world that were once covered by [forests](http://ourworldindata.org/forests-and-deforestation) and wildlands are now used for agriculture. This loss of natural habitat has been the main driver for reducing the world’s [biodiversity](http://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity). Wildlife [can rebound](https://ourworldindata.org/europe-mammal-comeback) if we reduce agricultural land use and allow natural lands to restore. Ensuring everyone has access to a nutritious diet sustainably is one of the most significant challenges we face. On this page, you can find our data, visualizations, and writing relating to the environmental impacts of food. Related topics * [Land use](https://ourworldindata.org/land-use) * [Biodiversity](https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity) * [Hunger and Undernourishment](https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment) * [CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions) What are the environmental impacts of food and agriculture? The visualization here shows a summary of some of the main global impacts: * Food production accounts for [over a quarter](https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions) (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} * Half of the world’s habitable land [is used for](https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture) agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. * 70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture{ref}FAO. (2011). The state of the world’s land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW) – Managing systems at risk. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome and Earthscan, London.{/ref}. * 78% of global ocean and freshwater eutrophication is caused by agriculture.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} Eutrophication is the pollution of waterways with nutrient-rich water. * 94% of non-human mammal biomass is livestock. This means livestock outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 15-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). [The biomass distribution on Earth](https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506). _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref} This share is 97% when only land-based mammals are included. * 71% of bird biomass is poultry livestock. This means poultry livestock outweigh wild birds by a factor of more than 3-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). [The biomass distribution on Earth](https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506). _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref} Tackling what we eat, and how we produce our food, plays a key role in tackling climate change, reducing water stress and pollution, restoring lands back to forests or grasslands, and protecting the world’s wildlife. <Image filename="Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2.png" alt=""/> Around half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. This is what the visualization shows. Agricultural land is the sum of pasture used for livestock grazing, and cropland used for direct human consumption and animal feed. Agriculture is, therefore, the world’s largest land user, taking up more area than forests, or wild grasslands. Three-quarters of this agricultural land is used for livestock, which is pasture plus cropland used for the production of animal feed. This gives the world just 18% of global calories, and 37% of its protein. The other quarter of land is for crops for human consumption, which provide the majority of the world's calories and protein. ### https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture ##### What you should know about this data * Other studies find similar distributions of global land: in an analysis of how humans have transformed global land use in recent centuries, Ellis et al. (2010) found that by 2000, 55% of Earth’s ice-free (not simply habitable) land had been converted into cropland, pasture, and urban areas.{ref}Ellis, E. C., Klein Goldewijk, K., Siebert, S., Lightman, D., & Ramankutty, N. (2010). [Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00540.x). Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19(5), 589-606.{/ref} This left only 45% as ‘natural’ or ‘semi-natural’ land. * The study by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018) estimates that 43% of ice- and desert-free land is used for agriculture. 83% of this is used for animal-sourced foods.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} * The difference in these figures is often due to the uncertainty of the size of ‘rangelands’. Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. The intensity of grazing on rangelands can vary a lot. That can make it difficult to accurately quantify how much rangelands are used for grazing, and therefore how much is used for food production. * But as the review above showed, despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to converge on an estimate of close to half of habitable land being used for agriculture. <Image filename="Global-land-use-graphic.png" alt=""/> Food systems are responsible for around one-quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This includes emissions from land use change, on-farm production, processing, transport, packaging, and retail. We can break these food system emissions down into four broad categories: 30% of food emissions come directly from livestock and fisheries. Ruminant livestock – mainly cattle – for example, produce methane through their digestive processes. Manure and pasture management also fall into this category. 1% comes from wild fisheries, most of which is fuel consumption from fishing vessels. Crop production accounts for around a quarter of food emissions. This includes crops for human consumption and animal feed. Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions. Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%). Finally, supply chains account for 18% of food emissions. This includes food processing, distribution, transport, packaging, and retail. Other studies estimate that an even larger fraction – up to one-third – of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.{ref}Crippa, M., Solazzo, E., Guizzardi, D., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Tubiello, F. N., & Leip, A. J. N. F. (2021). Food systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Nature Food, 2(3), 198-209.{/ref} These differences come from the inclusion of non-food agricultural products – such as textiles, biofuels, and industrial crops – plus uncertainties in food waste and land use emissions. ### https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions ### https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food ##### What you should know about this data * The source of this data is the meta-analysis of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in _Science_.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products. * Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail. * Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO2. In this study, CO2eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP100). <Image filename="How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food.png" alt=""/> [One-quarter to one-third](https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food) of global greenhouse gas emissions come from our food systems. The rest comes from energy. While energy and industry make a bigger contribution than food, we must tackle _both_ food and energy systems to address climate change. Michael Clark and colleagues modeled the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be emitted from food systems this century across a range of scenarios. In a business-as-usual scenario, the authors expect the world to emit around 1356 billion tonnes of CO2-we by 2100. As the visualization shows, this would take us well beyond the carbon budget for 1.5°C – we would emit two to three times more than this budget. And it would consume almost all of our budget for 2°C. Ignoring food emissions is simply not an option if we want to get close to our international climate targets. Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow – an impossibility – we would still go well beyond our 1.5°C target, and nearly miss our 2°C target. ### https://ourworldindata.org/food-emissions-carbon-budget ##### What you should know about this data * The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Michael Clark et al. (2020), published in _Science_.{ref}Clark, Michael A., Nina GG Domingo, Kimberly Colgan, Sumil K. Thakrar, David Tilman, John Lynch, Inês L. Azevedo, and Jason D. Hill. “[Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2° C climate change targets](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/705).” _Science_, 370, no. 6517 (2020): 705-708.{/ref} * Their ‘business-as-usual’ projection makes the following assumptions: global population increases in line with the UN’s medium fertility scenario; per capita diets change as people around the world get richer (shifting towards more diverse diets with more meat and dairy); crop yields continue to increase in line with historical improvements, and rates of food loss and the emissions intensity of food production remain constant. * This is measured in global warming potential CO2 warming-equivalents (CO2-we). This accounts for the range of greenhouse gasses, not just CO2 but also others such as methane and nitrous oxide. We look at the differences in greenhouse gas metrics at the end of our article on [the carbon footprint of foods](https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane). <Image filename="Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits.png" alt=""/> ‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But it’s often a misguided one. Transport tends to be a small part of a food’s carbon footprint. Globally, transport accounts for just 5% of food system emissions. Most of food’s emissions come from land use change and emissions from their production on the farm. Since transport emissions are typically small, and the differences _between_ foods are large, _what_ types of food we eat matter much more than how far it has traveled. Locally-produced beef will have a much larger footprint than peas, regardless of whether it’s shipped across continents or not. The visualization shows this. Producing a kilogram of beef, for example, emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gasses (CO2-equivalents). The production of a kilogram of peas, shown at the bottom of the chart, emits just 1 kilogram of greenhouse gasses. Whether the beef or peas are produced locally will have little impact on the difference between these two foods. The reason that transport accounts for such a small share of emissions is that most internationally traded food travels by boat, not by plane. Very little food is air-freighted; [it accounts](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-food-miles-by-method) for only 0.16% of food miles.{ref}’Food miles’ are measured in tonne-kilometers which represents the transport of one tonne of goods by a given transport mode (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterways, pipeline etc.) over a distance of one kilometer. Poore & Nemecek (2018) report that of the 9.4 billion tonne-kilometers of global food transport, air-freight accounted for only 15 million. This works out at only 0.16% of the total; most foods are transported by boat.{/ref} For the few products which _are_ transported by air, the emissions can be very high: flying emits 50 times more CO2eq than boat per tonne kilometer. Unlike aviation, shipping is a very carbon-efficient way to transport goods. So, even shipping food over long distances by boat emits only small amounts of carbon. A classic example of traded food is avocados. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO2eq in transport emissions.{ref}We get this footprint value as: [9000km * 0.023kg per tonne-kilometer / 1000 = 0.207kg CO2eq per kg].{/ref}This is only around 8% of avocados’ total footprint. Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products. ### https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local ##### What you should know about this data * The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in _Science_.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products. * Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail. * Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO2. In this study, CO2eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP100). <Image filename="Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage.png" alt=""/> When we compare the carbon footprint of different types of foods, a clear hierarchy emerges. Meat and dairy products tend to emit more greenhouse gasses than plant-based foods. This holds true whether we compare on the basis of [mass (per kilogram)](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-kg-poore), [per kilocalorie](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore), or per gram of protein, as shown in the chart. Within meat and dairy products, there is also a consistent pattern: larger animals tend to be less efficient and have a higher footprint. Beef typically has the largest emissions; followed by lamb; pork; chicken; then eggs and fish. ### https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local ##### What you should know about this data * This data presents global average values. For some foods – such as beef – there are large differences depending on where it is produced, and the farming practices used. Nonetheless, the lowest-carbon beef and lamb still have a higher carbon footprint than most plant-based foods. * The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in _Science_.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products. * Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail. * Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO2. For CO2eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP100). <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore"/> The most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the food system is to change [_what_ we eat](https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local). Adopting a more plant-based diet by reducing our consumption of carbon-intensive foods such as meat and dairy – especially beef and lamb – is an effective way for consumers to reduce their carbon footprint. But there are also opportunities to reduce emissions by optimizing for more carbon-efficient practices and locations to produce foods. For some foods – in particular, beef, lamb, and dairy – there are large differences in emissions depending on how and where they’re produced. This is shown in the chart. Producing 100 grams of protein from beef emits 25 kilograms of carbon dioxide-equivalents (CO2eq), on average. But this ranges from 9 kilograms to 105 kilograms of CO2eq – a ten-fold difference. Optimizing production in places where these foods are produced with a smaller footprint could be another effective way of reducing global emissions. ### https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat ##### What you should know about this data * The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in _Science_.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products. * Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail. * Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO2. For CO2eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP100). <Image filename="Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2.png" alt=""/> ### Explore data on the Environmental Impacts of Food <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/food-footprints?facet=none&Commodity+or+Specific+Food+Product=Commodity&Environmental+Impact=Carbon+footprint&Kilogram+%2F+Protein+%2F+Calories=Per+kilogram&By+stage+of+supply+chain=false&country=Bananas~Beef+%28beef+herd%29~Beef+%28dairy+herd%29~Cheese~Eggs~Lamb+%26+Mutton~Milk~Maize~Nuts~Pig+Meat~Peas~Potatoes~Poultry+Meat~Rice~Tomatoes~Wheat+%26+Rye~Tofu+%28soybeans%29~Prawns+%28farmed%29&hideControls=false"/> ## Research & Writing ‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But transport tends to account for a small share of greenhouse gas emissions. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it’s come from? Hannah Ritchie One-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food’s emissions? Hannah Ritchie ##### More key articles on the Environmental Impacts of Food ###### [Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint](https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat) Hannah Ritchie ###### [Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts?](https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks) Hannah Ritchie ###### [Yields vs. Land Use: How the Green Revolution enabled us to feed a growing population](https://ourworldindata.org/yields-vs-land-use-how-has-the-world-produced-enough-food-for-a-growing-population) Hannah Ritchie #### Food production and climate change Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie #### Food miles and transport Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie #### Environmental impacts of meat and dairy Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie #### Land use and deforestation Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie #### Other articles on food impacts Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie	{ "id": 29601, "date": "2022-12-02T04:00:00", "guid": { "rendered": "https://owid.cloud/?page_id=29601" }, "link": "https://owid.cloud/environmental-impacts-of-food", "meta": { "owid_publication_context_meta_field": [], "owid_key_performance_indicators_meta_field": { "raw": "26% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.\n\n50% of the world's habitable land is used for agriculture.", "rendered": "<p><strong>26%</strong> of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.</p>\n<p><strong>50%</strong> of the world's habitable land is used for agriculture.</p>\n" } }, "slug": "environmental-impacts-of-food", "tags": [], "type": "page", "title": { "rendered": "Environmental Impacts of Food Production" }, "_links": { "self": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/29601" } ], "about": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/types/page" } ], "author": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/users/17", 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"rendered": "\n<!-- formatting-options toc:false bodyClassName:topic-page -->\n\n\n\t<div class=\"sticky-nav-contents\">\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\" href=\"#introduction\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Introduction</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\" href=\"#key-insights-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Key Insights</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\" href=\"#explore-data-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food\" rel=\"\" title=\"\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Data Explorer</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\" href=\"#research-and-writing\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Research & Writing</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\" href=\"#interactive-charts-on-environmental-impacts-of-food-production\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Charts</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\" href=\"#endnotes\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Endnotes</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\" href=\"#citation\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Cite This Work</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\" href=\"#licence\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Reuse This Work</span></a></li>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns front-matter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\" id=\"introduction\">\n<p>Agriculture has a significant environmental impact in three key ways. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>First, it requires large amounts of <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress\">fresh water</a>, which can cause significant environmental pressures in regions with water stress. It needs water as input and pollutes rivers, lakes, and oceans by releasing nutrients.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is a crucial driver of climate change, responsible for around one-quarter of the world\u2019s <a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions\">greenhouse gas emissions</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, agriculture has a massive impact on the world\u2019s environment due to its enormous <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/land-use\">land use</a>. Half of the world\u2019s habitable land is used for agriculture.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Large parts of the world that were once covered by <a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/forests-and-deforestation\">forests</a> and wildlands are now used for agriculture. This loss of natural habitat has been the main driver for reducing the world\u2019s <a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity\">biodiversity</a>. Wildlife <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/europe-mammal-comeback\">can rebound</a> if we reduce agricultural land use and allow natural lands to restore.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ensuring everyone has access to a nutritious diet sustainably is one of the most significant challenges we face. On this page, you can find our data, visualizations, and writing relating to the environmental impacts of food.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e0273e wp-block-group related-topics\">\n<p>Related topics</p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/land-use\">Land use</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity\">Biodiversity</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment\">Hunger and Undernourishment</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions\">CO\u2082 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions</a></li></ul>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insights\">\n\t\t<title>Key insights on the Environmental Impacts of Food</title>\n <slug>key-insights-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food</slug>\n <insights>\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">Food production has a large environmental impact in several ways</title>\n <slug>food-plays-a-large-role-in-many-environmental-impacts</slug>\n <content>\n\n<p>What are the environmental impacts of food and agriculture?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The visualization here shows a summary of some of the main global impacts:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Food production accounts for <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions\">over a quarter</a> (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}<br></li><li>Half of the world\u2019s habitable land <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture\">is used for</a> agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free.<br></li><li>70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture{ref}FAO. (2011). The state of the world\u2019s land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW) \u2013 Managing systems at risk. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome and Earthscan, London.{/ref}.<br></li><li>78% of global ocean and freshwater eutrophication is caused by agriculture.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} Eutrophication is the pollution of waterways with nutrient-rich water.<br></li><li>94% of non-human mammal biomass is livestock. This means livestock outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 15-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506\">The biomass distribution on Earth</a>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref} This share is 97% when only land-based mammals are included.<br></li><li>71% of bird biomass is poultry livestock. This means poultry livestock outweigh wild birds by a factor of more than 3-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506\">The biomass distribution on Earth</a>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref}<br></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Tackling what we eat, and how we produce our food, plays a key role in tackling climate change, reducing water stress and pollution, restoring lands back to forests or grasslands, and protecting the world\u2019s wildlife.</p>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<p></p>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"6811\" height=\"6055\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-57954\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2.png 6811w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2-400x356.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2-619x550.png 619w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2-150x133.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2-768x683.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2-1536x1366.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 6811px) 100vw, 6811px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">Half of the world\u2019s habitable land is used for agriculture</title>\n <slug>half-of-habitable-land-is-used-for-agriculture</slug>\n <content>\n\n<p>Around half of the world\u2019s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. This is what the visualization shows.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Agricultural land is the sum of pasture used for livestock grazing, and cropland used for direct human consumption and animal feed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Agriculture is, therefore, the world\u2019s largest land user, taking up more area than forests, or wild grasslands.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Three-quarters of this agricultural land is used for livestock, which is pasture plus cropland used for the production of animal feed. This gives the world just 18% of global calories, and 37% of its protein. The other quarter of land is for crops for human consumption, which provide the majority of the world’s calories and protein. </p>\n\n\n <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture</link-url>\n <title></title>\n <content></content>\n <figure></figure>\n </block>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<h5>What you should know about this data</h5>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Other studies find similar distributions of global land: in an analysis of how humans have transformed global land use in recent centuries, Ellis et al. (2010) found that by 2000, 55% of Earth\u2019s ice-free (not simply habitable) land had been converted into cropland, pasture, and urban areas.{ref}Ellis, E. C., Klein Goldewijk, K., Siebert, S., Lightman, D., & Ramankutty, N. (2010). <a href=\"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00540.x\">Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000</a>. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19(5), 589-606.{/ref} This left only 45% as \u2018natural\u2019 or \u2018semi-natural\u2019 land.<br></li><li>The study by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018) estimates that 43% of ice- and desert-free land is used for agriculture. 83% of this is used for animal-sourced foods.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}<br></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The difference in these figures is often due to the uncertainty of the size of \u2018rangelands\u2019. Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. The intensity of grazing on rangelands can vary a lot. That can make it difficult to accurately quantify how much rangelands are used for grazing, and therefore how much is used for food production.<br></li><li>But as the review above showed, despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to converge on an estimate of close to half of habitable land being used for agriculture.</li></ul>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"3011\" height=\"1922\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-29757\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic.png 3011w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic-400x255.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic-800x511.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic-150x96.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic-768x490.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic-1536x980.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic-2048x1307.png 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 3011px) 100vw, 3011px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">Food is responsible for one-quarter of the world\u2019s emissions</title>\n <slug>food-responsible-for-one-quarter-of-emissions</slug>\n <content>\n\n<p>Food systems are responsible for around one-quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This includes emissions from land use change, on-farm production, processing, transport, packaging, and retail.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We can break these food system emissions down into four broad categories:</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>30% of food emissions come directly from livestock and fisheries</strong>. Ruminant livestock \u2013 mainly cattle \u2013 for example, produce methane through their digestive processes. Manure and pasture management also fall into this category.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>1% comes from wild fisheries</strong>, most of which is fuel consumption from fishing vessels. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Crop production accounts for around a quarter of food emissions. </strong>This includes crops for human consumption and animal feed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions.</strong> Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, <strong>supply chains account for 18% of food emissions</strong>. This includes food processing, distribution, transport, packaging, and retail.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other studies estimate that an even larger fraction \u2013 up to one-third \u2013 of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.{ref}Crippa, M., Solazzo, E., Guizzardi, D., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Tubiello, F. N., & Leip, A. J. N. F. (2021). Food systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Nature Food, 2(3), 198-209.{/ref} These differences come from the inclusion of non-food agricultural products \u2013 such as textiles, biofuels, and industrial crops \u2013 plus uncertainties in food waste and land use emissions.</p>\n\n\n <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions</link-url>\n <title></title>\n <content>\n\n<p></p>\n\n</content>\n <figure></figure>\n </block>\n\n <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food</link-url>\n <title></title>\n <content></content>\n <figure></figure>\n </block>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<h5>What you should know about this data</h5>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analysis of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. In this study, CO<sub>2</sub>eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1624\" height=\"1520\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-28080\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food.png 1624w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food-400x374.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food-588x550.png 588w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food-150x140.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food-768x719.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food-1536x1438.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1624px) 100vw, 1624px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">Emissions from food alone would take us past 1.5\u00b0C or 2\u00b0C this century</title>\n <slug>food-emissions-climate-targets</slug>\n <content>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food\">One-quarter to one-third</a> of global greenhouse gas emissions come from our food systems. The rest comes from energy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>While energy and industry make a bigger contribution than food, we must tackle <em>both</em> food and energy systems to address climate change.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Michael Clark and colleagues modeled the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be emitted from food systems this century across a range of scenarios. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a business-as-usual scenario, the authors expect the world to emit around 1356 billion tonnes of CO<sub>2-we</sub> by 2100.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the visualization shows, this would take us well beyond the carbon budget for 1.5\u00b0C \u2013 we would emit two to three times more than this budget. And it would consume almost all of our budget for 2\u00b0C.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ignoring food emissions is simply not an option if we want to get close to our international climate targets.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow \u2013 an impossibility \u2013 we would still go well beyond our 1.5\u00b0C target, and nearly miss our 2\u00b0C target.</p>\n\n\n <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/food-emissions-carbon-budget</link-url>\n <title></title>\n <content></content>\n <figure></figure>\n </block>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<h5>What you should know about this data</h5>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Michael Clark et al. (2020), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Clark, Michael A., Nina GG Domingo, Kimberly Colgan, Sumil K. Thakrar, David Tilman, John Lynch, In\u00eas L. Azevedo, and Jason D. Hill. \u201c<a href=\"https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/705\">Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5\u00b0 and 2\u00b0 C climate change targets</a>.\u201d <em>Science</em>, 370, no. 6517 (2020): 705-708.{/ref}<br></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Their \u2018business-as-usual\u2019 projection makes the following assumptions: global population increases in line with the UN\u2019s medium fertility scenario; per capita diets change as people around the world get richer (shifting towards more diverse diets with more meat and dairy); crop yields continue to increase in line with historical improvements, and rates of food loss and the emissions intensity of food production remain constant.<br></li><li>This is measured in global warming potential CO<sub>2</sub> warming-equivalents (CO<sub>2-we</sub>). This accounts for the range of greenhouse gasses, not just CO<sub>2</sub> but also others such as methane and nitrous oxide. We look at the differences in greenhouse gas metrics at the end of our article<strong> </strong>on <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane\"><strong>the carbon footprint of foods</strong></a>.<br></li></ul>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1541\" height=\"1004\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-43395\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits.png 1541w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits-400x261.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits-800x521.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits-150x98.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits-768x500.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits-1536x1001.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1541px) 100vw, 1541px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">What we eat matters much more than how far it has traveled</title>\n <slug>food-emissions-local</slug>\n <content>\n\n<p>\u2018Eat local\u2019 is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But it\u2019s often a misguided one.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Transport tends to be a small part of a food\u2019s carbon footprint. Globally, transport accounts for just 5% of food system emissions. Most of food\u2019s emissions come from land use change and emissions from their production on the farm.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since transport emissions are typically small, and the differences <em>between</em> foods are large, <em>what</em> types of food we eat matter much more than how far it has traveled. Locally-produced beef will have a much larger footprint than peas, regardless of whether it\u2019s shipped across continents or not.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The visualization shows this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Producing a kilogram of beef, for example, emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gasses (CO<sub>2</sub>-equivalents). The production of a kilogram of peas, shown at the bottom of the chart, emits just 1 kilogram of greenhouse gasses. Whether the beef or peas are produced locally will have little impact on the difference between these two foods.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason that transport accounts for such a small share of emissions is that most internationally traded food travels by boat, not by plane. Very little food is air-freighted; <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-food-miles-by-method\">it accounts</a> for only 0.16% of food miles.{ref}\u2019Food miles\u2019 are measured in tonne-kilometers which represents the transport of one tonne of goods by a given transport mode (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterways, pipeline etc.) over a distance of one kilometer. Poore & Nemecek (2018) report that of the 9.4 billion tonne-kilometers of global food transport, air-freight accounted for only 15 million. This works out at only 0.16% of the total; most foods are transported by boat.{/ref} For the few products which <em>are</em> transported by air, the emissions can be very high: flying emits 50 times more CO<sub>2</sub>eq than boat per tonne kilometer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unlike aviation, shipping is a very carbon-efficient way to transport goods. So, even shipping food over long distances by boat emits only small amounts of carbon. A classic example of traded food is avocados. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO<sub>2</sub>eq in transport emissions.{ref}We get this footprint value as: [9000km * 0.023kg per tonne-kilometer / 1000 = 0.207kg CO2eq per kg].{/ref}This is only around 8% of avocados\u2019 total footprint. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products.</p>\n\n\n <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local</link-url>\n <title></title>\n <content></content>\n <figure></figure>\n </block>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<h5>What you should know about this data</h5>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. In this study, CO<sub>2</sub>eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"2933\" height=\"2635\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-29928\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage.png 2933w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-400x359.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-612x550.png 612w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-150x135.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-768x690.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-1536x1380.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-2048x1840.png 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2933px) 100vw, 2933px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">Meat and dairy foods tend to have a higher carbon footprint</title>\n <slug>meat-dairy-food-carbon-footprint</slug>\n <content>\n\n<p>When we compare the carbon footprint of different types of foods, a clear hierarchy emerges.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meat and dairy products tend to emit more greenhouse gasses than plant-based foods. This holds true whether we compare on the basis of <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-kg-poore\">mass (per kilogram)</a>, <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore\">per kilocalorie</a>, or per gram of protein, as shown in the chart.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Within meat and dairy products, there is also a consistent pattern: larger animals tend to be less efficient and have a higher footprint. Beef typically has the largest emissions; followed by lamb; pork; chicken; then eggs and fish.</p>\n\n\n <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local</link-url>\n <title></title>\n <content></content>\n <figure></figure>\n </block>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<h5>What you should know about this data</h5>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>This data presents global average values. For some foods \u2013 such as beef \u2013 there are large differences depending on where it is produced, and the farming practices used. Nonetheless, the lowest-carbon beef and lamb still have a higher carbon footprint than most plant-based foods.<br></li><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. For CO<sub>2</sub>eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">There are also large differences in the carbon footprint of the same foods</title>\n <slug>differences-carbon-footprint-foods</slug>\n <content>\n\n<p>The most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the food system is to change <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local\"><em>what</em> we eat</a>. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adopting a more plant-based diet by reducing our consumption of carbon-intensive foods such as meat and dairy \u2013 especially beef and lamb \u2013 is an effective way for consumers to reduce their carbon footprint.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there are also opportunities to reduce emissions by optimizing for more carbon-efficient practices and locations to produce foods. For some foods \u2013 in particular, beef, lamb, and dairy \u2013 there are large differences in emissions depending on how and where they\u2019re produced. This is shown in the chart.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Producing 100 grams of protein from beef emits 25 kilograms of carbon dioxide-equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq), on average. But this ranges from 9 kilograms to 105 kilograms of CO<sub>2</sub>eq \u2013 a ten-fold difference.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Optimizing production in places where these foods are produced with a smaller footprint could be another effective way of reducing global emissions.</p>\n\n\n <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat</link-url>\n <title></title>\n <content></content>\n <figure></figure>\n </block>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<h5>What you should know about this data</h5>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. For CO<sub>2</sub>eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"2678\" height=\"2613\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-29926\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2.png 2678w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2-400x390.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2-564x550.png 564w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2-150x146.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2-768x749.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2-1536x1499.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2-2048x1998.png 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2678px) 100vw, 2678px\" /></figure>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n</insights>\n\t</block>\n\n\n<h3>Explore data on the Environmental Impacts of Food</h3>\n\n\n\n<iframe class=\"wp-block-full-content-width\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/food-footprints?facet=none&Commodity+or+Specific+Food+Product=Commodity&Environmental+Impact=Carbon+footprint&Kilogram+%2F+Protein+%2F+Calories=Per+kilogram&By+stage+of+supply+chain=false&country=Bananas~Beef+%28beef+herd%29~Beef+%28dairy+herd%29~Cheese~Eggs~Lamb+%26+Mutton~Milk~Maize~Nuts~Pig+Meat~Peas~Potatoes~Poultry+Meat~Rice~Tomatoes~Wheat+%26+Rye~Tofu+%28soybeans%29~Prawns+%28farmed%29&hideControls=false\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; min-height: 740px; max-height: 950px; height: 100vh; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27eafcc7 wp-block-group wp-block-research-and-writing\">\n<h2 id=\"research-and-writing\">Research & Writing</h2>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1cfbd wp-block-group research-and-writing__top\"> <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>\u2018Eat local\u2019 is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But transport tends to account for a small share of greenhouse gas emissions. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it\u2019s come from?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1cbd3 wp-block-group research-and-writing__top-right\"> <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">Food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>One-quarter of the world\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food\u2019s emissions?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1c86b wp-block-group\">\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1c4f0 wp-block-group research-and-writing__shorts\">\n<h5>More key articles on the Environmental Impacts of Food</h5>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1b6ed wp-block-group\">\n<h6><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat\">Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint</a></h6>\n\n\n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1bbf3 wp-block-group\">\n<h6><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks\">Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts?</a></h6>\n\n\n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1c0de wp-block-group\">\n<h6><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/yields-vs-land-use-how-has-the-world-produced-enough-food-for-a-growing-population\">Yields vs. Land Use: How the Green Revolution enabled us to feed a growing population</a></h6>\n\n\n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h4>Food production and climate change</h4>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-grid research-and-writing__sub-category\">\n\t\t\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">Food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"428\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail-768x428.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail-768x428.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail-400x223.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail-800x446.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail-150x84.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail.png 1087w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">How much of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food?</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-emissions-carbon-budget\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"301\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail-768x301.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail-768x301.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail-400x157.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail-800x314.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail-150x59.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail-1536x603.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail.png 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">Emissions from food alone could use up all of our budget for 1.5\u00b0C or 2\u00b0C \u2013 but we have a range of opportunities to avoid this</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-opportunity-costs-food\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\"><strong>What are the carbon opportunity costs of our food?</strong></div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<h4>Food miles and transport</h4>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-grid research-and-writing__sub-category\">\n\t\t\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-transport-by-mode\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"301\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts-768x301.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts-768x301.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts-400x157.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts-800x314.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts-150x59.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts-1536x603.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts.png 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">Very little of global food is transported by air; this greatly reduces the climate benefits of eating local</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<h4>Environmental impacts of meat and dairy</h4>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-grid research-and-writing__sub-category\">\n\t\t\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"301\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail-768x301.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail-768x301.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail-400x157.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail-800x314.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail-150x59.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail-1536x603.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail.png 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts?</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">The carbon footprint of foods: are differences explained by the impacts of methane?</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<h4>Land use and deforestation</h4>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-grid research-and-writing__sub-category\">\n\t\t\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/what-are-drivers-deforestation\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">Cutting down forests: what are the drivers of deforestation?</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/peak-agriculture-land\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"301\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1-768x301.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1-768x301.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1-400x157.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1-800x314.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1-150x59.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1-1536x603.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1.png 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">After millennia of agricultural expansion, the world has passed \u2018peak agricultural land\u2019</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/yields-habitat-loss\">\n <figure><img width=\"348\" height=\"183\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/Biodiversity-habitat.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/Biodiversity-habitat.png 348w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/Biodiversity-habitat-150x79.png 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 348px) 100vw, 348px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">To protect the world\u2019s wildlife we must improve crop yields \u2013 especially across Africa</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">Half of the world\u2019s habitable land is used for agriculture</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<h4>Other articles on food impacts</h4>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-grid research-and-writing__sub-category\">\n\t\t\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-waste-emissions\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">Food waste is responsible for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agriculture-better-for-the-environment\">\n <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n <div class=\"title\">Is organic r<strong>e</strong>ally better for the e<strong>nvironment</strong>\u00a0th<strong>a</strong>n conventiona<strong>l</strong>\u00a0agriculture?</div class=\"title\">\n <div class=\"description\">\n \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n </div>\n </div>\n </a>\n </div>\n\n\t</div></div>\n\n\n\n\t<block type=\"all-charts\"></block>", "protected": false }, "excerpt": { "rendered": "What are the environmental impacts of food production? How do we reduce the impacts of agriculture on the environment?", "protected": false }, "date_gmt": "2022-12-02T04:00:00", "modified": "2023-08-03T15:48:34", "template": "", "categories": [ 44, 49, 188, 47, 183 ], "menu_order": 147, "ping_status": "closed", "authors_name": [ "Hannah Ritchie", "Pablo Rosado" ], "modified_gmt": "2023-08-03T14:48:34", "comment_status": "closed", "featured_media": 54675, "featured_media_paths": { "thumbnail": "/app/uploads/2024/05/environmental-impacts-of-food-production-thumbnail.png", "medium_large": "/app/uploads/2024/05/environmental-impacts-of-food-production-thumbnail.png" } }

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Environmental Impacts of Food Production

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<div class="wp-block-columns front-matter"> <div class="wp-block-column" id="introduction"> <p>Agriculture has a significant environmental impact in three key ways. </p>   <p>First, it requires large amounts of <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress">fresh water</a>, which can cause significant environmental pressures in regions with water stress. It needs water as input and pollutes rivers, lakes, and oceans by releasing nutrients.</p>   <p>It is a crucial driver of climate change, responsible for around one-quarter of the world’s <a href="http://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions">greenhouse gas emissions</a>.</p>   <p>Finally, agriculture has a massive impact on the world’s environment due to its enormous <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/land-use">land use</a>. Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture.</p>   <p>Large parts of the world that were once covered by <a href="http://ourworldindata.org/forests-and-deforestation">forests</a> and wildlands are now used for agriculture. This loss of natural habitat has been the main driver for reducing the world’s <a href="http://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity">biodiversity</a>. Wildlife <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/europe-mammal-comeback">can rebound</a> if we reduce agricultural land use and allow natural lands to restore.</p>   <p>Ensuring everyone has access to a nutritious diet sustainably is one of the most significant challenges we face. On this page, you can find our data, visualizations, and writing relating to the environmental impacts of food.</p> </div>   <div class="wp-block-column"> <div class="wp-block-group related-topics"> <p>Related topics</p>   <ul><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/land-use">Land use</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity">Biodiversity</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment">Hunger and Undernourishment</a></li><li><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions">CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions</a></li></ul> </div> </div> </div>      <p>What are the environmental impacts of food and agriculture?</p>   <p>The visualization here shows a summary of some of the main global impacts:</p>   <ul><li>Food production accounts for <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions">over a quarter</a> (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}<br></li><li>Half of the world’s habitable land <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture">is used for</a> agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free.<br></li><li>70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture{ref}FAO. (2011). The state of the world’s land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW) – Managing systems at risk. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome and Earthscan, London.{/ref}.<br></li><li>78% of global ocean and freshwater eutrophication is caused by agriculture.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} Eutrophication is the pollution of waterways with nutrient-rich water.<br></li><li>94% of non-human mammal biomass is livestock. This means livestock outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 15-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506">The biomass distribution on Earth</a>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref} This share is 97% when only land-based mammals are included.<br></li><li>71% of bird biomass is poultry livestock. This means poultry livestock outweigh wild birds by a factor of more than 3-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506">The biomass distribution on Earth</a>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref}<br></li></ul>   <p>Tackling what we eat, and how we produce our food, plays a key role in tackling climate change, reducing water stress and pollution, restoring lands back to forests or grasslands, and protecting the world’s wildlife.</p>    <p></p>    <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-57954"/></figure>   <p></p>     <p>Around half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. This is what the visualization shows.</p>   <p>Agricultural land is the sum of pasture used for livestock grazing, and cropland used for direct human consumption and animal feed.</p>   <p>Agriculture is, therefore, the world’s largest land user, taking up more area than forests, or wild grasslands.</p>   <p>Three-quarters of this agricultural land is used for livestock, which is pasture plus cropland used for the production of animal feed. This gives the world just 18% of global calories, and 37% of its protein. The other quarter of land is for crops for human consumption, which provide the majority of the world's calories and protein. </p>     <h5>What you should know about this data</h5>   <ul><li>Other studies find similar distributions of global land: in an analysis of how humans have transformed global land use in recent centuries, Ellis et al. (2010) found that by 2000, 55% of Earth’s ice-free (not simply habitable) land had been converted into cropland, pasture, and urban areas.{ref}Ellis, E. C., Klein Goldewijk, K., Siebert, S., Lightman, D., & Ramankutty, N. (2010). <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00540.x">Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000</a>. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19(5), 589-606.{/ref} This left only 45% as ‘natural’ or ‘semi-natural’ land.<br></li><li>The study by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018) estimates that 43% of ice- and desert-free land is used for agriculture. 83% of this is used for animal-sourced foods.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}<br></li></ul>   <ul><li>The difference in these figures is often due to the uncertainty of the size of ‘rangelands’. Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. The intensity of grazing on rangelands can vary a lot. That can make it difficult to accurately quantify how much rangelands are used for grazing, and therefore how much is used for food production.<br></li><li>But as the review above showed, despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to converge on an estimate of close to half of habitable land being used for agriculture.</li></ul>    <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic.png" alt="" class="wp-image-29757"/></figure>   <p></p>     <p>Food systems are responsible for around one-quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}</p>   <p>This includes emissions from land use change, on-farm production, processing, transport, packaging, and retail.</p>   <p>We can break these food system emissions down into four broad categories:</p>   <p><strong>30% of food emissions come directly from livestock and fisheries</strong>. Ruminant livestock – mainly cattle – for example, produce methane through their digestive processes. Manure and pasture management also fall into this category.</p>   <p><strong>1% comes from wild fisheries</strong>, most of which is fuel consumption from fishing vessels. </p>   <p><strong>Crop production accounts for around a quarter of food emissions. </strong>This includes crops for human consumption and animal feed.</p>   <p><strong>Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions.</strong> Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%).</p>   <p>Finally, <strong>supply chains account for 18% of food emissions</strong>. This includes food processing, distribution, transport, packaging, and retail.</p>   <p>Other studies estimate that an even larger fraction – up to one-third – of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.{ref}Crippa, M., Solazzo, E., Guizzardi, D., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Tubiello, F. N., & Leip, A. J. N. F. (2021). Food systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Nature Food, 2(3), 198-209.{/ref} These differences come from the inclusion of non-food agricultural products – such as textiles, biofuels, and industrial crops – plus uncertainties in food waste and land use emissions.</p>    <p></p>      <h5>What you should know about this data</h5>   <ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analysis of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. In this study, CO<sub>2</sub>eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul>    <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food.png" alt="" class="wp-image-28080"/></figure>   <p></p>     <p><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food">One-quarter to one-third</a> of global greenhouse gas emissions come from our food systems. The rest comes from energy.</p>   <p>While energy and industry make a bigger contribution than food, we must tackle <em>both</em> food and energy systems to address climate change.</p>   <p>Michael Clark and colleagues modeled the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be emitted from food systems this century across a range of scenarios. </p>   <p>In a business-as-usual scenario, the authors expect the world to emit around 1356 billion tonnes of CO<sub>2-we</sub> by 2100.</p>   <p>As the visualization shows, this would take us well beyond the carbon budget for 1.5°C – we would emit two to three times more than this budget. And it would consume almost all of our budget for 2°C.</p>   <p>Ignoring food emissions is simply not an option if we want to get close to our international climate targets.</p>   <p>Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow – an impossibility – we would still go well beyond our 1.5°C target, and nearly miss our 2°C target.</p>     <h5>What you should know about this data</h5>   <ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Michael Clark et al. (2020), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Clark, Michael A., Nina GG Domingo, Kimberly Colgan, Sumil K. Thakrar, David Tilman, John Lynch, Inês L. Azevedo, and Jason D. Hill. “<a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/705">Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2° C climate change targets</a>.” <em>Science</em>, 370, no. 6517 (2020): 705-708.{/ref}<br></li></ul>   <ul><li>Their ‘business-as-usual’ projection makes the following assumptions: global population increases in line with the UN’s medium fertility scenario; per capita diets change as people around the world get richer (shifting towards more diverse diets with more meat and dairy); crop yields continue to increase in line with historical improvements, and rates of food loss and the emissions intensity of food production remain constant.<br></li><li>This is measured in global warming potential CO<sub>2</sub> warming-equivalents (CO<sub>2-we</sub>). This accounts for the range of greenhouse gasses, not just CO<sub>2</sub> but also others such as methane and nitrous oxide. We look at the differences in greenhouse gas metrics at the end of our article<strong> </strong>on <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane"><strong>the carbon footprint of foods</strong></a>.<br></li></ul>    <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits.png" alt="" class="wp-image-43395"/></figure>   <p></p>     <p>‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But it’s often a misguided one.</p>   <p>Transport tends to be a small part of a food’s carbon footprint. Globally, transport accounts for just 5% of food system emissions. Most of food’s emissions come from land use change and emissions from their production on the farm.</p>   <p>Since transport emissions are typically small, and the differences <em>between</em> foods are large, <em>what</em> types of food we eat matter much more than how far it has traveled. Locally-produced beef will have a much larger footprint than peas, regardless of whether it’s shipped across continents or not.</p>   <p>The visualization shows this.</p>   <p>Producing a kilogram of beef, for example, emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gasses (CO<sub>2</sub>-equivalents). The production of a kilogram of peas, shown at the bottom of the chart, emits just 1 kilogram of greenhouse gasses. Whether the beef or peas are produced locally will have little impact on the difference between these two foods.</p>   <p>The reason that transport accounts for such a small share of emissions is that most internationally traded food travels by boat, not by plane. Very little food is air-freighted; <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-food-miles-by-method">it accounts</a> for only 0.16% of food miles.{ref}’Food miles’ are measured in tonne-kilometers which represents the transport of one tonne of goods by a given transport mode (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterways, pipeline etc.) over a distance of one kilometer. Poore & Nemecek (2018) report that of the 9.4 billion tonne-kilometers of global food transport, air-freight accounted for only 15 million. This works out at only 0.16% of the total; most foods are transported by boat.{/ref} For the few products which <em>are</em> transported by air, the emissions can be very high: flying emits 50 times more CO<sub>2</sub>eq than boat per tonne kilometer.</p>   <p>Unlike aviation, shipping is a very carbon-efficient way to transport goods. So, even shipping food over long distances by boat emits only small amounts of carbon. A classic example of traded food is avocados. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO<sub>2</sub>eq in transport emissions.{ref}We get this footprint value as: [9000km * 0.023kg per tonne-kilometer / 1000 = 0.207kg CO2eq per kg].{/ref}This is only around 8% of avocados’ total footprint. </p>   <p>Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products.</p>     <h5>What you should know about this data</h5>   <ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. In this study, CO<sub>2</sub>eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul>    <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage.png" alt="" class="wp-image-29928"/></figure>   <p></p>     <p>When we compare the carbon footprint of different types of foods, a clear hierarchy emerges.</p>   <p>Meat and dairy products tend to emit more greenhouse gasses than plant-based foods. This holds true whether we compare on the basis of <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-kg-poore">mass (per kilogram)</a>, <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore">per kilocalorie</a>, or per gram of protein, as shown in the chart.</p>   <p>Within meat and dairy products, there is also a consistent pattern: larger animals tend to be less efficient and have a higher footprint. Beef typically has the largest emissions; followed by lamb; pork; chicken; then eggs and fish.</p>     <h5>What you should know about this data</h5>   <ul><li>This data presents global average values. For some foods – such as beef – there are large differences depending on where it is produced, and the farming practices used. Nonetheless, the lowest-carbon beef and lamb still have a higher carbon footprint than most plant-based foods.<br></li><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. For CO<sub>2</sub>eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul>    <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe>     <p>The most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the food system is to change <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local"><em>what</em> we eat</a>. </p>   <p>Adopting a more plant-based diet by reducing our consumption of carbon-intensive foods such as meat and dairy – especially beef and lamb – is an effective way for consumers to reduce their carbon footprint.</p>   <p>But there are also opportunities to reduce emissions by optimizing for more carbon-efficient practices and locations to produce foods. For some foods – in particular, beef, lamb, and dairy – there are large differences in emissions depending on how and where they’re produced. This is shown in the chart.</p>   <p>Producing 100 grams of protein from beef emits 25 kilograms of carbon dioxide-equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq), on average. But this ranges from 9 kilograms to 105 kilograms of CO<sub>2</sub>eq – a ten-fold difference.</p>   <p>Optimizing production in places where these foods are produced with a smaller footprint could be another effective way of reducing global emissions.</p>     <h5>What you should know about this data</h5>   <ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. For CO<sub>2</sub>eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul>    <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-29926"/></figure>     <h3>Explore data on the Environmental Impacts of Food</h3>   <iframe class="wp-block-full-content-width" src="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/food-footprints?facet=none&Commodity+or+Specific+Food+Product=Commodity&Environmental+Impact=Carbon+footprint&Kilogram+%2F+Protein+%2F+Calories=Per+kilogram&By+stage+of+supply+chain=false&country=Bananas~Beef+%28beef+herd%29~Beef+%28dairy+herd%29~Cheese~Eggs~Lamb+%26+Mutton~Milk~Maize~Nuts~Pig+Meat~Peas~Potatoes~Poultry+Meat~Rice~Tomatoes~Wheat+%26+Rye~Tofu+%28soybeans%29~Prawns+%28farmed%29&hideControls=false" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; min-height: 740px; max-height: 950px; height: 100vh; border: 0px none;"></iframe>    <div class="wp-block-group wp-block-research-and-writing"> <h2 id="research-and-writing">Research & Writing</h2>   <div class="wp-block-group research-and-writing__top">  <p>‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But transport tends to account for a small share of greenhouse gas emissions. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it’s come from?</p>   <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>    <div class="wp-block-group research-and-writing__top-right">  <p>One-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food’s emissions?</p>   <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>    <div class="wp-block-group"> <div class="wp-block-group research-and-writing__shorts"> <h5>More key articles on the Environmental Impacts of Food</h5>   <div class="wp-block-group"> <h6><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat">Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint</a></h6>   <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> </div>   <div class="wp-block-group"> <h6><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks">Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts?</a></h6>   <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> </div>   <div class="wp-block-group"> <h6><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/yields-vs-land-use-how-has-the-world-produced-enough-food-for-a-growing-population">Yields vs. Land Use: How the Green Revolution enabled us to feed a growing population</a></h6>   <p>Hannah Ritchie</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div>   <h4>Food production and climate change</h4>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <h4>Food miles and transport</h4>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <h4>Environmental impacts of meat and dairy</h4>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <h4>Land use and deforestation</h4>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <h4>Other articles on food impacts</h4>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>     <p>Hannah Ritchie</p>   </div>

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                                "text": "Agriculture has a significant environmental impact in three key ways.\u00a0",
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                                "text": "Finally, agriculture has a massive impact on the world\u2019s environment due to its enormous ",
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                                "text": " and wildlands are now used for agriculture. This loss of natural habitat has been the main driver for reducing the world\u2019s ",
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                                "text": " if we reduce agricultural land use and allow natural lands to restore.",
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                                "text": "Ensuring everyone has access to a nutritious diet sustainably is one of the most significant challenges we face. On this page, you can find our data, visualizations, and writing relating to the environmental impacts of food.",
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                                                "text": "CO\u2082 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions",
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                        "text": "The visualization here shows a summary of some of the main global impacts:",
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                                "text": " (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). ",
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                                "text": " agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free.",
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                                "text": "70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture{ref}FAO. (2011). The state of the world\u2019s land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW) \u2013 Managing systems at risk. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome and Earthscan, London.{/ref}.",
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                                "text": "94% of non-human mammal biomass is livestock. This means livestock outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 15-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). ",
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                                        "text": "The biomass distribution on Earth",
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                                "text": ", 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref} This share is 97% when only land-based mammals are included.",
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                                "text": "71% of bird biomass is poultry livestock. This means poultry livestock outweigh wild birds by a factor of more than 3-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). ",
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                        "text": "Tackling what we eat, and how we produce our food, plays a key role in tackling climate change, reducing water stress and pollution, restoring lands back to forests or grasslands, and protecting the world\u2019s wildlife.",
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                        "text": "Around half of the world\u2019s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. This is what the visualization shows.",
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                        "text": "Agricultural land is the sum of pasture used for livestock grazing, and cropland used for direct human consumption and animal feed.",
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                        "text": "Agriculture is, therefore, the world\u2019s largest land user, taking up more area than forests, or wild grasslands.",
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                        "text": "Three-quarters of this agricultural land is used for livestock, which is pasture plus cropland used for the production of animal feed. This gives the world just 18% of global calories, and 37% of its protein. The other quarter of land is for crops for human consumption, which provide the majority of the world's calories and protein. ",
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                                "text": "Other studies find similar distributions of global land: in an analysis of how humans have transformed global land use in recent centuries, Ellis et al. (2010) found that by 2000, 55% of Earth\u2019s ice-free (not simply habitable) land had been converted into cropland, pasture, and urban areas.{ref}Ellis, E. C., Klein Goldewijk, K., Siebert, S., Lightman, D., & Ramankutty, N. (2010). ",
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                                        "text": "Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000",
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                                "text": ". Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19(5), 589-606.{/ref} This left only 45% as \u2018natural\u2019 or \u2018semi-natural\u2019 land.",
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                                "text": "The study by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018) estimates that 43% of ice- and desert-free land is used for agriculture. 83% of this is used for animal-sourced foods.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). ",
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                            {
                                "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216",
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                                        "text": "Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers",
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                                "text": ". ",
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                                "text": ", 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}",
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                                "text": "The difference in these figures is often due to the uncertainty of the size of \u2018rangelands\u2019. Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. The intensity of grazing on rangelands can vary a lot. That can make it difficult to accurately quantify how much rangelands are used for grazing, and therefore how much is used for food production.",
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                                "text": "But as the review above showed, despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to converge on an estimate of close to half of habitable land being used for agriculture.",
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                        "text": "Food systems are responsible for around one-quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). ",
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                        "text": "This includes emissions from land use change, on-farm production, processing, transport, packaging, and retail.",
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                        "text": "We can break these food system emissions down into four broad categories:",
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                                "text": "30% of food emissions come directly from livestock and fisheries",
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                        "text": ". Ruminant livestock \u2013 mainly cattle \u2013 for example, produce methane through their digestive processes. Manure and pasture management also fall into this category.",
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                                "text": "1% comes from wild fisheries",
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                        "text": ", most of which is fuel consumption from fishing vessels.\u00a0",
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                                "text": "Crop production accounts for around a quarter of food emissions. ",
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                                "text": "Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions.",
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                        "text": " Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%).",
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                        "text": "Finally, ",
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                                "text": "supply chains account for 18% of food emissions",
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                        "text": ". This includes food processing, distribution, transport, packaging, and retail.",
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                        "text": "Other studies estimate that an even larger fraction  \u2013 up to one-third \u2013 of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.{ref}Crippa, M., Solazzo, E., Guizzardi, D., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Tubiello, F. N., & Leip, A. J. N. F. (2021). Food systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Nature Food, 2(3), 198-209.{/ref} These differences come from the inclusion of non-food agricultural products \u2013 such as textiles, biofuels, and industrial crops \u2013 plus uncertainties in food waste and land use emissions.",
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                        "text": "What you should know about this data",
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                                "text": "The source of this data is the meta-analysis of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in ",
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                                "text": ".{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). ",
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                            {
                                "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216",
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                                        "text": "Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers",
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                                "text": ". ",
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                                "text": ", 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.",
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                                "text": "Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.",
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                                "text": "Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO",
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                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "2",
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                                "text": "eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO",
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                                "text": ". In this study, CO",
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                                "text": "eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP",
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                                        "text": "100",
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                                "text": ").",
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                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food",
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                                "text": "One-quarter to one-third",
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                        "text": " of global greenhouse gas emissions come from our food systems. The rest comes from energy.",
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                        "text": "While energy and industry make a bigger contribution than food, we must tackle ",
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                                "text": "both",
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                        "text": " food and energy systems to address climate change.",
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                        "text": "Michael Clark and colleagues modeled the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be emitted from food systems this century across a range of scenarios.\u00a0",
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                        "text": "In a business-as-usual scenario, the authors expect the world to emit around 1356 billion tonnes of CO",
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                        "text": " by 2100.",
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                        "text": "As the visualization shows, this would take us well beyond the carbon budget for 1.5\u00b0C \u2013 we would emit two to three times more than this budget. And it would consume almost all of our budget for 2\u00b0C.",
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                        "text": "Ignoring food emissions is simply not an option if we want to get close to our international climate targets.",
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                        "text": "Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow \u2013 an impossibility \u2013 we would still go well beyond our 1.5\u00b0C target, and nearly miss our 2\u00b0C target.",
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                                "text": "The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Michael Clark et al. (2020), published in ",
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                                "text": ".{ref}Clark, Michael A., Nina GG Domingo, Kimberly Colgan, Sumil K. Thakrar, David Tilman, John Lynch, In\u00eas L. Azevedo, and Jason D. Hill. \u201c",
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                                "url": "https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/705",
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                                        "text": "Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5\u00b0 and 2\u00b0 C climate change targets",
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                                "text": ".\u201d ",
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                                "text": ", 370, no. 6517 (2020): 705-708.{/ref}",
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                                "text": "Their \u2018business-as-usual\u2019 projection makes the following assumptions: global population increases in line with the UN\u2019s medium fertility scenario; per capita diets change as people around the world get richer (shifting towards more diverse diets with more meat and dairy); crop yields continue to increase in line with historical improvements, and rates of food loss and the emissions intensity of food production remain constant.",
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                                "text": "This is measured in global warming potential CO",
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                                "text": " warming-equivalents (CO",
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                                "text": "). This accounts for the range of greenhouse gasses, not just CO",
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                                "text": " but also others such as methane and nitrous oxide. We look at the differences in greenhouse gas metrics at the end of our article",
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                                        "text": " ",
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                                "text": "on ",
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                                                "text": "the carbon footprint of foods",
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                        "text": "\u2018Eat local\u2019 is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But it\u2019s often a misguided one.",
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                        "text": "Transport tends to be a small part of a food\u2019s carbon footprint. Globally, transport accounts for just 5% of food system emissions. Most of food\u2019s emissions come from land use change and emissions from their production on the farm.",
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                        "text": "Since transport emissions are typically small, and the differences ",
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                        "text": " foods are large, ",
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                        "text": " types of food we eat matter much more than how far it has traveled. Locally-produced beef will have a much larger footprint than peas, regardless of whether it\u2019s shipped across continents or not.",
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                        "text": "The visualization shows this.",
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                        "text": "Producing a kilogram of beef, for example, emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gasses (CO",
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                        "text": "-equivalents). The production of a kilogram of peas, shown at the bottom of the chart, emits just 1 kilogram of greenhouse gasses. Whether the beef or peas are produced locally will have little impact on the difference between these two foods.",
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                        "text": "The reason that transport accounts for such a small share of emissions is that most internationally traded food travels by boat, not by plane. Very little food is air-freighted; ",
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                                "text": "it accounts",
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                        "text": " for only 0.16% of food miles.{ref}\u2019Food miles\u2019 are measured in tonne-kilometers which represents the transport of one tonne of goods by a given transport mode (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterways, pipeline etc.) over a distance of one kilometer. Poore & Nemecek (2018) report that of the 9.4 billion tonne-kilometers of global food transport, air-freight accounted for only 15 million. This works out at only 0.16% of the total; most foods are transported by boat.{/ref} For the few products which ",
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                        "text": " transported by air, the emissions can be very high: flying emits 50 times more CO",
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                        "text": "eq than boat per tonne kilometer.",
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                        "text": "Unlike aviation, shipping is a very carbon-efficient way to transport goods. So, even shipping food over long distances by boat emits only small amounts of carbon. A classic example of traded food is avocados. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO",
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                        "text": "eq in transport emissions.{ref}We get this footprint value as: [9000km * 0.023kg per tonne-kilometer / 1000 = 0.207kg CO2eq per kg].{/ref}This is only around 8% of avocados\u2019 total footprint.\u00a0",
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                        "text": "\u2018Eat local\u2019 is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But transport tends to account for a small share of greenhouse gas emissions. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it\u2019s come from?",
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                        "text": "One-quarter of the world\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food\u2019s emissions?",
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2022-12-02 04:00:00

2024-06-03 15:46:39

[
    "Hannah Ritchie",
    "Pablo Rosado"
]

What are the environmental impacts of food production? How do we reduce the impacts of agriculture on the environment?

2020-05-17 10:23:56

2023-08-03 14:48:34

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Agriculture has a significant environmental impact in three key ways. First, it requires large amounts of [fresh water](https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress), which can cause significant environmental pressures in regions with water stress. It needs water as input and pollutes rivers, lakes, and oceans by releasing nutrients. It is a crucial driver of climate change, responsible for around one-quarter of the world’s [greenhouse gas emissions](http://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions). Finally, agriculture has a massive impact on the world’s environment due to its enormous [land use](https://ourworldindata.org/land-use). Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Large parts of the world that were once covered by [forests](http://ourworldindata.org/forests-and-deforestation) and wildlands are now used for agriculture. This loss of natural habitat has been the main driver for reducing the world’s [biodiversity](http://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity). Wildlife [can rebound](https://ourworldindata.org/europe-mammal-comeback) if we reduce agricultural land use and allow natural lands to restore. Ensuring everyone has access to a nutritious diet sustainably is one of the most significant challenges we face. On this page, you can find our data, visualizations, and writing relating to the environmental impacts of food. Related topics * [Land use](https://ourworldindata.org/land-use) * [Biodiversity](https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity) * [Hunger and Undernourishment](https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment) * [CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions) What are the environmental impacts of food and agriculture? The visualization here shows a summary of some of the main global impacts: * Food production accounts for [over a quarter](https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions) (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} * Half of the world’s habitable land [is used for](https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture) agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. * 70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture{ref}FAO. (2011). The state of the world’s land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW) – Managing systems at risk. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome and Earthscan, London.{/ref}. * 78% of global ocean and freshwater eutrophication is caused by agriculture.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} Eutrophication is the pollution of waterways with nutrient-rich water. * 94% of non-human mammal biomass is livestock. This means livestock outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 15-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). [The biomass distribution on Earth](https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506). _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref} This share is 97% when only land-based mammals are included. * 71% of bird biomass is poultry livestock. This means poultry livestock outweigh wild birds by a factor of more than 3-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). [The biomass distribution on Earth](https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506). _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref} Tackling what we eat, and how we produce our food, plays a key role in tackling climate change, reducing water stress and pollution, restoring lands back to forests or grasslands, and protecting the world’s wildlife. <Image filename="Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2.png" alt=""/> Around half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. This is what the visualization shows. Agricultural land is the sum of pasture used for livestock grazing, and cropland used for direct human consumption and animal feed. Agriculture is, therefore, the world’s largest land user, taking up more area than forests, or wild grasslands. Three-quarters of this agricultural land is used for livestock, which is pasture plus cropland used for the production of animal feed. This gives the world just 18% of global calories, and 37% of its protein. The other quarter of land is for crops for human consumption, which provide the majority of the world's calories and protein. ### https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture ##### What you should know about this data * Other studies find similar distributions of global land: in an analysis of how humans have transformed global land use in recent centuries, Ellis et al. (2010) found that by 2000, 55% of Earth’s ice-free (not simply habitable) land had been converted into cropland, pasture, and urban areas.{ref}Ellis, E. C., Klein Goldewijk, K., Siebert, S., Lightman, D., & Ramankutty, N. (2010). [Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00540.x). Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19(5), 589-606.{/ref} This left only 45% as ‘natural’ or ‘semi-natural’ land. * The study by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018) estimates that 43% of ice- and desert-free land is used for agriculture. 83% of this is used for animal-sourced foods.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} * The difference in these figures is often due to the uncertainty of the size of ‘rangelands’. Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. The intensity of grazing on rangelands can vary a lot. That can make it difficult to accurately quantify how much rangelands are used for grazing, and therefore how much is used for food production. * But as the review above showed, despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to converge on an estimate of close to half of habitable land being used for agriculture. <Image filename="Global-land-use-graphic.png" alt=""/> Food systems are responsible for around one-quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This includes emissions from land use change, on-farm production, processing, transport, packaging, and retail. We can break these food system emissions down into four broad categories: **30% of food emissions come directly from livestock and fisheries**. Ruminant livestock – mainly cattle – for example, produce methane through their digestive processes. Manure and pasture management also fall into this category. **1% comes from wild fisheries**, most of which is fuel consumption from fishing vessels. **Crop production accounts for around a quarter of food emissions. **This includes crops for human consumption and animal feed. **Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions.** Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%). Finally, **supply chains account for 18% of food emissions**. This includes food processing, distribution, transport, packaging, and retail. Other studies estimate that an even larger fraction – up to one-third – of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.{ref}Crippa, M., Solazzo, E., Guizzardi, D., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Tubiello, F. N., & Leip, A. J. N. F. (2021). Food systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Nature Food, 2(3), 198-209.{/ref} These differences come from the inclusion of non-food agricultural products – such as textiles, biofuels, and industrial crops – plus uncertainties in food waste and land use emissions. ### https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions ### https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food ##### What you should know about this data * The source of this data is the meta-analysis of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in _Science_.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products. * Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail. * Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO2. In this study, CO2eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP100). <Image filename="How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food.png" alt=""/> [One-quarter to one-third](https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food) of global greenhouse gas emissions come from our food systems. The rest comes from energy. While energy and industry make a bigger contribution than food, we must tackle _both_ food and energy systems to address climate change. Michael Clark and colleagues modeled the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be emitted from food systems this century across a range of scenarios. In a business-as-usual scenario, the authors expect the world to emit around 1356 billion tonnes of CO2-we by 2100. As the visualization shows, this would take us well beyond the carbon budget for 1.5°C – we would emit two to three times more than this budget. And it would consume almost all of our budget for 2°C. Ignoring food emissions is simply not an option if we want to get close to our international climate targets. Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow – an impossibility – we would still go well beyond our 1.5°C target, and nearly miss our 2°C target. ### https://ourworldindata.org/food-emissions-carbon-budget ##### What you should know about this data * The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Michael Clark et al. (2020), published in _Science_.{ref}Clark, Michael A., Nina GG Domingo, Kimberly Colgan, Sumil K. Thakrar, David Tilman, John Lynch, Inês L. Azevedo, and Jason D. Hill. “[Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2° C climate change targets](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/705).” _Science_, 370, no. 6517 (2020): 705-708.{/ref} * Their ‘business-as-usual’ projection makes the following assumptions: global population increases in line with the UN’s medium fertility scenario; per capita diets change as people around the world get richer (shifting towards more diverse diets with more meat and dairy); crop yields continue to increase in line with historical improvements, and rates of food loss and the emissions intensity of food production remain constant. * This is measured in global warming potential CO2 warming-equivalents (CO2-we). This accounts for the range of greenhouse gasses, not just CO2 but also others such as methane and nitrous oxide. We look at the differences in greenhouse gas metrics at the end of our article** **on [**the carbon footprint of foods**](https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane). <Image filename="Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits.png" alt=""/> ‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But it’s often a misguided one. Transport tends to be a small part of a food’s carbon footprint. Globally, transport accounts for just 5% of food system emissions. Most of food’s emissions come from land use change and emissions from their production on the farm. Since transport emissions are typically small, and the differences _between_ foods are large, _what_ types of food we eat matter much more than how far it has traveled. Locally-produced beef will have a much larger footprint than peas, regardless of whether it’s shipped across continents or not. The visualization shows this. Producing a kilogram of beef, for example, emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gasses (CO2-equivalents). The production of a kilogram of peas, shown at the bottom of the chart, emits just 1 kilogram of greenhouse gasses. Whether the beef or peas are produced locally will have little impact on the difference between these two foods. The reason that transport accounts for such a small share of emissions is that most internationally traded food travels by boat, not by plane. Very little food is air-freighted; [it accounts](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-food-miles-by-method) for only 0.16% of food miles.{ref}’Food miles’ are measured in tonne-kilometers which represents the transport of one tonne of goods by a given transport mode (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterways, pipeline etc.) over a distance of one kilometer. Poore & Nemecek (2018) report that of the 9.4 billion tonne-kilometers of global food transport, air-freight accounted for only 15 million. This works out at only 0.16% of the total; most foods are transported by boat.{/ref} For the few products which _are_ transported by air, the emissions can be very high: flying emits 50 times more CO2eq than boat per tonne kilometer. Unlike aviation, shipping is a very carbon-efficient way to transport goods. So, even shipping food over long distances by boat emits only small amounts of carbon. A classic example of traded food is avocados. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO2eq in transport emissions.{ref}We get this footprint value as: [9000km * 0.023kg per tonne-kilometer / 1000 = 0.207kg CO2eq per kg].{/ref}This is only around 8% of avocados’ total footprint. Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products. ### https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local ##### What you should know about this data * The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in _Science_.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products. * Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail. * Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO2. In this study, CO2eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP100). <Image filename="Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage.png" alt=""/> When we compare the carbon footprint of different types of foods, a clear hierarchy emerges. Meat and dairy products tend to emit more greenhouse gasses than plant-based foods. This holds true whether we compare on the basis of [mass (per kilogram)](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-kg-poore), [per kilocalorie](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore), or per gram of protein, as shown in the chart. Within meat and dairy products, there is also a consistent pattern: larger animals tend to be less efficient and have a higher footprint. Beef typically has the largest emissions; followed by lamb; pork; chicken; then eggs and fish. ### https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local ##### What you should know about this data * This data presents global average values. For some foods – such as beef – there are large differences depending on where it is produced, and the farming practices used. Nonetheless, the lowest-carbon beef and lamb still have a higher carbon footprint than most plant-based foods. * The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in _Science_.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products. * Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail. * Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO2. For CO2eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP100). <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore"/> The most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the food system is to change [_what_ we eat](https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local). Adopting a more plant-based diet by reducing our consumption of carbon-intensive foods such as meat and dairy – especially beef and lamb – is an effective way for consumers to reduce their carbon footprint. But there are also opportunities to reduce emissions by optimizing for more carbon-efficient practices and locations to produce foods. For some foods – in particular, beef, lamb, and dairy – there are large differences in emissions depending on how and where they’re produced. This is shown in the chart. Producing 100 grams of protein from beef emits 25 kilograms of carbon dioxide-equivalents (CO2eq), on average. But this ranges from 9 kilograms to 105 kilograms of CO2eq – a ten-fold difference. Optimizing production in places where these foods are produced with a smaller footprint could be another effective way of reducing global emissions. ### https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat ##### What you should know about this data * The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in _Science_.{ref}Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). [Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216). _Science_, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products. * Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail. * Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO2. For CO2eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP100). <Image filename="Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2.png" alt=""/> ### Explore data on the Environmental Impacts of Food <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/food-footprints?facet=none&Commodity+or+Specific+Food+Product=Commodity&Environmental+Impact=Carbon+footprint&Kilogram+%2F+Protein+%2F+Calories=Per+kilogram&By+stage+of+supply+chain=false&country=Bananas~Beef+%28beef+herd%29~Beef+%28dairy+herd%29~Cheese~Eggs~Lamb+%26+Mutton~Milk~Maize~Nuts~Pig+Meat~Peas~Potatoes~Poultry+Meat~Rice~Tomatoes~Wheat+%26+Rye~Tofu+%28soybeans%29~Prawns+%28farmed%29&hideControls=false"/> ## Research & Writing ‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But transport tends to account for a small share of greenhouse gas emissions. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it’s come from? Hannah Ritchie One-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food’s emissions? Hannah Ritchie ##### More key articles on the Environmental Impacts of Food ###### [Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint](https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat) Hannah Ritchie ###### [Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts?](https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks) Hannah Ritchie ###### [Yields vs. Land Use: How the Green Revolution enabled us to feed a growing population](https://ourworldindata.org/yields-vs-land-use-how-has-the-world-produced-enough-food-for-a-growing-population) Hannah Ritchie #### Food production and climate change Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie #### Food miles and transport Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie #### Environmental impacts of meat and dairy Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie #### Land use and deforestation Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie #### Other articles on food impacts Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie

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        "rendered": "\n<!-- formatting-options toc:false bodyClassName:topic-page -->\n\n\n\t<div class=\"sticky-nav-contents\">\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\"  href=\"#introduction\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Introduction</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\"  href=\"#key-insights-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Key Insights</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\"  href=\"#explore-data-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food\" rel=\"\" title=\"\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Data Explorer</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\"  href=\"#research-and-writing\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Research &amp; Writing</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\"  href=\"#interactive-charts-on-environmental-impacts-of-food-production\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Charts</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\"  href=\"#endnotes\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Endnotes</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\"  href=\"#citation\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Cite This Work</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\" wp-block-navigation-item wp-block-navigation-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__content\"  href=\"#licence\"><span class=\"wp-block-navigation-item__label\">Reuse This Work</span></a></li>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns front-matter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\" id=\"introduction\">\n<p>Agriculture has a significant environmental impact in three key ways.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>First, it requires large amounts of <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress\">fresh water</a>, which can cause significant environmental pressures in regions with water stress. It needs water as input and pollutes rivers, lakes, and oceans by releasing nutrients.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is a crucial driver of climate change, responsible for around one-quarter of the world\u2019s <a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions\">greenhouse gas emissions</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, agriculture has a massive impact on the world\u2019s environment due to its enormous <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/land-use\">land use</a>. Half of the world\u2019s habitable land is used for agriculture.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Large parts of the world that were once covered by <a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/forests-and-deforestation\">forests</a> and wildlands are now used for agriculture. This loss of natural habitat has been the main driver for reducing the world\u2019s <a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity\">biodiversity</a>. Wildlife <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/europe-mammal-comeback\">can rebound</a> if we reduce agricultural land use and allow natural lands to restore.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ensuring everyone has access to a nutritious diet sustainably is one of the most significant challenges we face. On this page, you can find our data, visualizations, and writing relating to the environmental impacts of food.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e0273e wp-block-group related-topics\">\n<p>Related topics</p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/land-use\">Land use</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity\">Biodiversity</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment\">Hunger and Undernourishment</a></li><li><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions\">CO\u2082 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions</a></li></ul>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insights\">\n\t\t<title>Key insights on the Environmental Impacts of Food</title>\n        <slug>key-insights-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food</slug>\n        <insights>\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">Food production has a large environmental impact in several ways</title>\n        <slug>food-plays-a-large-role-in-many-environmental-impacts</slug>\n        <content>\n\n<p>What are the environmental impacts of food and agriculture?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The visualization here shows a summary of some of the main global impacts:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Food production accounts for <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions\">over a quarter</a> (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., &amp; Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}<br></li><li>Half of the world\u2019s habitable land <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture\">is used for</a> agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free.<br></li><li>70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture{ref}FAO. (2011). The state of the world\u2019s land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW) \u2013 Managing systems at risk. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome and Earthscan, London.{/ref}.<br></li><li>78% of global ocean and freshwater eutrophication is caused by agriculture.{ref}Poore, J., &amp; Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} Eutrophication is the pollution of waterways with nutrient-rich water.<br></li><li>94% of non-human mammal biomass is livestock. This means livestock outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 15-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., &amp; Milo, R. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506\">The biomass distribution on Earth</a>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref} This share is 97% when only land-based mammals are included.<br></li><li>71% of bird biomass is poultry livestock. This means poultry livestock outweigh wild birds by a factor of more than 3-to-1.{ref}Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., &amp; Milo, R. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506\">The biomass distribution on Earth</a>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 115(25), 6506-6511.{/ref}<br></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Tackling what we eat, and how we produce our food, plays a key role in tackling climate change, reducing water stress and pollution, restoring lands back to forests or grasslands, and protecting the world\u2019s wildlife.</p>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<p></p>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"6811\" height=\"6055\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-57954\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2.png 6811w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2-400x356.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2-619x550.png 619w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2-150x133.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2-768x683.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2023/08/Environmental-impacts-of-agriculture-v2-1536x1366.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 6811px) 100vw, 6811px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">Half of the world\u2019s habitable land is used for agriculture</title>\n        <slug>half-of-habitable-land-is-used-for-agriculture</slug>\n        <content>\n\n<p>Around half of the world\u2019s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. This is what the visualization shows.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Agricultural land is the sum of pasture used for livestock grazing, and cropland used for direct human consumption and animal feed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Agriculture is, therefore, the world\u2019s largest land user, taking up more area than forests, or wild grasslands.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Three-quarters of this agricultural land is used for livestock, which is pasture plus cropland used for the production of animal feed. This gives the world just 18% of global calories, and 37% of its protein. The other quarter of land is for crops for human consumption, which provide the majority of the world&#8217;s calories and protein. </p>\n\n\n    <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n        <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture</link-url>\n        <title></title>\n        <content></content>\n        <figure></figure>\n    </block>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<h5>What you should know about this data</h5>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Other studies find similar distributions of global land: in an analysis of how humans have transformed global land use in recent centuries, Ellis et al. (2010) found that by 2000, 55% of Earth\u2019s ice-free (not simply habitable) land had been converted into cropland, pasture, and urban areas.{ref}Ellis, E. C., Klein Goldewijk, K., Siebert, S., Lightman, D., &amp; Ramankutty, N. (2010). <a href=\"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00540.x\">Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000</a>. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19(5), 589-606.{/ref} This left only 45% as \u2018natural\u2019 or \u2018semi-natural\u2019 land.<br></li><li>The study by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018) estimates that 43% of ice- and desert-free land is used for agriculture. 83% of this is used for animal-sourced foods.{ref}Poore, J., &amp; Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}<br></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The difference in these figures is often due to the uncertainty of the size of \u2018rangelands\u2019. Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. The intensity of grazing on rangelands can vary a lot. That can make it difficult to accurately quantify how much rangelands are used for grazing, and therefore how much is used for food production.<br></li><li>But as the review above showed, despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to converge on an estimate of close to half of habitable land being used for agriculture.</li></ul>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"3011\" height=\"1922\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-29757\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic.png 3011w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic-400x255.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic-800x511.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic-150x96.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic-768x490.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic-1536x980.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-graphic-2048x1307.png 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 3011px) 100vw, 3011px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">Food is responsible for one-quarter of the world\u2019s emissions</title>\n        <slug>food-responsible-for-one-quarter-of-emissions</slug>\n        <content>\n\n<p>Food systems are responsible for around one-quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions.{ref}Poore, J., &amp; Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This includes emissions from land use change, on-farm production, processing, transport, packaging, and retail.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We can break these food system emissions down into four broad categories:</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>30% of food emissions come directly from livestock and fisheries</strong>. Ruminant livestock \u2013 mainly cattle \u2013 for example, produce methane through their digestive processes. Manure and pasture management also fall into this category.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>1% comes from wild fisheries</strong>, most of which is fuel consumption from fishing vessels.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Crop production accounts for around a quarter of food emissions. </strong>This includes crops for human consumption and animal feed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions.</strong> Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, <strong>supply chains account for 18% of food emissions</strong>. This includes food processing, distribution, transport, packaging, and retail.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other studies estimate that an even larger fraction  \u2013 up to one-third \u2013 of the world&#8217;s greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.{ref}Crippa, M., Solazzo, E., Guizzardi, D., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Tubiello, F. N., &amp; Leip, A. J. N. F. (2021). Food systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Nature Food, 2(3), 198-209.{/ref} These differences come from the inclusion of non-food agricultural products \u2013 such as textiles, biofuels, and industrial crops \u2013 plus uncertainties in food waste and land use emissions.</p>\n\n\n    <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n        <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions</link-url>\n        <title></title>\n        <content>\n\n<p></p>\n\n</content>\n        <figure></figure>\n    </block>\n\n    <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n        <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food</link-url>\n        <title></title>\n        <content></content>\n        <figure></figure>\n    </block>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<h5>What you should know about this data</h5>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analysis of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., &amp; Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. In this study, CO<sub>2</sub>eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1624\" height=\"1520\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-28080\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food.png 1624w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food-400x374.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food-588x550.png 588w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food-150x140.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food-768x719.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food-1536x1438.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1624px) 100vw, 1624px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">Emissions from food alone would take us past 1.5\u00b0C or 2\u00b0C this century</title>\n        <slug>food-emissions-climate-targets</slug>\n        <content>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food\">One-quarter to one-third</a> of global greenhouse gas emissions come from our food systems. The rest comes from energy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>While energy and industry make a bigger contribution than food, we must tackle <em>both</em> food and energy systems to address climate change.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Michael Clark and colleagues modeled the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be emitted from food systems this century across a range of scenarios.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a business-as-usual scenario, the authors expect the world to emit around 1356 billion tonnes of CO<sub>2-we</sub> by 2100.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the visualization shows, this would take us well beyond the carbon budget for 1.5\u00b0C \u2013 we would emit two to three times more than this budget. And it would consume almost all of our budget for 2\u00b0C.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ignoring food emissions is simply not an option if we want to get close to our international climate targets.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow \u2013 an impossibility \u2013 we would still go well beyond our 1.5\u00b0C target, and nearly miss our 2\u00b0C target.</p>\n\n\n    <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n        <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/food-emissions-carbon-budget</link-url>\n        <title></title>\n        <content></content>\n        <figure></figure>\n    </block>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<h5>What you should know about this data</h5>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Michael Clark et al. (2020), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Clark, Michael A., Nina GG Domingo, Kimberly Colgan, Sumil K. Thakrar, David Tilman, John Lynch, In\u00eas L. Azevedo, and Jason D. Hill. \u201c<a href=\"https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/705\">Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5\u00b0 and 2\u00b0 C climate change targets</a>.\u201d <em>Science</em>, 370, no. 6517 (2020): 705-708.{/ref}<br></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Their \u2018business-as-usual\u2019 projection makes the following assumptions: global population increases in line with the UN\u2019s medium fertility scenario; per capita diets change as people around the world get richer (shifting towards more diverse diets with more meat and dairy); crop yields continue to increase in line with historical improvements, and rates of food loss and the emissions intensity of food production remain constant.<br></li><li>This is measured in global warming potential CO<sub>2</sub> warming-equivalents (CO<sub>2-we</sub>). This accounts for the range of greenhouse gasses, not just CO<sub>2</sub> but also others such as methane and nitrous oxide. We look at the differences in greenhouse gas metrics at the end of our article<strong> </strong>on <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane\"><strong>the carbon footprint of foods</strong></a>.<br></li></ul>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1541\" height=\"1004\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-43395\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits.png 1541w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits-400x261.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits-800x521.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits-150x98.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits-768x500.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/Food-emissions-vs.-temp-limits-1536x1001.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1541px) 100vw, 1541px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">What we eat matters much more than how far it has traveled</title>\n        <slug>food-emissions-local</slug>\n        <content>\n\n<p>\u2018Eat local\u2019 is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But it\u2019s often a misguided one.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Transport tends to be a small part of a food\u2019s carbon footprint. Globally, transport accounts for just 5% of food system emissions. Most of food\u2019s emissions come from land use change and emissions from their production on the farm.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since transport emissions are typically small, and the differences <em>between</em> foods are large, <em>what</em> types of food we eat matter much more than how far it has traveled. Locally-produced beef will have a much larger footprint than peas, regardless of whether it\u2019s shipped across continents or not.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The visualization shows this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Producing a kilogram of beef, for example, emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gasses (CO<sub>2</sub>-equivalents). The production of a kilogram of peas, shown at the bottom of the chart, emits just 1 kilogram of greenhouse gasses. Whether the beef or peas are produced locally will have little impact on the difference between these two foods.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason that transport accounts for such a small share of emissions is that most internationally traded food travels by boat, not by plane. Very little food is air-freighted; <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-food-miles-by-method\">it accounts</a> for only 0.16% of food miles.{ref}\u2019Food miles\u2019 are measured in tonne-kilometers which represents the transport of one tonne of goods by a given transport mode (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterways, pipeline etc.) over a distance of one kilometer. Poore &amp; Nemecek (2018) report that of the 9.4 billion tonne-kilometers of global food transport, air-freight accounted for only 15 million. This works out at only 0.16% of the total; most foods are transported by boat.{/ref} For the few products which <em>are</em> transported by air, the emissions can be very high: flying emits 50 times more CO<sub>2</sub>eq than boat per tonne kilometer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unlike aviation, shipping is a very carbon-efficient way to transport goods. So, even shipping food over long distances by boat emits only small amounts of carbon. A classic example of traded food is avocados. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO<sub>2</sub>eq in transport emissions.{ref}We get this footprint value as: [9000km * 0.023kg per tonne-kilometer / 1000 = 0.207kg CO2eq per kg].{/ref}This is only around 8% of avocados\u2019 total footprint.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products.</p>\n\n\n    <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n        <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local</link-url>\n        <title></title>\n        <content></content>\n        <figure></figure>\n    </block>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<h5>What you should know about this data</h5>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., &amp; Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. In this study, CO<sub>2</sub>eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"2933\" height=\"2635\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-29928\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage.png 2933w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-400x359.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-612x550.png 612w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-150x135.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-768x690.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-1536x1380.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-2048x1840.png 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2933px) 100vw, 2933px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">Meat and dairy foods tend to have a higher carbon footprint</title>\n        <slug>meat-dairy-food-carbon-footprint</slug>\n        <content>\n\n<p>When we compare the carbon footprint of different types of foods, a clear hierarchy emerges.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meat and dairy products tend to emit more greenhouse gasses than plant-based foods. This holds true whether we compare on the basis of <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-kg-poore\">mass (per kilogram)</a>, <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore\">per kilocalorie</a>, or per gram of protein, as shown in the chart.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Within meat and dairy products, there is also a consistent pattern: larger animals tend to be less efficient and have a higher footprint. Beef typically has the largest emissions; followed by lamb; pork; chicken; then eggs and fish.</p>\n\n\n    <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n        <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local</link-url>\n        <title></title>\n        <content></content>\n        <figure></figure>\n    </block>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<h5>What you should know about this data</h5>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>This data presents global average values. For some foods \u2013 such as beef \u2013 there are large differences depending on where it is produced, and the farming practices used. Nonetheless, the lowest-carbon beef and lamb still have a higher carbon footprint than most plant-based foods.<br></li><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., &amp; Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. For CO<sub>2</sub>eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n\n\t<block type=\"key-insight\">\n\t\t<title is-hidden=\"0\">There are also large differences in the carbon footprint of the same foods</title>\n        <slug>differences-carbon-footprint-foods</slug>\n        <content>\n\n<p>The most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the food system is to change <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local\"><em>what</em> we eat</a>.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adopting a more plant-based diet by reducing our consumption of carbon-intensive foods such as meat and dairy \u2013 especially beef and lamb \u2013 is an effective way for consumers to reduce their carbon footprint.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there are also opportunities to reduce emissions by optimizing for more carbon-efficient practices and locations to produce foods. For some foods \u2013 in particular, beef, lamb, and dairy \u2013 there are large differences in emissions depending on how and where they\u2019re produced. This is shown in the chart.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Producing 100 grams of protein from beef emits 25 kilograms of carbon dioxide-equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq), on average. But this ranges from 9 kilograms to 105 kilograms of CO<sub>2</sub>eq \u2013 a ten-fold difference.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Optimizing production in places where these foods are produced with a smaller footprint could be another effective way of reducing global emissions.</p>\n\n\n    <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n        <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat</link-url>\n        <title></title>\n        <content></content>\n        <figure></figure>\n    </block>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-technical-text\">\n\t\t\n\n<h5>What you should know about this data</h5>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in <em>Science</em>.{ref}Poore, J., &amp; Nemecek, T. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216\">Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers</a>. <em>Science</em>, 360(6392), 987-992.{/ref} This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.<br></li><li>Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.<br></li><li>Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO<sub>2</sub>eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO<sub>2</sub>. For CO<sub>2</sub>eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP<sub>100</sub>).</li></ul>\n\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"2678\" height=\"2613\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-29926\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2.png 2678w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2-400x390.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2-564x550.png 564w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2-150x146.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2-768x749.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2-1536x1499.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/02/Carbon-footprint-of-protein-foods-2-2048x1998.png 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2678px) 100vw, 2678px\" /></figure>\n\n</content>\n\t</block>\n</insights>\n\t</block>\n\n\n<h3>Explore data on the Environmental Impacts of Food</h3>\n\n\n\n<iframe class=\"wp-block-full-content-width\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/food-footprints?facet=none&amp;Commodity+or+Specific+Food+Product=Commodity&amp;Environmental+Impact=Carbon+footprint&amp;Kilogram+%2F+Protein+%2F+Calories=Per+kilogram&amp;By+stage+of+supply+chain=false&amp;country=Bananas~Beef+%28beef+herd%29~Beef+%28dairy+herd%29~Cheese~Eggs~Lamb+%26+Mutton~Milk~Maize~Nuts~Pig+Meat~Peas~Potatoes~Poultry+Meat~Rice~Tomatoes~Wheat+%26+Rye~Tofu+%28soybeans%29~Prawns+%28farmed%29&amp;hideControls=false\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; min-height: 740px; max-height: 950px; height: 100vh; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27eafcc7 wp-block-group wp-block-research-and-writing\">\n<h2 id=\"research-and-writing\">Research &amp; Writing</h2>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1cfbd wp-block-group research-and-writing__top\">      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>\u2018Eat local\u2019 is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But transport tends to account for a small share of greenhouse gas emissions. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it\u2019s come from?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1cbd3 wp-block-group research-and-writing__top-right\">      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">Food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>One-quarter of the world\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food\u2019s emissions?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1c86b wp-block-group\">\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1c4f0 wp-block-group research-and-writing__shorts\">\n<h5>More key articles on the Environmental Impacts of Food</h5>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1b6ed wp-block-group\">\n<h6><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat\">Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint</a></h6>\n\n\n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1bbf3 wp-block-group\">\n<h6><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks\">Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts?</a></h6>\n\n\n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-container-65e6e27e1c0de wp-block-group\">\n<h6><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/yields-vs-land-use-how-has-the-world-produced-enough-food-for-a-growing-population\">Yields vs. Land Use: How the Green Revolution enabled us to feed a growing population</a></h6>\n\n\n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h4>Food production and climate change</h4>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-grid research-and-writing__sub-category\">\n\t\t\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2019/11/Food-GHG-emissions-thumbnail.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">Food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"428\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail-768x428.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail-768x428.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail-400x223.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail-800x446.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail-150x84.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/food-emissions-thumbnail.png 1087w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">How much of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food?</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-emissions-carbon-budget\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"301\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail-768x301.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail-768x301.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail-400x157.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail-800x314.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail-150x59.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail-1536x603.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/06/food-budgets-thumbnail.png 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">Emissions from food alone could use up all of our budget for 1.5\u00b0C or 2\u00b0C \u2013 but we have a range of opportunities to avoid this</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-opportunity-costs-food\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/ghg-opportunity-costs-land-01.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\"><strong>What are the carbon opportunity costs of our food?</strong></div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<h4>Food miles and transport</h4>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-grid research-and-writing__sub-category\">\n\t\t\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/12/Local-food-thumbnail-1.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-transport-by-mode\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"301\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts-768x301.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts-768x301.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts-400x157.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts-800x314.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts-150x59.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts-1536x603.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/02/faq-food-impacts.png 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">Very little of global food is transported by air; this greatly reduces the climate benefits of eating local</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<h4>Environmental impacts of meat and dairy</h4>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-grid research-and-writing__sub-category\">\n\t\t\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Carbon-meat-curves.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"301\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail-768x301.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail-768x301.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail-400x157.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail-800x314.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail-150x59.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail-1536x603.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/01/environment-milks-thumbnail.png 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts?</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2020/03/Food-impacts-methane.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">The carbon footprint of foods: are differences explained by the impacts of methane?</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/03/Land-use-different-diets-thumbnail.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<h4>Land use and deforestation</h4>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-grid research-and-writing__sub-category\">\n\t\t\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/what-are-drivers-deforestation\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/02/deforestation-drivers-thumbnail-01.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">Cutting down forests: what are the drivers of deforestation?</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/peak-agriculture-land\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"301\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1-768x301.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1-768x301.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1-400x157.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1-800x314.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1-150x59.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1-1536x603.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/03/Peak-land-thumbnail-1.png 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">After millennia of agricultural expansion, the world has passed \u2018peak agricultural land\u2019</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/yields-habitat-loss\">\n            <figure><img width=\"348\" height=\"183\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/Biodiversity-habitat.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/Biodiversity-habitat.png 348w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/09/Biodiversity-habitat-150x79.png 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 348px) 100vw, 348px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">To protect the world\u2019s wildlife we must improve crop yields \u2013 especially across Africa</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Agriculture-land-use-map.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">Half of the world\u2019s habitable land is used for agriculture</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n\t</div>\n\n\n<h4>Other articles on food impacts</h4>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-block-owid-grid research-and-writing__sub-category\">\n\t\t\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/food-waste-emissions\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Food-waste-thumbnail.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">Food waste is responsible for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n      <div class=\"wp-block-owid-card  with-image\" data-no-lightbox>\n        <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agriculture-better-for-the-environment\">\n            <figure><img width=\"768\" height=\"402\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail-768x402.png\" class=\"attachment-medium_large size-medium_large\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail-768x402.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail-400x209.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail-800x419.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail-150x79.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2017/10/Organic-vs.-conventional-thumbnail.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" /></figure>\n            <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n              <div class=\"title\">Is organic r<strong>e</strong>ally better for the e<strong>nvironment</strong>\u00a0th<strong>a</strong>n conventiona<strong>l</strong>\u00a0agriculture?</div class=\"title\">\n              <div class=\"description\">\n                \n\n<p>Hannah Ritchie</p>\n\n\n              </div>\n            </div>\n        </a>\n      </div>\n\n\t</div></div>\n\n\n\n\t<block type=\"all-charts\"></block>",
        "protected": false
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    "excerpt": {
        "rendered": "What are the environmental impacts of food production? How do we reduce the impacts of agriculture on the environment?",
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    "date_gmt": "2022-12-02T04:00:00",
    "modified": "2023-08-03T15:48:34",
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    "authors_name": [
        "Hannah Ritchie",
        "Pablo Rosado"
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    "modified_gmt": "2023-08-03T14:48:34",
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