A selection of articles on the environmental case for Vegetyarianism / Veganism

JONATHON PRRITT in The Guardian

New research indicates that gas-guzzling cars are a much less important factor in climate change than the huge amounts of food devoured by carnivorous ‘burger man’. Jonathon Porritt on the geopolitics of food

Jonathon Porritt The Guardian, Wednesday January 4 2006 Of all the seasonal homilies about “green” Christmases and “sustainable” new year pledges – an oxymoron if ever I've heard one – only one stuck in my mind: each of us could make a bigger contribution to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by becoming a vegan than by converting to an eco-friendly car.

Researchers at the University of Chicago have calculated the relative carbon intensity of a standard vegan diet in comparison to a US-style carnivorous diet, all the way through from production to processing to distribution to cooking and consumption. An average burger man (that is, not the outsize variety) emits the equivalent of 1.5 tonnes more CO2 every year than the standard vegan. By comparison, were you to trade in your conventional gas-guzzler for a state of the art Prius hybrid, your CO2 savings would amount to little more than one tonne per year.

This may come as a bit of a shock to climate change campaigners. “Stop eating meat” is unlikely to be the favourite slogan of the new Stop Climate Chaos coalition. Even “eat less meat” might not go down too well, even though Compassion in World Farming has produced an utterly compelling explanation – in their report, Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat – of why this really is the way forward.

The basic rule of thumb is that it takes 2kg of feed to produce every kilogram of chicken, 4kg for pork, and at least 7kg for beef. The more meat we eat, the more grain, soya and other feedstuffs we need. So when we hear that the total global meat demand is expected to grow from 209m tonnes in 1997 to around 327m tonnes in 2020, what we have to hold in our mind is all the extra hectares of land required, all the extra water consumed, the extra energy burned, and the extra chemicals applied to grow the requisite amount of feed to produce 327m tonnes of meat.

Only a tiny proportion of those recently alerted to the threat of climate change would make any connection whatsoever between this and the food they eat. These are two entirely different zones of environmental reality – and getting one's head around climate change is proving to be enough of a challenge anyway.

Mass awareness.

This year will undoubtedly be looked back on as the year when mass awareness at last kicked in – largely because it's been such a shocking year in terms both of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and of the spate of new research findings about accelerating impacts on both the Arctic and the Antarctic, on the Russian and Canadian permafrost, on the acidification of the oceans, and so on.

It was also the year when the debate about how much oil is left in the ground bubbled up again, with oil trading at more than $60 a barrel for far longer than analysts imagined possible. The Goldman Sachs prediction that oil could reach $100 a barrel within the next decade didn't seem quite so daft any more.

The relatively imminent prospect of finding ourselves living in a carbon-constrained oil-scarce world is, at long last, beginning to impact on government policymakers. But policymakers in the agricultural wing of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) may well be the last to wake up to this – even though the climate change team is only just down the corridor. My Christmas reading included a brave new Vision for the common agricultural policy (CAP), produced by Treasury and Defra, presumably as part of their campaign to see off Jacques Chirac and his legions of French peasants. All in all, it's quite a good read, but the section on food security (defined as “an individual's access to enough food to maintain a healthy and active life”) is astonishingly complacent.

As far as our government is concerned, it apparently doesn't matter any longer where the food we buy comes from, as long as it meets minimum food safety and animal welfare standards. If our big retailers can source their produce from elsewhere in the world at lower costs than UK producers, what's the problem? In a global economy, where food is treated just like any other traded commodity, we may still need farmers (for the time being at least), but we don't necessarily need them based in the UK itself.

Many people believe the government has got this one badly wrong. Food isn't “just another commodity”, it is the foundation of personal wellbeing and is inextricably interwoven into a nation's culture, character and land use. In that regard, farming and food production embody a set of skills and capabilities on which the long-term security of any nation still ultimately depends.

To demonstrate this, just add a few more geopolitical variables to the pot – on top of climate change and declining availability of oil. Just before Christmas, we heard that the Chinese economy grew by 16.5% last year – almost twice as fast as official figures. Oil imports have soared correspondingly, and will keep on rising. China is no longer self-sufficient in food. As meat consumption rockets (from 4kg per person 40 years ago to nearly 60kg today), so too do imports of grain and soya. Competition for land and water has never been fiercer; protests and riots over land use are now commonplace.

At least China's population isn't growing much any longer, unlike that of India and many other countries. We are on track for a world population of around 9bn by the middle of this century – 6bn more than in 1950. Massive increases in food production and in average yields have just about kept up with population growth so far, but at huge cost to the environment. And there are few agricultural experts who think we can any longer sustain that kind of increased productivity.

Then start mixing them all together. When oil starts trading at $100 a barrel, what happens to food production systems that are entirely dependent on cheap fossil fuels? How secure – let alone economically viable – will today's global supply chains prove to be when the worst effects of climate change begin to impact on food production all around the world? What will be the impact on food production of more and more governments using more and more of their land for energy crops and biofuels in order to address the problem of climate change? Worst nightmare

Modelling these variables is a policy-maker's worst nightmare, but they absolutely cannot be ignored. Unfortunately, they barely feature in Defra's new vision, which seeks to persuade its readers that there is no alternative but to accelerate the globalisation of the food economy. “Complete self-sufficiency” is summarily dismissed, as if anyone is out there arguing for complete self-sufficiency anyway. What they are arguing for might be termed “cost-effective self-reliance”, as a hedge against the growing threat of widespread ecological and social disruption – food security seen in terms of land use, quality, sustainability and food safety, not just temporary availability and access.

And that means policies that do not leave our farmers gratuitously disadvantaged by overseas producers who care little for the state of the environment or animal welfare; policies that actively promote local sourcing, obliging our retailers to be as smart and creative about local supply chains as they are about global supply chains; policies that set out systematically to reduce carbon intensity in food production and distribution; policies that build on the excellent work already achieved through the public sector food procurement initiative, and the development of new agri-environment measures.

It also means a rather different vision, acknowledging up front that a sustainable future for the UK depends on securing a thriving rural economy, and that this, in turn, depends on keeping sustainable food production absolutely at the heart of the rural economy. This may come as a bit of a surprise to some conservationists today, but the worst possible outcome for the British countryside and the global environment would be further reform of the CAP – ostensibly in the name of “more environment-friendly farming” – that resulted in more and more farmers going out of business. Which is precisely why we need a much more intelligent debate about food security than the one we're getting at the moment.

· Jonathon Porritt is programme director of Forum for the Future and chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission. His book, Capitalism As If The World Matters, is published by Earthscan Hardback. He will be speaking, with Ken Livingstone, Monty Don, Caroline Lucas and others, at the Soil Association's 60th anniversary conference in London on Friday and Saturday. Further information at: www.soilassociation.org/conference

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

The UN Water Assessment Programme states: “At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Earth, with its diverse and abundant life forms, including over six billion humans, is facing a serious water crisis.” [1]

We all know that ours is a Blue Planet, mostly made up of water, so it can be difficult to believe that this most precious of natural resources could ever become so scarce as to endanger future food production and general planetary health. However, only 2.53% of the earth's water is fresh and most of this is inaccessible – some two-thirds being captured in glaciers and permanent snow. [2] The remaining fresh water is almost entirely made up of groundwater.

According to Sandra Postel, Director of the Global Water Policy Project, the world overdraws 200 km3 of its global groundwater ‘bank account’ every year. [3] This over-exploitation has serious consequences for future food production and global health. In fact, the WorldWatch Institute rates aquifer depletion, alongside HIV and shrinking cropland area per person, as one of the three most potentially devastating problems facing our species. [4]

Water pollution serves to compound the problem, with global wastewater estimated to be in the region of 1,500 km3. The UN suggests that 1 litre of wastewater pollutes, on average, 8 litres of freshwater, which would result in a freshwater pollution burden of around 12,000 km3 worldwide. [5]

Estimates suggest that climate change could cause a 20% increase in global water scarcity. [6]

In their ‘Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment 2000’ UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimate that at present 1.1 billion people have no access to safe water supplies. 2.4 billion people have no access to any form of improved sanitation.

“As a consequence, 2.2 million people in developing countries, most of them children, die every year from diseases associated with lack of safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene” – Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General, WHO and Carol Bellamy, Executive Director, UNICEF. [7]

The situation is predicted to worsen as population expands and consumption per capita increases as more and more people adopt resource-intensive Western-style lifestyles.

The UN's 2003 Water Development Report predicts that “by the middle of this century, at worst 7 billion people in sixty countries will be water-scarce, at best 2 billion people in forty-eight countries.” [8] In fact, the problem is so serious that many environmental and political commentators predict that the resource wars of the future will be fought over water rather than oil.

To ensure our basic needs, we all need 20 to 50 litres of water free from harmful contaminants each day. [9]

THE LIVESTOCK CONNECTION Worldwide, agriculture uses up 70% of fresh water resources. [10] This is largely because a lot of cropland has to be irrigated to make it agriculturally viable and to increase and improve crop yields.

As has been shown, much of this land is entirely wasted by being used to grow feed crops for livestock rather than food for people. The water used on this land – as well as that consumed directly by livestock – represents yet another wasted resource.

There has been much disagreement over precisely how much water is squandered in this way. Professor David Pimentel of Cornell University's Ecology Department has calculated that it takes 500 litres of water to produce 1kg of potatoes, 900 litres per kg of wheat, 3,500 litres per kg of digestible chicken flesh and a massive 100,000 litres for 1kg of beef. [11]

A more conservative estimate comes from Beckett and Oltjen of the University of California's Department of Animal Science. [12] In a study partly financed by the California Beef Council, they concluded that wheat production requires 120 litres per kg and beef 3,700 litres per kg. It is interesting to look a little more closely at these figures as they show that, even by the most conservative of estimates, beef production still represents a scandalous misuse of one of our most precious natural resources.

1 kg of meat yields about 2800 kcal and 174 g of protein. [13] 1 kg of wheat yields 3300 kcal and 110 g of protein (100g after adjustment for digestibility). According to Beckett and Oltjen, the kilogram of beef requires 3,700 litres of water and the kilogram of wheat requires 120 litres of water. If we put all of these figures together, we find that whilst wheat provides us with an average 27.5 kcal for each litre of water used, beef provides only 0.76 kcal per litre. This means that – based on the data presented to show that other figures were “overstated” – beef still requires 36 times as much water per calorie as wheat. When the same calculations are done for digestible protein, wheat comes out as 18 times more water efficient than beef. These figures are summarised in table 2.

Calories  Digestible protein  Water  Calories per litre Protein per litre

Wheat 3300 100 120 27.50 0.833 Beef 2800 174 3700 0.76 0.047 Wheat/Beef 36 18 Table 2: Comparison of water use in beef and wheat production; Source: Beckett & Oltjen, 1993; USDA nutritional database.

By these figures, one kilogram of beef uses as much water as:

40 baths 300 toilet flushes 100 times the clean water needed by an individual according to UNESCO

Since a large percentage of the crops we feed to our farmed animals are grown on ‘ghost acres’ in developing countries, this wasted water is coming not just from our own reserves but from the very countries where drinking water is most scarce.

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Livestock a major threat to environment

Remedies urgently needed 29 November 2006, Rome – Which causes more greenhouse gas emissions, rearing cattle or driving cars?

Surprise!

According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation.

Says Henning Steinfeld, Chief of FAO’s Livestock Information and Policy Branch and senior author of the report: “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”

With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes.

Long shadow

The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other agricultural sub-sector. It provides livelihoods to about 1.3 billion people and contributes about 40 percent to global agricultural output. For many poor farmers in developing countries livestock are also a source of renewable energy for draft and an essential source of organic fertilizer for their crops.

But such rapid growth exacts a steep environmental price, according to the FAO report, Livestock’s Long Shadow –Environmental Issues and Options. “The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level,” it warns.

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

Land and water

At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 percent of pastures considered as degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification.

The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution, euthropication and the degeneration of coral reefs. The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops. Widespread overgrazing disturbs water cycles, reducing replenishment of above and below ground water resources. Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed.

Livestock are estimated to be the main inland source of phosphorous and nitrogen contamination of the South China Sea, contributing to biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems.

Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass. Livestock’s presence in vast tracts of land and its demand for feed crops also contribute to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed as in decline, with livestock identified as a culprit.

Remedies

The report, which was produced with the support of the multi-institutional Livestock, Environment and Development (LEAD) Initiative, proposes explicitly to consider these environmental costs and suggests a number of ways of remedying the situation, including:

Land degradation – controlling access and removing obstacles to mobility on common pastures. Use of soil conservation methods and silvopastoralism, together with controlled livestock exclusion from sensitive areas; payment schemes for environmental services in livestock-based land use to help reduce and reverse land degradation.

Atmosphere and climate – increasing the efficiency of livestock production and feed crop agriculture. Improving animals’ diets to reduce enteric fermentation and consequent methane emissions, and setting up biogas plant initiatives to recycle manure.

Water – improving the efficiency of irrigation systems. Introducing full-cost pricing for water together with taxes to discourage large-scale livestock concentration close to cities.

These and related questions are the focus of discussions between FAO and its partners meeting to chart the way forward for livestock production at global consultations in Bangkok this week. These discussions also include the substantial public health risks related to the rapid livestock sector growth as, increasingly, animal diseases also affect humans; rapid livestock sector growth can also lead to the exclusion of smallholders from growing markets.

Contact: Christopher Matthews Media Relations, FAO christopher.matthews@fao.org (+39) 06 570 53762