In an era of industrialized agriculture and complex supply chains, the true environmental pressures of our global food system are elusive and often difficult to assess.
“Everybody eats food, and more and more people are paying attention to the impact that what they eat on the planet,” says Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Keeping track of is proving to be a huge task for many reasons, for example, there are different foods produced in different ways around the world, and different environmental pressures.
Scientists have made great strides in assessing the environmental impact of food on a pound or kilogram basis by ranking foods based on factors such as greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution. assessments can help guide consumer decision-making, but Halpern says that when it comes to decisions that have to be made in a world with a rapidly expanding population, environmental footprints – the pressures from food production Affected areas) needed a more thorough analysis. And we need the intensity of those pressures.
“Eight billion people’s individual choices stack up, and we need to know the overall impact of total food production, not just per pound, especially when setting food policies.”
To meet that need, Halpern and colleagues at the UC Santa Barbara National Center for Ecological Analysis, Synthesis (NCEAS), have for the first time mapped the environmental footprint of all food production, both in the ocean and on land. Their research is published in the Nature Sustainability journal.
Biased pressure and hidden connections
“Did you know that nearly half of all environmental pressure from food production comes from just five countries?” Halpern said.
Halpern, executive director of NCEAS and professor at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, has a long-standing interest in understanding the impacts of food production and the local context for these impacts. The researchers found that greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater use, habitat disturbance, and nutrient pollution (such as fertilizer runoff) were generated by 99% of the total reported seafood and terrestrial food production in 2017. it was done.
The results are astonishing.
“The cumulative pressures of food production are more concentrated than previously thought, with 92% of the pressures from food production on land concentrated on just 10% of the Earth’s surface,” says Melanie. Frazier said. Co-author of NCEAS and papers. Moreover, the space required for dairy and beef farming accounts for about a quarter of the cumulative footprint of all food production. And are these five countries responsible for nearly half of all environmental pressures related to food production? India, China, the United States, Brazil and Pakistan.
Similar to the per pound of food approach used in most other studies, this study also looked at the eco-efficiency of each food type, but this time rather than assuming it was the same everywhere. , taking into account regional differences.
“Because the eco-efficiency in producing a particular type of food varies spatially, the ranking of foods by efficiency varies greatly from country to country. This is important in guiding which foods we eat from where.” said Halley Froehlich, assistant professor of environmental studies at UCSB and co-author of the study.
Evaluation by the research team takes production methods into account. For example, the United States, the world’s largest soybean producer, is more than twice as efficient as India, the fifth largest producer, thanks to technology that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and increases yields. I grow soybeans. Environmentally friendly option.
Furthermore, the study reveals that the relationship between land and sea can be overlooked when focusing solely on one or the other, and has a significant impact on environmental pressures. Because they are fed marine forage fish such as herring, anchovies and sardines, and chickens have sea footprints. The opposite is true for marine farms, where crop-based feeds extend the environmental pressure of fish farms onto land.
To feed a growing and wealthier world population, reduce environmental damage and improve food security, the current food system will need to undergo major changes, researchers say. I have. In some cases, farming may need to be made more efficient, but consumers may need to change their food preferences.
“We need this comprehensive information to make more accurate decisions about what we eat,” said Halpern, who has revised her own food choices based on the results of this study.
“I became a pescatarian many years ago because I wanted to reduce the environmental impact of what I ate,” he said. I thought I needed to actually use science to inform my decisions about what to eat, which is actually why I started this research project. So I see that from an environmental point of view, chicken is actually better than some seafood.So I changed my diet and started incorporating chicken again. Annie)
