The other day a follower of my blog asked me to write a post on the environmental arguments for reducing meat consumption. This is something I’ve reffered to a lot in other posts – particularly ‘the human cost’ posts – but I wanted to put together a recap.
Let’s be absolutely clear; the environmental argument is the most pressing and convincing argument for reducing your meat consumption (unless you’re a climate change denier, in which case this post is not going to illuminate things for you).
If we assume it’s a given that climate change is happening, and that it’s accelerating fast as a result of human activity, then agriculture is a massive contributor. Not just meat production but all agriculture, and the food industry as a whole.
Plants and animals need land and water to grow. Animals also need food, generally plants grown for that purpose. Crops are usually grown with fertilisers – which give off greenhouse gasses, and animal manure releases such gasses too. In fact feed crops take the lions share of fertilisers and the Nitrous oxide released by these and animal manure is among the most potent gas causing climate change. It takes around three times more fossil fuels to manufacture a meat-based diet than a vegetable-based diet.
Put simply animals require much more energy input, and in the process emit more gasses, than vegetables to to produce. They require more water and more time, and then energy to slaughter and prepare. They require land to grow food crops which could be used for feeding humans or kept as vital forests.
We need to feed an increasingly large number of people whilst lowering greenhouse gas emissions. The only sustainable way to do these two things is by eating less meat and growing more crops for human consumption. A recent study published in Environmental Research Letters states that fertiliser use needs to be reduced by 50% to prevent further climate change, and that means meat consumption has to drop too. Switching from beef and pork to chicken and fish, which have a lower carbon footprint, can help but is not an overall solution.
It’s not just production we need to think about – it’s also the way food gets to us. I think we need to think long and hard about basing our diet around local products. This will often mean seasonal products, but that’s part of the charm. This is not to say we should eschew all imported goods, of course it’s nice to enjoy a bannana or a mango from time to time and that’s a benefit of living in this time, but we can’t make such things the staple of our diets if we are serious about lowering emissions. If you want to eat meat, eat British meat.
I’m aware this is low on statistics – you can find these easily enough with a google search and I’ve dropped plenty into previous posts too. This is not a statistics post it’s a fact post. Agriculture and the food industry of key to our survival on the planet, it will always use energy, but we can reinvisage how it does so before it’s too late. Like many things, it’s easy to say that nothing we can do will make a difference but I disagree. The simple act of change, of asking for things to be better or different, of showing people how to be different, can and does have power. The more of us that do it, the bigger the difference.
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