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Beef Cattle in the Texana Feeders Feedlot in Floresville, Texas (Daniel Acker / Bloomberg)
The human population has reached 7.6 billion and could reach 9 or 10 billion by the middle of the century. All these people will need to eat. A A thought-provoking report released Wednesday in the journal Nature indicates that a sustainable food system that does not devastate the environment will require dramatic reforms, including a radical change in eating habits.
To be precise: the cheeseburgers are outside, and the fruits and vegetables are in it.
The 23 authors of the report, from Europe, the United States, Australia and Lebanon, reviewed the many moving elements of the global food system and their interaction with the environment. The authors concluded that current methods of food production, distribution and consumption are not environmentally sustainable and that damage to the planet may make it less hospitable to human existence.
Researchers said that efforts to keep climate change at an acceptable level will not succeed without a significant reduction in meat consumption.
"Feeding humanity is possible. It's just a question of whether we can do it in an environmentally friendly way, "said Johan Rockström, earth sciences specialist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. in Germany and co-author of the study.
The report follows a warning from the US Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that world leaders must take unprecedented action over the next decade to prevent the average temperature of the planet from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.
Global warming has generally been associated with the burning of fossil fuels, but food production is a huge and underestimated factor, and the new report seeks to place food at the center of the debate about how humanity can create sustainable future.
"Everyone knows that energy has something to do with the climate – we need to transform our energy system. Very few people realize that it is just as important, if not more important, to transform our food system, "said Katherine Richardson, director of the Sustainable Science Center at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Richardson, who was not part of the new study's production team, added, "The food system is down and needs to be repaired if we have any hope of feeding $ 9 to $ 10 billion" .
Already, half of the planet's ice-free land surface is dedicated to livestock or food production for these animals, Richardson said. It is an area equal to North America and South America combined, she said. Tropical forests are regularly cleared to become cultivated land. And the demand for food is growing faster than the population: rising incomes in China and many other formerly poor countries are leading to increased demand for meat and other forms of animal protein. About 70% of the world's fresh water is already used in agriculture, and the demand for this water will intensify.
The Nature report, titled "Options for Keeping the Food System in the Environment," says that without targeted changes, pressures on different environmental systems will increase by 50-90% by 2050 compared to 2010. There is no simple solution, write the authors, but rather "a combination of synergistic measures" will be needed to limit environmental damage.
An obvious measure is a change of regime. The researchers say that meat production, which includes the production of food specifically for livestock, is an ineffective way for the environment to generate calories for human consumption. In addition, ruminants such as cows are prodigious producers of methane when digesting food, and methane is a potent greenhouse gas. The report states that greenhouse gas emissions from the global food system could be significantly reduced if people reduce their consumption of red meat and follow a diet based on fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes.
To limit greenhouse gas emissions, "we will not go far if we do not seriously think about dietary changes in a more plant-based diet," said Marco Springmann, lead author of the report. senior researcher at Oxford. Martin program on the future of food.
He said that what is good for the planet is good for the eater. For most people who follow a typical Western diet, eating less meat usually means better health.
Two representatives of the National Cattlemen 's Beef Association, responding to the Nature Report, said the US beef industry is focused on improving the efficiency of beef production. The United States had 128 million cattle (including dairy cows) in 1976 and 94 million cattle in January. Yet, they still produce as much beef as in the 1970s, thanks in part to breeding efforts that boosted the growth rate. Sara Place, Senior Director, Beef Association for Research on Sustainable Beef Production.
Ashley McDonald, Senior Director of Sustainability for the association, said, "As an industry, we are trying to take a proactive stance and truly engage in continuous improvement."
The report notes that the current food system is extremely wasteful, with about a third of the food produced ultimately being discarded. Most of this food waste comes from deterioration. Halving the amount of food wasted would hurt the overall environmental problem, they said, and a 75% reduction in waste is theoretically possible.
The report does not know if the world should adopt genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food supply. The report also does not take a position on population growth. Although birth rates have dropped dramatically in many countries – at levels well below the replacement rate – the world's population continues to grow. According to a report released in 2015 by the United States, the population would reach 9.7 billion by 2050.
Decades ago, the prospect of such a crowd of human beings on the planet inspired the predictions of a widespread famine. The "green revolution" in agriculture has changed the equations. Nevertheless, the food is not evenly distributed. About 3 billion people are malnourished today and one billion of them suffer from food shortages, according to Rockström.
At the heart of this research is the argument that the Earth has several limits, the "planetary limits", which can not be exceeded without potentially disastrous consequences. These limitations – which involve factors such as climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, atmospheric aerosols (smog), depletion of stratospheric ozone layer and water supply sweet – define a "safe space of operation" for humanity. Proponents of the hypothesis say that human civilization flourished in the geological epoch known as the Holocene, spanning a period of about 11,700 years since the end of the last period glacial, but that damage to the environment could put humanity in existential crisis.
"You can imagine a scenario in which contemporary society begins to erode" because of the degradation of the environment, said Will Steffen, professor emeritus of Earth System Science at the National University Australian and supporter of the hypothesis of planetary boundaries. "So, it's a long rocket, big bang."
He noted that there is a movement in Australia for the consumption of kangaroo meat because kangaroos are not ruminants and do not have the same ecological footprint.
"It's a more playful taste, but it's also a lot leaner meat. It takes more skill to cook it to make it easy to chew and digest, "he said, before quickly adding," I do not like the idea that the poor little guys get shot. "
Read more:
Scientists: Human activity pushed the Earth beyond 4 of 9 "planetary boundaries"
Spaceship Earth: A new vision of environmentalism
An old omnivore is vegetarian
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