Choose foods with low emissions

Being a Climatarian means your diet should include foods that emit less emissions. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the hierarchy of impacts on food production.

Where do the emissions from our food come from?

Emissions are produced at each stage across the supply chain:

Land Use Change: Aboveground changes in biomass from deforestation, and belowground changes in soil carbon.

Farm: Methane emissions from cows, rice, fertiliszers, manure and farm machinery.

Animal Feed: On-farm emissions on farms come from crop production and its processing into feed for livestock.

Processing: Emissions from energy use in the process of converting raw agriculture products into final food items.

Transport: Emissions from transporting the food in-country and internationally.

Retail: Emissions from energy use in refrigeration and other retail processes.

Packaging: Emissions from the production of packaging, material transport and packaging disposal.

For most foods, and particularly the largest emitters most emissions result from land-use change and from processes at the farm stage. Combined, land use and farm-stage emissions account for more than 80% of the footprint for most foods.

 

 

 

What else can you do to choose foods with low emissions?

References

Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumersScience, 360(6392), 987-992. Sourced from Hannah Ritchie (2020) – “Environmental impacts of food production”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food’ [Online Resource]

 

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