How to Apply Learnings from Japanese Bullet Train Thinking to "Act Fast" in Climate Crisis - Part 2

Source: Jo-Anne McArthur - We Animals

In the earlier article, I wrote about the story of “Japan Bullet Train Thinking” and what we should learn from it to “Act Fast” in  tackling climate catastrophe! I also wrote on where the world is currently and its trajectory towards Paris agreement of keeping less than 2°C Global warming. I mentioned that fossil fuels, food, transportation & building are main sectors to address climate change which contributes to more than 50% of Greenhouse gas emissions or as per the book “The Carbon Almanac” The Four Horsemen of Carbon Apocalypse, the 4Cs: Coal, Combustion, Cows and Concrete projected to account for 70% of our climate change problems. Fossil fuels were discussed in detail earlier which I recommend reading first to get continuity and in this part 2, I will describe about Food sector.  

Food:

There are various estimates of food and agriculture impact on greenhouse gases ranging from 14% to 87% considering various factors from farm to table including all supply chain elements and impacts of food industry on deforestation and carbon opportunity cost (COC) etc., Conservative estimate from UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is 14.5%, a study published in Nature estimates 34%, Goodland and Anhang estimated at 51% and a recent 2019 study from Sailesh Rao estimates at 87%. Even if we completely eliminate emissions from fossil fuels today, Global food system alone can make it difficult to meet below 2°C warming, if there are no significant changes in current global food production system and continue business as usual.

What’s the problem with our food system?

This graphic from Our World in Data, sums it up all on environmental impact of our food and agricultural system, it uses 50% of Land, 70% fresh water causing 26% of Greenhouse Gas emissions with other impacts like 78% of global ocean and freshwater pollution. If we look much deeper into the global land usage, it tells us where the biggest problem lies. 

“If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land. While livestock takes up most of the world’s agricultural land it only produces 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of total protein.”

There is a disproportionately high use of land, water by animal agriculture to raise and slaughter ~80 billion land animals every year that is 10 animals for a human being. Imagine you have a team that takes 77% of your resource and yet produce only 18% of output, you would immediately look at revamping team to improve efficiency, isn’t it? That’s exactly what is needed in our global food system and especially animal agriculture. If we look at the feed conversation ratio, amount of feed needed to produce 1 kg of meat and caloric energy efficiency on how input feed is effectively converted into animal product, we can understand the problem better. Beef is worst offender takes 25kg of feed to produce 1 kg of meat and almost 98% of calories in animal feed gets wasted producing ~100kg of Greenhouse gas emission per kg of Beef. Other animal products like lamb, pork, poultry, eggs, and milk also cause significant greenhouse gases with inefficient feed and energy conversion.   

Overall food chain of animal agriculture from clearing forests for growing livestock, usage of chemicals and pesticides for growing monocrops like soy and corn as animal feed, excessive nutrients from animal waste like nitrous oxide (N₂O), methane (CH₄), ammonia (NH₃), and phosphorous as run-off impacting critical ecosystems like air, water and land causing water, air pollution, soil erosion, ocean acidification, Ocean dead-zones, eutrophication, toxicity, biodiversity loss, desertification, deforestation, habitat loss, and species extinction etc., Methane gas is short lived but 83 times more potent than CO₂ in 20 years_,  contributed to 0.5C global warming and 80% of methane emissions from agriculture sector comes from Livestock. 70-80% of the tropical deforestation is due to agriculture for livestock rearing, growing soy and corn for animal feed. “Up to 137 species of plants, animals and unique insects are lost every day due to forest clearing”. 75% of all world-crops dependent of pollinators to some extent and 1/3^rd of crop production needs our bees, wasp and butterflies. Pollinator populations are severely impacted due to usage of pesticides for agriculture, deforestation, and habitat loss caused by animal agriculture and due to climate change like drought.

Our oceans produce more than 50% of Oxygen for supporting all life forms on the planet, but only 7.7% of total ocean is protected and 34% or fish overexploited with destructive methods like bottom trawling dragging a whole of ocean ecosystem from seabed causing 41% organisms lost which takes 6 years to recover. Every year 13.5% of shallow ocean bed is bottom trawled causing more than 20% unintended marine species as “by catch” thrown into oceans and release carbon stored at seabed into atmosphere, 1 Gt / year of carbon almost equivalent to aviation industry. Intensive Fish farming known as Aquaculture still uses more land and freshwater for some types of fishes than chickens (most exploited species on land) and produces more Greenhouse gases and nitrogen emissions than chicken.

Source: Net Zero: Ambition Gap Report Zero Hour

The impact of food system especially intensive factory farming of animals both in land and ocean causing greatest damage to carbon sinks like forests, peatlands, wetlands, oceans straining natural resources like water, air, land. Food system impact can be seen on all 9 planetary boundaries formulated by Stockholm Resilience Center and causing them to surpass safe operating limits that could results in irreversible consequences by breaching tipping points towards total ecosystems collapse. World should move fast towards sustainable food system that uses less land, water causes less pollution, uses less chemicals and pesticides, protects biodiversity loss in land and ocean there by reduces the impact of climate change.

What are the solutions towards Sustainable Food system to tackle climate crisis?

There are already proven and practiced systems all over the world to tackle climate crisis in our food system, here are some of major ones.

Reduce or eliminate Intensive Animal Agriculture and move towards plant based alternatives

As we have seen earlier the impacts of animal agriculture both in land and oceans, we should reduce or eliminate the intensive factory farming and move towards more sustainable alternatives like plant-based food practices. Moving away from the animal-based diets to more plant centric diets has many benefits, the immediate double climate dividend is freeing up large quantities of land up to 75% that can be used for reforestation, restoring wood and peatlands which act as carbon sinks to absorb greenhouses gases (opportunity cost of land) and reduce production emissions from animal agriculture, 48% reduction from food production.

According to this study 

“Today, and probably into the future, dietary change can deliver environmental benefits on a scale not achievable by producers. Moving from current diets to a diet that excludes animal products has transformative potential, reducing food’s land use by 3.1 (2.8 to 3.3) billion ha (a 76% reduction), including a 19% reduction in arable land; food’s GHG emissions by 6.6 (5.5 to 7.4) billion metric tons of CO2eq (a 49% reduction); acidification by 50% (45 to 54%); eutrophication by 49% (37 to 56%); and scarcity-weighted freshwater withdrawals by 19% (−5 to 32%) for a 2010 reference year”

Although we need transformative changes in food system, at least substitutions like “beans for beef” could meet 74% of GHG emission target for 2020 in US and release 42% of crop land as bonus as shown in this study. Plant-based diets not only have environmental benefits, but health and economical benefits as well. Oxford Martin School study published in journal Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences estimated that if the world adopts vegan diet, it could save 8.1 million lives, reduce food related emissions by 2/3^rd, saves $1.5 trillion (US) climate related costs by 2050.

“The researchers also modelled the economic benefits of dietary change and found they could save $700-$1,000 billion (US) per year on healthcare, unpaid informal care and lost working days. The economic value that society places on the reduced risk of dying could even be as high as 9-13% of global GDP, or $20-$30 trillion (US). In addition, the researchers found that the economic benefit of reduced greenhouse gas emissions from dietary changes could be as much as $570 billion (US).”

Food Policy and Regulation

Like subsidies in fossil fuel industry descried in earlier article, food industry especially animal products and ultra-processed food also enjoys a lot of subsidies and inefficient regulation.

Source: Metanomics

In his book “Meatanomic$”, author Simon estimated that US animal food production is externalizing $415 billion year which is burden to taxpayer, through health care costs, subsidies, environmental costs, cruelty, and fish production with a mathematical calculation based on best available studies and government sources. If we take Tobacco Industry along with high taxes, 50 states in US have extracted $400 billion from tobacco companies to reimburse their medical bills due to smoking. There is clear evidence that dietary risks are number 1 killer of US population pushing tobacco down and yet the industries responsible for this enjoy the subsidies. 

The author says from 1988 to 2008, the inflation adjusted prices of ground beef and cheddar cheese fell by 53 and 27% respectively, during same period, the inflation adjusted prices of fruits and vegetables increased by 46 and 41% respectively. Besides the efficiencies in intensive animal agriculture industry, if we look at the externalized costs come in the other forms to taxpayer a $4.56 Big Mac would cost $12 as per 2015 prices.

Source: Metanomics.com

If we look at the case in UK, Government’s Eatwell guide suggests 5 servings of fruit and veg daily but as per the “Broken Plate Report 2022” based on affordability & price, appeal and availability there are major inefficiencies in policy and regulation in meeting this guideline:

• The poorest fifth of UK households would need to spend 43% of their disposable income on food to meet the cost of the Government recommended healthy diet. This compares to just 10% for the richest fifth.
• More healthy foods are nearly three times as expensive per calorie as less healthy foods. More sustainable alternative milks are approximately 60% more expensive than dairy milk.
• 71% of sandwiches available from high street retailers contain meat or fish, with no significant improvement in the past three years. More than 1 in 4 (26%) places to buy food are fast-food outlets.
• Just one major UK food retailer, caterer or restaurant chain currently reports publicly on sales of healthy foods, vegetables, and animal vs plant-based proteins. 
• Approximately a third (32%) of food and soft drink advertising spend goes towards less healthy foods, compared to just 1% for fruit and vegetables.

US Department of Agriculture (USDA) check-off programs spend $558 annually on Pork, Beef, Eggs, Lamb, and Dairy Industry that would return $4.6 billion extra sales as per the book “Meatanomic$”. Author in the book further argues that USDA has conflict of interest where it promotes the agriculture with check off programs asking to eat more of animal products, but on other hand give advice on nutrition and dietary guidelines asking to eat less of saturated fat and cholesterol and eat more of fruit and veg. On contrary to eat less message on meat, eggs, fish, and dairy, it supports Industry with heavy subsidies. USDA asks to eat more fruits and vegetables in Dietary Guidelines but put these in speciality crops making them not eligible for subsidies. The author says, end result is:

“2/3^rd of the government farming support goes to animal foods that government suggests we limit, while less than 2% goes to fruits and veg it recommends, we eat more of”.

There must be strong regulations and better food policy in accordance with dietary guidelines to incentivize sustainable alternatives and tax unsustainable animal products such as an attempt with Saturated fat tax in Denmark although repealed after 1 year of introduction in 2011 had small public health improvement but more importantly change in consumer behaviour. Governments can consider environmental tax to encourage healthy diets similar to carbon tax successfully implement in British Columbia. Although major supermarkets like LIDL, ASDA, ALDI in UK are stepping up to reduce the meat products, in response to the Environmental Audit committee UK Major retailer Tesco calls out government action on food strategy and policy interventions:

“The UK’s food strategy cannot be left to the market… The UK produces only half its food; we must ask tough questions about efficient land use. That means eating less meat and dairy, we could not achieve the required goals alone and the sector needed incentives for sustainable farming and a strategy to help livestock farmers diversify, and would support action taken by government, in consultation with industry and civil society, to establish clearer consumption targets for meat, dairy and plant-proteins.”

Agroecology

Agroecology although implemented in many forms like organic farming, natural farming, horticulture, permaculture, regenerative agriculture it is based on fundamental principles of ecology: maintaining biodiversity of earth working in harmony with land, plants and microorganisms and recycling with law of return, giving back to the soil to maintain it’s fertility to increase resilience. Agroecology is a systemic approach with transformational change required at multiple levels: political, social, cultural, and economical working based on ecological principles. As this is fundamental shift from greedy corporate profit driven monoculture based industrial agriculture, it reduces or eliminates the impact from industrial farming like soil erosion, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution etc., and act as a solution to climate, biodiversity crisis and hunger, IPCC agrees as well.

“Agroecology has been proposed as a key set of practices in building climate resilience. These can enhance on-farm diversity (of genes, species, and ecosystems) through a landscape approach. Outcomes include soil conservation and restoration and thus soil carbon sequestration, reduction of the use of mineral and chemical fertilisers, watershed protection, promotion of local food systems, waste reduction, and fair access to healthy food through nutritious and diversified diets.”

In her book “Who Really Feeds the World?” Author Vandana Shiva mentions that Globalization leads to multiple levels of waste and FAO estimated 30% of global food supply is wasted with $1 trillion of food waste per year. “Long distance food chains destroy food both at the level of production and distribution” For easy of packaging global supply chains and major retailers mandating uniformity of the products and discard a lot of food if it is not of exact shape and size. Agroecology keeps small scale localized farming practices at the core and farmers take care of soil health and produces mostly for their and local community needs, wider adaption of these practices can reduce the food wastages due to globalization, especially when food waste contributes to 8-10% of GHG emissions.

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) mentions that Intensive farming with animals bred with same genetic composition in millions and grown in close proximity can play a role in emergency of zoonotic diseases like Covid 19 and spread fast. When forests are cut to grow animal feed, viruses and other pathogens circulating in wildlife come in contact with humans leading to endemics and pandemics. “Over the past 100 years, more than 90 per cent of crop varieties have disappeared and today, just nine plant species account for 66 per cent of total crop production – contributing to ubiquitous health risks like diabetes, obesity and malnutrition.”

Food security is also a growing concern with already inefficient food production system a lot of countries depend on imports and climate crisis puts them at high risk. Net Zero Ambition Gap Report from ZEROHOUR depicts the problem with food system in UK. Food facts states that 85% of UK farmland is used to produce livestock that causes climate change and less than 1% of agriculture land was used for fruit and vegetables in 2021. UK imports 50% Veg and 84% Fruit mostly from Europe and climate change with droughts in countries like Spain and Italy where food is imported can put this country at risk with Food security and result in food shortage and inflation. Food Policy should guide it’s national Eatwell guide with more fruit and veg grown in UK with agroecological practices and reduced meat consumption as per National Food Strategy to meet its Net Zero targets.

Source: Net Zero - Ambition Gap Report ZEROHOUR

"Agroecology is instrumental for realizing 12 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, including the reduction of poverty and hunger; and, because it requires fewer external inputs and shortens value chains, agroecology empowers farmers and local communities. It is part of a holistic response to some of the greatest challenges to planetary health – helping to cut waste, reduce emissions and stop the pollution of natural environments. And according to a review of findings from over the past decade, agroecological crop protection also reduces the risks of the emergence of viral zoonoses."  -- UNEP

 

Moving away from intensive industrialized agriculture involving monocrops and animal farming to more diverse plant-based alternatives with proper food policy that has strategy & regulation including agroecological practices has a potential to sequester 52 gigatons of carbon dioxide, to keep us below 2°C.  Agroecology can solve multitude of problems along with climate crisis to poverty, world hunger and health of the planet. We are what we eat and harming our biodiversity is harming ourselves and our health and food that is good for humanity is also good for the planet.

Although we have seen where the biggest problem in food sector is, it is not understanding and recognising the impact of food industry and talking out loud in global forums like COP is where the fastest change should come in. Fossil fuels and phasing to renewable is in agenda at least with global leaders, businesses and governments but food industry is not discussed at all, and it has equal and in some accounts much bigger impacts and the solutions can also be quick for addressing the climate crisis for good.

We have so many pledges and treaties like "The new high sea treaty", "Global Methane Pledge", "End Factory Farming", "The Plant Based Treaty", "Global Ocean Treaty", "Plant based universities", "Plant based health professionals", "Plastic Treaty" etc., but what we need is many people joining these gross root movements and campaigns and acting fast to revamp our broken food system at individual or institutional capacity to bring about change in people, policy, politics to protect our planet before it is too late!

Let’s see the impact of Transport & Building sectors in Part 3!