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TOP FACTS
FOOD & ENVIRONMENT

Here is a list of what we consider the most credible figures and statistics to use based on the entire body of evidence in our database.

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Think we should update this or do you have a different interpretation than us?  Please contact us directly, we're always open to discussing the evidence:

CLIMATE CHANGE

The choice to adopt a plant based diet was the most underestimated environmental behaviour relative to how beneficial it actually is in reducing greenhouse gas emissions (Ivanova et al., 2020).

  • This poll had a base of over 23,000 adults across 31 countries aged 16-74.  This study also systematically reviewed almost 7000 peer-reviewed studies, and it was cited in the latest IPCC reports.​

 

The food system accounts for 25-42% of global greenhouse gas emissions, not including carbon drawdown opportunities of freed up land used by animal agriculture (Crippa et al., 2021).

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The average carbon footprint of plant-based foods is 90% lower than that of animal-based foods (Feng et al. 2023).

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“Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2°C climate change targets” (Ivanovich et al., 2023). “GHG emissions cannot be sufficiently mitigated without dietary changes towards more plant-based diets” (Springmann et al., 2018). Even if fossil fuels were eliminated immediately, emissions from agriculture would still push global warming past safe levels (Clark et al., 2020​). 

 

32% of annual human-caused methane (CH4) emissions come from animal agriculture (enteric fermentation and manure).

 

Meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, despite using the vast majority – 83% – of farmland.  Shifting away from animal agriculture completely would free up more than 3 billion hectares of land, equivalent to the size of Africa.  Transport typically accounts for less than 1% of beef’s GHG emissions (less than 10% for most other foods): choosing to eat local food has very minimal effects on its total footprint (Poore & Nemecek, 2018).​

 

If cattle were able to form their own country, they would rank 3rd behind China and the United States among the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters.

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Chicken has a lower carbon footprint than beef or pork but it’s still three times higher than even the highest emitting plant protein, like soy, and almost ten times higher than peas (Poore & Nemecek, 2018).

 

The loss of forests and natural vegetation dating back to the Agricultural Revolution has released a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. It's equivalent to ~1400 billion t of CO2. For scale, that’s 40 years’ worth of our current emissions from fossil fuels (Erb et al., 2017; Our World in Data)​

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LAND USE & DEFORESTATION

Shifting away from animal agriculture completely would free up more than 3 billion hectares of land, equivalent to the size of Africa (Poore & Nemecek, 2018)

 

If everyone in the world adopted the diet of wealthy industrialized countries (OECD), it would require an extra 35 million square kilometers for livestock production, which is about the same size as Africa and Australia combined (Eisen & Brown, 2022).

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A dietary shift from animal-based foods to plant-based foods (Eat-Lancet Planetary Health Diet) in high-income nations (only 17% of the population) could spare more than 426.35 Mha—an equivalent area slightly larger than that of the European Union which has benefits beyond carbon sequestration into biodiversity, indigenous land-back programs, etc. (Sun et al., 2022).
 

Nearly 60 percent of the world's agricultural land is used for beef production, yet beef accounts for less than two percent of the world's calories (Boucher et al., 2012)​

 

Significant shifts to plant-based diets by 2050 could lead to ​sequestration of 332–547 Gt CO2. That's equivalent to 9-16 years of global fossil fuel CO2 emissions (Hayek et al., 2020).

 

Every year, the world loses around 5 million hectares of forest. 95% of this occurs in the tropics. Pasture expansion for cattle production is the main driver of deforestation and has been linked to 80% of clearing of the Brazilian Amazon (Skidmore et al., 2021)

BIODIVERSITY LOSS

Animal agriculture is the most significant driver of habitat loss on the planet (Machovina, Feeley, & Ripple, 2015) and one of the biggest drivers of global biodiversity loss (FAO, Steinfeld et al., 2006).

 

94% of mammal biomass (excluding humans) is livestock. This means livestock outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 15-to-1 (Bar-On, Phillips & Milo, 2018). Of the 28,000 species evaluated to be threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List, agriculture and aquaculture is listed as a threat for 24,000 of them (Benton et al., 2021).

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Biomass of poultry globally is three times that of all wild bird species and is a major driver of biodiversity loss, largely due to increase demand for feed crops (Bennett et al., 2018).
 

"Across all animals, livestock exclusion increased abundance and diversity" (Filazzola et al., 2020). This comparison, along with others, shows that ecosystems with extremes in low precipitation or high temp (e.g. deserts) can be particularly impacted by grazing which can further damage soil characteristics, reducing already limited plant biomass, and decreasing animal diversity. 

  • Meta-analysis of 109 ind. studies on the response of animals or plants to livestock grazing vs. exclusion.

INEFFICIENCY & FEED CROPS

For every 100 calories of grain fed to farmed animals, you only get:

  • 🥛 40 calories of milk

  • 🥚 22 calories of eggs

  • 🐔 12 calories of chicken

  • 🐖 10 calories of pork

  • 🐄 3 calories of beef

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“The feed conversion ratio for converting plants into edible meat to produce some traditional animal proteins foods is as follows: beef, between 24:1 and 49:1; pork, between 3:1 and 9:1; chicken and turkey, approximately 2:1 to 5.4:1; dairy, approximately 2.4:1; eggs, approximately 2.4:1; salmon, approximately 1.3:1; and marine fish, approximately 1.9:1” (Gardner et al., 2019) (Shepon et al., 2016).

 

More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products such as tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh (Fraanje & Garnett, 2020).

REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE MYTH

"Agricultural soils contain 25% to 75% less SOC than their counterparts in undisturbed or natural ecosystems" (Lal, 2010)

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If all grassland soil carbon is restored to its full potential (12-24Gt CO2), this would offset less than 1-2% of global greenhouse emissions each year, until the soil reaches its capacity. (Sanderman, Hengl, & Fiske, 2017)

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Don't rely on soil C to offset livestock emissions: "About 135 gigatonnes of carbon is required to offset the continuous methane and nitrous oxide emissions from ruminant sector worldwide, nearly twice the current global carbon stock in managed grasslands" (Wang et al., 2023)

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In a scenarios where we shift to grass-finished beef:

 

"Only under very specific conditions can [grazing] help sequester carbon. This sequestering of carbon is even then small, time-limited, reversible and substantially outweighed by the GHG emissions these grazing animals generate." (Garnett et al., 2017).

  • The maximum global potential (of carbon sequestered in these soils), in the most optimistic conditions and using the most generous of assumptions, would offset only “20%-60% of emissions from grazing cows, 4%-11% of total livestock emissions, and 0.6%-1.6% of total annual greenhouse gas emissions” (Garnett et al., 2017).

OCEANS & DEAD ZONES

66% of the marine environment is severely altered by human actions and 55% is covered by industrial fishing. By the year 2100, without significant changes, more than half of the world’s marine species may be close to extinction.

  • Sharks are less than 10% of their original population

  • Most whales are less than 1% of original populations

 

Right now, 8 percent of the ocean is protected, and only 2.6 percent of those MPAs are considered strongly protected and fully off-limits to fishing (Marine Conservation Institute).

 

78% of global ocean and freshwater eutrophication (the pollution of waterways with nutrient-rich pollutants) is caused by agriculture (Poore & Nemecek, 2018).

OVERALL STATEMENTS

“Global food production is the single largest human pressure on Earth, threatening local ecosystems, driving a sixth mass extinction of species, and impacting the stability of the entire Earth system.” (Loken, 2020)​

 

Scientist and Project Drawdown’s leader Dr. Jonathan Foley states that “nothing else we do has come close to how food, agriculture, and land use are causing global environmental harm. Without major changes, our food system will continue to push Earth well beyond its planetary boundaries.” (Loken, 2020)

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The plant-predominant Planetary Health Diet could reduce enough emissions to keep us below 1.5 degrees of warming.  This diet, for the US, involved a reduction of beef, lamb and pork by 84%, eggs by 63%, poultry by 57%, and dairy by 31%.  However, this is assuming that everyone will adhere to the diet, we also eliminate fossil fuel use entirely, and it only gets us to a 50% chance at staying below 1.5 degrees of warming. Considering most nations can’t even promise to reduce half the emissions we need, some might conclude changing our diets even more may be prudent.  A completely plant based diet could get us to a 85% chance at staying below 1.5 degrees.

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