From farm to fork: conscious eating can help mitigate methane emissions
As the next Conference of the Parties (CoP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change approaches, news has emerged that the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is set to present a plan on emission reduction that will include dietary advice for the rich world, asking its people to curb their meat intake. The average American consumes about 127kg of it annually, although under 16kg is considered healthy and people in some poor countries average less than 4kg. As CoP-28 begins in Dubai later this week, a restraint advisory for heavy consumers is likely to be part of an FAO roadmap for the global agrifood industry to align itself with the Paris pact’s goal of keeping our planet no warmer than 1.5° Celsius above its pre-industrial level.
The FAO has said that about 14% of all greenhouse gas emissions on account of human activity come from meat and dairy production. That’s quite a chunk. As it involves people’s diets, discussion of it has been sparse.
But no major source of emissions can be left out in the race to arrest global warming. Not all of the food sector’s emissions are from animal food chains. According to one study, these account for about 57% (including livestock feed), while 29% can be traced to plant-based foods and 14% to other related activities.
What makes livestock stand out, especially cattle, is the methane generated by farms that rear these animals. This is a gas that gets far less attention than carbon dioxide does, but it too adds to the crisis of an atmospheric heat-trap (fluorinated gases and nitrous oxide are even less known as culprits). Methane is a relatively short-lived gas with an atmospheric lifetime of around a decade, whereas carbon dioxide affects the climate for
. Read more on livemint.com
