Global food production is responsible for up to 35% of greenhouse gases, which is equivalent to a total of more than 17,000 million metric tons of CO2 every year. This is revealed by a study published by the journal Nature Food, the only one carried out to date that has developed a single, coherent and unified data modeling framework to estimate global emissions of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide from the human diet of vegetable and animal origin. The work has studied in a transversal way the impact of all subsectors related to food production, including transport, import, export and storage.
In a climate crisis context such as the one we find ourselves in, these figures are, to say the least, worrying. According to data from Greenpeace, 3 million years ago there was not such a high concentration of CO2 and the global average temperature is already 1.1ºC above what it was in the pre-industrial era. The organization warns that this climate emergency situation is going to give rise to natural and human catastrophes ranging from melting ice to massive migrations, natural disasters and an increase in mortality, with a total of 9.1 million deaths per year up to 2100 if climate change cannot be brought under control.
It is worth wondering why, in the face of this climate emergency, we Western consumers have not yet changed –or at least have not substantially changed– our way of consuming food. The answer is complex, according to the professor of Anthropology at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Xavier Medina, who specializes in Food Athropoligy. “It was from the second half of the 20th century when there was a fundamental change in terms of food. The rise of industrialization took place, the implementation of good transportation systems worldwide and production chains were established that allow certain food is very cheap and that we can eat practically any food out of season, even those that are not part of our daily lives.This can be read as negative due to its environmental cost, but at the time of its implementation it meant something that until then it had not been possible: scarcity ended and many people were able to access abundant food for the first time,” explains Medina.
Therefore, there are many who do not perceive the dynamics derived from globalization as negative, since they value positively that access to food has been democratized. It is one of the reasons why, according to Medina, it is difficult to achieve a global change in the food paradigm, but there are others. “People adapt to changes in emergency situations, such as reducing intake when resources run out, but climate change is not yet perceived as a real threat, so the response to stop it remains timid. If we also have Bearing in mind that the situation we find ourselves in depends on a host of factors, it is even more complex to apply changes at the individual level, since actions would be required by the different actors involved: consumers, producers, government, industry… Right now we are all partly to blame for the situation but in the end no one feels that they are, so that we perceive what is happening, in some way, as a situation that has come about,” says Medina.
However, there is solid scientific evidence on the immediate consequences that changing the way we eat could have on the health of the planet. Anna Bach-Faig, professor of Health Sciences Studies and director of the Master’s in Nutrition and Health at the UOC, explains: “Scientific evidence indicates that it is possible to reduce the environmental impact of our diet through proper nutrition. To do this , the Mediterranean diet, in comparison with Western patterns, implies a reduction in the demands of soil, water and energy resources and less production of greenhouse gases”, explains the expert. Bach-Faig also stresses that “a recent study published in the journal Environmental Health indicates that the adoption of the Mediterranean diet could lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (72%), as well as in land use ( 58%), energy (52%) and water (33%) consumption.At the same time, a move away from the Mediterranean diet towards a westernized pattern would mean an increase in all ‘environmental footprints’ between 12% and 72%”.
Medina agrees with her, a firm defender of a “real” Mediterranean diet, with its cultural, daily and festive load, with its varied and not excessive diet, based fundamentally on plant foods. Implementing it, however, can be tricky. “Currently there are paradoxes such as that it is easier and cheaper to feed ourselves with food that comes from thousands of kilometers than to buy good local food prepared in a respectful way. In other words, we must not forget that in many cases it is cheaper to eat inside of the industrial circuit than eating fresh products”, explains the UOC professor.
Back with meat and derivatives
One of the main culprits for this situation is the meat industry. The head of Agriculture and Livestock at Greenpeace Spain, LuÃs Ferreirim, points out, for his part, that “contrary to what everyone thinks, what we eat is more important than where it comes from. In other words, the use of food has a much greater impact. soil and emissions on the farm itself than the transport required for distribution”. Bach-Faig corroborates this: “When we think of climate change, cities, pollution, freight transport come to mind… However, we do not link it to food, when it weighs 24%, much more than transport in terms of to emissions”.
Scientific studies that warn about the environmental impact of intensive farming are numerous. According to the World Atlas of Meat, a document prepared by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the environmental organizations BUND and Friends of the Earth Europe and the magazine Le Monde Diplomatique, with financial support from the European Union, intensive farming is one of the main responsible for the climate crisis. This work warns that more than a billion people around the world earn a living thanks to livestock, although it stresses that traditional and nature-friendly animal husbandry is “under pressure from industrialized agriculture”, in this case from of the macrofarms.
For Ferrerim, it is urgent to “promote an agroecological model that involves supporting the local economic fabric, strengthening the rural environment, curbing depopulation and promoting ecological and sustainable livestock, respectful of the environment, committed to animal welfare and rooted in the territory “, an initiative that must start, first of all, from the administrations.
On the other hand, the person in charge of Greenpeace also highlights the great impact that the feed consumed by animals in intensive farming has. In this sense, from Ecologistas en Acción they recall that “a significant reduction in the use of concentrated feed is necessary in favor of a greater contribution of fodder: remove the cattle from the stables and take advantage of the pastures, meadows and mountains; always adjusting to the natural cycles of the grass. As well as other resources available in the territory: fallows and remains of harvests or by-products of the agricultural and food industry. Resources all of them not directly usable for human consumption”.
A paradigmatic case: legumes
That of legumes is a paradigmatic case of how some of the new food dynamics are, in essence, nonsense. Ferreirim explains it: “The production of feed is just one example of how animal protein is being produced wildly, with the climatic costs that it entails, while another protein like the one we find in legumes, which is a fantastic alternative to animal protein. It cannot be denied that it is an anomaly that these types of crops are being abandoned, which are not only more neutral, but are even good for soil fertility.”
For the person in charge of Greenpeace, it is paradoxical that “since Spain is a producer of legumes of the first order, a good part of those that we find in supermarkets come from other countries.” Specifically, 80% of the chickpeas consumed in Spain come from Mexico, according to the Alimentos Kilométricos campaign, carried out by the NGO Friends of the Earth, which highlights the impact of food transport on climate change. This body denounces that, according to the latest data available, imported food has traveled an average of 4,000 km before reaching the markets, which represents an annual cost of 23,000 million euros in importing food from other countries. “Many of these foods can be produced within our borders, such as wine, apples or chickpeas,” they point out from Friends of the Earth.
The case of fruits and vegetables
In part, the same thing happens with some of the fruits, vegetables and vegetables that we consume, which should always be, as far as possible, seasonal and local. Marc Casabosch, communicator, trainer and writer in the field of agroecology, author, among other books, of Cultivating Life (Now Books, 2018) explains it: “It is not about demonizing fruits and vegetables that come from greenhouses or those that are produced far away, but simply to value other production and distribution models that are undoubtedly more ethical, have less impact on the environment and the landscape, and strengthen the local economic fabric.†For his part, Bach-Faig states that locally grown fruits, vegetables and other food “not only reduce the ecological impact in terms of transport, but buying local food encourages farmers to diversify crops and, therefore, to reduce their vulnerability to pests.
In addition, the existence of greenhouses in desert areas, such as AlmerÃa, means a greater consumption of water resources. In this sense, various environmental organizations, including Ecologistas en Acción, have denounced the so-called “ecocide of the Aguas River”, due to “a model of super-intensive monocultures, irrigated with fossil water extracted from the Aguas aquifer, overexploited in more than one 400%”. For the NGO, “this decrease in flows threatens the maintenance of traditional livestock and agricultural activities, forcing people to leave the area in search of other places to live”, so that the consequences of this type of production centers are not only environmental, but also demographic and socioeconomic.
Organic food: more sustainable?
A still controversial issue is the difference between conventional and organic products, both because of their impact on health and the environment. “Although it seems that there are not very remarkable differences in the nutrient content between organic and conventional products, there are differences between the marginal contaminations of pesticide residues. However, it is not clear if these differences are relevant to human health,” explains Bach-Faig.
Some scientists, such as the doctor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Valencia, José Miguel Mulet, question whether organic products actually have less of an impact on the environment. “Organic crops require more land to get the same food, so the environmental impact skyrockets.” If we add to this that we may be consuming food produced through organic farming but that comes from thousands of kilometers away, we cannot affirm in any case -Mulet points out- that it is sustainable.
