It promotes a variety of CBD products on its website and encourages people to follow the paleo diet, a controversial meat-focused eating plan that gained popularity in the United States in the early 2010s.
The phenomenon is misleading in comparing the carbon footprint of plant-based products to the carbon footprint of cattle raised for human consumption, experts told AFP.
“Soy- or corn-fed meat is inefficient compared to eating protein crops directly,” said Delphine Deryng, a visiting researcher at Humboldt. University of Berlin and guide Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chapter on food products (archived here).
AFP had previously investigated allegations on this matter. cattle impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Research shows that most of the methane produced by humans is the result of enteric fermentation from livestock (archived here and here ).
soil and water to use
Meat production, especially beef production, requires much more water than usual. plants.
“Size monocultures Corn or soybeans aren’t great for biodiversity, but if their harvest was used to produce meat alternatives instead of feeding animals, the overall environmental footprint would be significantly smaller, said Jonas Jägermeyr, a climate change scientist and crop modeler at Columbia University. archived here) on 5 March.
“Feeding crops to animals rather than eating them directly requires much more land and water to produce the same amount of food.”
Hanna Tuomisto, professor of sustainable food systems at the Helsinki Sustainability Institute Science (archived here), acceptance.
“While nearly 80 percent of agricultural land worldwide is used for livestock production, livestock products provide less than 18 percent food energy and less than 40 percent protein,” he said. March 14. A 2018 research paper published similar data (archived here).
David Tilman, ecologist “The claim that large soy and wheat farms are needed to produce alternative foods to beef, pork and chicken is false on many levels,” the University of Minnesota (archived here) told AFP on March 6.
Tilman pointed out that one kilogram of edible animal protein requires between three and 10 kilograms of plant protein, depending on the livestock (archived here), in addition to greater land use.
emissions
Increasing demand for animal-based food products, mostly due to global population growth and improvements in living standards worldwide (archived here), therefore raises concerns that trends in high emissions from agriculture will continue unless dietary changes occur.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that overall methane emissions dropped nationally between 1990 and 1990. 2021those from agricultural sources (especially enteric fermentation from cattle) increased over the same period (archived here and here ).
John SAEKIAdrian LEUNGLaurence CHUAFP
Studies predict a significant reduction in global emissions if consumers adopt plant-based diets over the next few years decades (archived here and here).
Inside Unified In states alone where meat consumption per capita is more than three times the global average, a change in eating habits could have huge impacts. bigger According to a 2018 case study (archived here ).
Nalini LEPETIT-CHELLASabrina BLANCHARDAFP
Cutting emissions is essential to limit average global temperature rise and climate’s worst impacts, scientists say to change (archived here).
“Eating less meat helps preserve biodiversity in tropical regions and allows pastures, grazing lands and some agricultural lands to be transformed into natural ecosystems that support wild animals,” Tilman said. said.
Mono crops and biodiversity
Andres Agudelo-Suárez, lecturer at Universidad de la Costa in Colombia and sustainable food systems researcher (archived here ), told AFP that large-scale monoculture production primarily affects biodiversity (archived here ).
“All activities based on industrial and large-scale exploitation lead to various ecological and social trade-offs,” he said on March 8. “It doesn’t matter if it’s cattle or flowers, wheat or soybeans.”
Ecologist Camille Parmesan (archived here) agrees.
“No matter what type of food is grown, there is a real conflict between producing food and preserving biodiversity; both animals and plants are detrimental to biodiversity,” he said on March 10.
But Parmesan, who studies the effects of global climate change on biodiversity, told AFP that damage caused by agriculture “can be greatly reduced by changing the way we produce food” and noted that Ruh’s Instagram post ignored the complexity of food systems.
“There is a wide range of approaches that, when implemented on a global scale, would go a long way towards maximizing food production while minimizing biodiversity loss,” he said, noting better crop management and greater consumption of local produce.
“Some soils are better for animal production than crop production and vice versa.the exact opposite“
Here AFP debunked other claims about humans’ impact on global warming.