What’s Happening

With Earth Day approaching, we often consider what we can do to save the planet. A few things might come to mind such as recycling, composting, planting more native plants, or shrinking the size of your yard. While all those things are important, have you ever thought about the environmental impact of what you choose to eat?

Animal agriculture is very energy-intensive. Approximately 83% of farmable land is used to produce meat, eggs, farmed fish, and dairy, yet they only provide 18% of our calories. Considering the amount of land required to produce animal products, it is unsurprising that they are accountable for 67% of the deforestation caused by agriculture. The destruction of ecosystems for farmland is the single largest contributing factor of species extinction. Approximately half of the land in the continental United States is used for livestock production—either for grazing or for growing grain and soybeans as feed. Wild animals often lose habitat through deforestation to make way for cattle ranches. Transitioning to plant-based diets has the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 76%.

Meat, fish, dairy, and egg production use the most energy, causing more greenhouse gas production than plant foods. Due to the way they digest grains, cattle emit methane, a gas much more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of causing global warming. The findings also showed that red and processed meat had the highest environmental impact out of all food groups in participants’ diets, producing the greatest share of  greenhouse gas emissions (49%). From an emissions perspective, it is without doubt; significantly better for the environment to eat plant-based foods. In fact, in one year, animal husbandry creates as much carbon emissions as the entire transportation sector.

By reducing our animal-based foods consumption, we would reduce our water use at least by half as animal husbandry utilizes more than 50% of fresh water. Approximately 2,400 gallons of water are required to produce 1 lb of beef and 1 gallon of cow’s milk requires 1,950 gallons of water, whereas it only takes 25 gallons of water to produce 1 lb of grain, and 302 gallons for 1 lb of tofu. Much of the water in animal agriculture is used in creating the feed for the cows (Beckett & Oltjen, 1993). It is much more efficient to eat plant foods than animal foods; in a single month of being vegan you’d on average, save about 600 lbs. of CO2 emissions, 904 square feet of forest, and 33,021 gallons of water.

If every person gave up meat and dairy products on one or more days of the week—ideally, all days of the week—we would save the environment from thousands of tons of carbon emissions. We would be saving untouched habitats from being destroyed to produce livestock, and we would be creating less pollution in our waterways, streams, and oceans that indirectly threaten lives.

It is time for people that value conservation to look at what is on their plate.

AUTHOR: LISA SHIRK