Article Tags: Doug L. Hoffman
Experts predict that, over the long term, food security can’t be achieved without energy security. Add in mechanization, storage, and transport and the energy impact of a typical meal in industrialized nations is many times the amount of energy the meal’s consumer derives. Recently, researchers have been taking a close look at just how much energy it takes to produce even seemingly similar foods. The conclusion: Food choices can have a significant impact on energy use in agriculture, and by extension, on greenhouse gas emissions as well. Beef lovers beware! As the world diverts more of its grain harvests into meat production, some scientists are taking a closer look at more environmentally friendly sources of protein, including insects.
Attacks on meat eating are nothing new. In 2003, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health started “Meatless Mondays,” an initiative to reduce U.S. meat consumption by 15%. More recently, a number of pop celebrities, including Paul McCartney and Sheryl Crow, started a campaign for “Meet Free Mondays.” Indian economist and IPCC head R. Pachauri , who is also a vegetarian, encouraged all people to “give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there.”
As we reported in The Resilient Earth, others have pursued this story for different purposes. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that meat production accounts for nearly a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. ABC News picked up the story in an article titled “Meat-Eaters Aiding Global Warming? New Research Suggests What You Eat as Important as What You Drive.” In it they reported that you should become a vegetarian if you want to help lower greenhouse gas emissions. They quoted researchers who liken eating red meat to driving an SUV. This position would certainly be supported by PETA, the group running the GoVeg.com web site.
Now, according to a news article in Science, if people in the developed world ate less meat, it would free up a lot of grain that could feed billions of hungry people. A lot of good farmland could be converted from grazing to crop production as well. As article author Erik Stokstad put it in “ Less Meat Mean More Food?”:
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Source: theresilientearth.com