Food, GHGs, and climate change: Diet for a warming world

While the impacts of transportation and industry in disrupting weather patterns have been extensively examined, only in the last decade has animal agriculture's role in climate change become better understood. This talk will examine how at every phase in meat, egg, and dairy production—including the manufacturing of artificial fertilizers, the exportation of grain, the growing of biofuels, and the raising of billions of animals in factory farms—greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere. At the same time, farming is likely the human activity most dependent on a stable climate and is the industry that will struggle the most to cope with erratic weather, drought, and other climate-related events.

There has been a great deal of discussion among governments, development agencies, and NGOs about the “winners and losers” in climate change. Wine growers in the United States and New Zealand, for example, expect to have longer growing seasons; farmers in the U.S. Midwest predict more rainfall and higher yields of some crops, such as corn and soybeans. For the world's poorest, however, climate change will make an already tenuous existence all the more difficult, increasing hunger and poverty among people with the greatest challenges.

By shifting to more environmentally sustainable food production and consumption practices—including reducing intake of meat, eggs, and dairy; increasing organic cultivation of crops; supporting agro-forestry and maintaining grasslands; and encouraging shifts away from industrial, intensive farm animal production—agriculture can help mitigate the impacts of a warming world.