Diet and climate change
Diet and climate change
to the climate as one car that travels around 18,000 km. Methane is 21 times more harmful to the climate than CO 2 . Also, cows require large amounts of feed, which often has to be transported from the feed producer to the farm. → Look at the difference between the cube with the beef and the cube with the milk. Why do you think the difference is so great? • This is all about how many litres of milk a dairy cow can produce each day and how long a cow needs to grow to produce one kilogram of beef. A dairy cow produces between 15 and 40 litres a day depending on performance. So if a cow produces, say, 24 litres of milk every day, it will emit one hour’s worth of methane per litre as it belches and breaks wind. Beef “grows” much more slowly, and so a cow destined to produce beef will emit far more methane per kilogram. → Why do you think vegetables are more climate-friendly than fruit? • This mostly depends on where the vegetables and fruit are produced. Vegetables often have a slightly smaller carbon footprint than fruit because they are more often produced regionally, so the distances over which it is transported tend to be smaller. Some fruits don’t grow in Europe (e.g., exotic fruits like pineapple, mango and banana) so they have to be imported and hence travel longer distances. There are also major differences in carbon footprint among vegetables depending on how they are grown. For instance, sun-ripened tomatoes grown outside of a green - house have a far smaller carbon footprint than tomatoes that are grown indoors in heated green- houses. → Why do animal products generally have a larger carbon footprint than plant-based foods? For instance, why are soy cutlets better in this regard than a steak? • The term “soy” often makes us think of the destruction of the rainforest. However, it is often forgotten that most of the soy that is farmed there is used for animal feed. The soy used to produce soy cutlets is often produced regionally. Generally speaking, plant-based products are better for the environment than meat because their production is less resource-intensive. Soy and other plants could help feed far more people if they were not used as animal feed, but instead were used directly in the production of food for human consumption. Farmed animals require the energy they get from feed for all kinds of metabolic processes. Only around 10 to 35% of the calories contained in feed goes into producing meat, milk or eggs. 3 , 4 → What is bread made of? And why does bread production impact on the climate? • Provided the grain for the bread is produced regionally, the climate impact of bread production is attributable to the baking. Most types of bread are baked at temperatures ranging from 200 to 270 degrees C for up to around 50 minutes. Baking requires a great deal of energy, usually electricity.
Opening
Workshop leaders can use the following ice-breaker questions to introduce the participants to the topic of the workshop: For younger participants: → The farming sector is responsible for producing the food we eat. What kind of foods did you eat yesterday? The responses will provide an initial overview of different food items. For older participants: → What kind of foods do you think are better for the climate? Which are worse? This helps to produce some initial ideas about how our diet impacts on climate change. A follow-up question is: → Can you imagine why or how the foods you just mentioned create greenhouse gas emissions? This helps create an awareness that several factors are at play here, such as crop production, animal husbandry, processing, packaging, transportation, animal feed, etc. Having exchanged these thoughts, the workshop becomes more interactive. Aim of the game Participants are invited to estimate the amount of harmful GHG emissions that results from the production of one kilogram of the following foods: vegetables, fruit, bread, milk, eggs, beef. Note: The values associated with the foods are global averages. The calculation of GHG emissions is based on a number of aspects including • changes in land use (e.g. soybean farming on cleared rainforest areas), • fertiliser use or emissions caused by liquid manure, • production of animal feed, • transportation (this means transportation from farms to food retailers, not include transportation from food retailers to consumers‘ homes), • packaging, • food retail (energy consumption in e.g. supermarkets, for instance for refrigeration). 2 Process The six cubes that represent the GHG emissions are arranged in a row according to size. The food symbols (or replica food items) are then handed out to some members of the group so they can match up each one to one of the cubes. The others can advise them on doing so. Once all matches have been done, their chosen order is checked. If errors were made, the workshop leaders can provide some hints. For instance, they could say “You’ve matched up four foods correctly; two are incorrectly matched. Why not take another look?” The participants then re-match all items until they have arrived at the right solution. If things take too long, the leaders can intervene and match the items correctly themselves. Following this, workshop leaders can ask the following questions. Any answers can be supplemented as required. → Why has the beef been matched up with the largest cube? • Cows are ruminants and hence produce large amounts of methane emissions when they belch and break wind. Their manure also produces nitrogen. Besides CO 2 , they produce other GHGs that contribute towards climate change, such as methane and nitrous oxide. Grazing land is fertilised, which is another factor. A cow that lives and hence produces methane for one year is as damaging
Electricity generation can cause major GHG emissions. → Where do the emissions in chicken farming come from?
• Chicken-rearing in batteries, which are large barns with up to 30,000 chickens, is highly energy-in - tensive. In addition, chicken manure releases large amounts of methane. Battery-farmed chickens are fed on soy, corn and grain that is often imported from halfway across the world. For instance, the soy that goes into chicken feed may be produced on fields that used to be rainforest. Eggs produced by free-range chickens are better for the climate. The same goes for eggs that are laid by chickens kept by neighbours and fed on kitchen scraps.
3 Cf. https://albert-schweitzer-stiftung.de/aktuell/warum-sojawurst-nicht-dem-regenwald-schadet [last accessed on 12 December 2022] (in German) 4 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263192492_Embodied_crop_calories_in_animal_products [last accessed on 12 December 2022]
2 Cf. Hannah Ritchie (2022): FAQs on the Environmental Impacts of Food. Online: https://ourworldindata.org/faqs-environmental-im - pacts-food [last accessed on 12 December 2022]
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