Page 6 - Mar Apr 2021-REV

pandemic of obesity, diabetes, high blood sures on other resources would decrease. Higher supply translates to lower costs to
pressure, heart disease, stroke and cancer. the consumer and more nutritious food in
The connection between obesity, under- Changes in the Wasting of Food the mouths of more people.
nutrition, and climate change has been Approximately one-third of the food
coined the “Global Syndemic” by The produced every year is lost or wasted. Changes in Food Consumption
Lancet, one of the top two-rated medi- According to the Food and Agriculture Patterns
cal journals in the world. In the U.S., 70 Organization of the United Nations, if Among the scientific community,
percent of adults are overweight or obese food waste were a country, it would have there is strong consensus that we need to
and 60 percent of those are malnourished. the third-highest greenhouse gas emis- change what we eat in order to address
Our quest to feed humanity has us sions in the world after China and the our environmental issues. The produc-
on a current trajectory that will lead us U.S. This means that all the water, land tion of meat—particularly beef, lamb
to running out of land, water, and most and agrochemicals used to produce that and pork—has a significantly larger
of the species that make up the biological wasted food are also wasted. environmental footprint than any other
diversity that provide necessary ecosys- The causes vary between lower- and food system component. This is because
tem services for food production like pol- higher-income countries, with losses oc- livestock require large amounts of land

SMALL OTHER
CATTLE PIGS CHICKENS BUFFALO RUMINANTS POULTRY

5,024 819 790 766 596 82

MILLION TONNES CO 2 -EQ

lination and pest management. Shifting curring at the post-harvest and process- to grow their feed and they are inefficient
this trajectory is truly daunting and will ing levels in low-income countries and at converting the calories they eat into
require changes in policy and practice losses at the retail and consumer levels in calories for human consumption. For
across at least four dimensions: wealthier countries. In developed nations, every six calories that a cow consumes,
1) Stemming Population Growth to reduce these losses, campaigns by gro- only one calorie is available for human
2) Changes in the Wasting of Food cers are being undertaken to reduce the consumption. Lasty, ruminants produce
3) Changes in Food Consumption amount of food that is thrown out because enormous amounts of greenhouse gases,
4) Changes in Food Production it is ‘past its date’. An app called “Too particularly methane.
Good To Go” notifies consumers when The “EAT Lancet Commission on
Stemming Population Growth grocers heavily discount food before Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food
Providing opportunities to educate throwing it away. This allows consumers Systems” published a report in 2019 titled
and improve the health and lives of the opportunity to purchase healthy food “Food in the Anthropocene”. According
women and children, and expanding at a fraction of the price while simultane- to the authors, a dietary shift away from
access to family planning for those who ously providing grocers with income on meat, beef in particular, and toward a
desire it, could reduce the number of products that would have otherwise been plant-based diet would dramatically
births per year by approximately 40 mil- a total loss. To reduce waste in lower- reduce the ecological and environmental
lion—around half the annual total glob- income countries, improvements are footprint of our food system.
ally, either through prevention or delay. needed in food storage and supply chains. Our current industrial system of
By providing the opportunity for women In addition to less waste and a lower en- producing meat is problematic for
and families to have fewer but healthier vironmental footprint, these changes will multiple reasons. Concentrated animal
children, food demand as well as the pres- provide retailers with more food to sell. feeding operations (CAFOs) congregate
MARCH/APRIL 2021 NE REPORT, P. 6 continued on page 11