Food and agriculture have a significant impact on our planet, particularly in terms of carbon emissions, water withdrawals, and land use.
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
100 points (82.1% liked)
Cool Guides
4685 readers
1 users here now
Rules for Posting Guides on Our Community
1. Defining a Guide Guides are comprehensive reference materials, how-tos, or comparison tables. A guide must be well-organized both in content and layout. Information should be easily accessible without unnecessary navigation. Guides can include flowcharts, step-by-step instructions, or visual references that compare different elements side by side.
2. Infographic Guidelines Infographics are permitted if they are educational and informative. They should aim to convey complex information visually and clearly. However, infographics that primarily serve as visual essays without structured guidance will be subject to removal.
3. Grey Area Moderators may use discretion when deciding to remove posts. If in doubt, message us or use downvotes for content you find inappropriate.
4. Source Attribution If you know the original source of a guide, share it in the comments to credit the creators.
5. Diverse Content To keep our community engaging, avoid saturating the feed with similar topics. Excessive posts on a single topic may be moderated to maintain diversity.
6. Verify in Comments Always check the comments for additional insights or corrections. Moderators rely on community expertise for accuracy.
Community Guidelines
-
Direct Image Links Only Only direct links to .png, .jpg, and .jpeg image formats are permitted.
-
Educational Infographics Only Infographics must aim to educate and inform with structured content. Purely narrative or non-informative infographics may be removed.
-
Serious Guides Only Nonserious or comedy-based guides will be removed.
-
No Harmful Content Guides promoting dangerous or harmful activities/materials will be removed. This includes content intended to cause harm to others.
By following these rules, we can maintain a diverse and informative community. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to the moderators. Thank you for contributing responsibly!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
It makes the exception for land use change for chocolate, but isn't almost all agricultural land a land use change which contributes? Most soybean and other crops aren't as effective at sequestering carbon as the natural grasslands they took over. Orchards and other crops also took over forests and turned them into pastures and fields.
load more comments
(1 replies)
It's informative, but 1kg of beef and 1kg of coffee beans is not a meaningful comparison :D
The absence of palm oil--or any cooking oil--is pretty dubious.
While it's not perfect I think emissions per calorie is a better measurement than emissions per kg (even more importantly for making comparisons of water usage.)
This infographic brought to you by the oil industry™
Please focus on this infographic and curbing your own satisfaction, so we can continue to be the biggest polluter AND make money hand over fist.
I mean not really.
Live stock accounts for 60% of land usage, but only 2% of calories consumed. Much of that land is growing feed for cattle. They eat millions more calories in grain than is harvested.
Meat is just such a luxury with how many resources it uses. Like the world doesn't have enough space for everyone to eat meat like the US does.
It also feels very cruel to grow so much feed for cows when people are starving.
But people love Meat and have it part of their culture so people won't stop no matter what.
So fingers crossed for lab grown meat so this debate can just vanish.
load more comments
(6 replies)
load more comments
(16 replies)
This can be misleading. For instance: raising dairy cattle in lush and water rich areas with no or limited dependency on fossil water is very different than dairy cattle being raised in the desert with 90% of the food being trucked in and the cheese also being made in the desert using extremely limited fresh water.
Beef is certainly super high impact, generally but how we go about it super matters.
Does it really make that much difference if 70% of grown plants globally are fed to animals?
70% of grown plants globally are fed to animals
they're not.
Seems like a weasel-y statement. Grass is a plant. Growing grass in places where it just grows itself and the animals eat it directly is disimilar to hauling grown, fertilized herbicide treated, insecticide treated, harvested, processed, trucked grains to feed animals.
The environmental impacts are wildly different.
If fish and prawn use so much water, we should figure out how to raise them aeroponically.
It excludes the fact that animal-based farming contributes greatly to water pollution, too.
The source paper does a lot of napkin math without context apparently.
Have you read the original study?
Have you? I’m going by what I heard people say about it.
Yes, many times. I've linked it in this thread.
The original study does show water pollution, even going so far as to split it between acidification and eutrophication.
Good find. Yes, the original study accounts for water pollution, but this chart (conveniently) excludes it.
When you include the water pollution, the impact to the environment are FAR, FAR worse than this chart suggests.
I don't think it's really an "exclusion" to show the relative carbon impacts. A more comprehensive infographic could certainly be made, but there's nothing wrong with a simple one that focuses on a specific topic.
I guess that depends on the definition of “environmental impact”, but you're right about nothing wrong with focusing on a specific topic. 👌
Methane with cow-based agriculture too
Lets focus on billonaires using their luxury private jets first then we can worry about going after things that feed people
Why not both? This is something that each individual can change by themselves. And it's not hard.
load more comments
(4 replies)
"lets focus on this thing im not responsible for and wont do anything about so we dont have to focus on the thing my actions directly affect and I also wont do anything about "
load more comments
(5 replies)
Does this include shipping? For example coffee does not grow in Europe and needs to be shipped. Even more so for fruits.
I get the point of the guide. However, it’s kind of funny and obvious the fish and prawns would be in the top 5 consumers of water. I would expect nothing less.
I was like where the hell is chicken... then saw "poultry"
Why is soy not mentioned? Not all soy is turned into tofu.
Pork and chicken it is then!
truth is, veganism reduces the use of over 50% of farmland in the United States.
Why/how does cheese use so much water?
I'm betting it correlates with the water consumption of dairy cows. I think they are using the whole production needs from nothing to final product.
This, and also a lot of milk is needed to make cheese.
Because they are judging the water use by final weight and you make cheese by removing the water from milk.
view more: next ›