This World Health Day (and everyday) eat right, for the planet

A growing body of scientific evidence suggests our dietary habits put too much pressure on the environment. To chart out the roadmap to improve the way we grow and consume food, countries gathered for the United Nations Food Systems Summit September 23, 2021 in New York.

There were nearly 300 commitments to transform food systems. But the summit is unlikely to effect real change, as its agenda was hijacked by agri-business firms even before it began.

A September 2020 report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), EAT and Climate Focus says the global food system that sustains 7.8 billion people accounts for about a quarter (21-37 per cent) of greenhouse gases emitted every year due to human activities.

This includes growing and harvesting of crops; processing, transport, marketing, consumption and disposal of food and related items, says the report, Enhancing Nationally Determined Contributions for Food Systems.

This means, in terms of pollution, our food system fares worse than transportation (14 per cent of greenhouse gases) and buildings and energy use (16 per cent), while matching electricity and heat generation (25 per cent) and industry (21 per cent).

Now, try to gauge the additional emissions as we churn out more to feed 10 billion mouths by 2050, as per estimates of US-based Population Reference Bureau's 2020 World Population Data Sheet.

Scientists around the world are working overtime to understand the unexplored links between food systems, human health and climate change, and how and where this essential element of life went awry.

Researchers from United Kingdom and the United States recently created an experimental model to estimate emissions from food production. They created a climate utopia in which all sources of emissions other than food production were halted — a world running on renewable energy, electric vehicles, sustainable buildings and non-polluting manufacturing.

In such a scenario, the food system alone contributed enough greenhouse gases to heat up the planet above the 1.5 degrees Celsius target under the 2015 Paris Agreement to combat climate change, sometime between 2051 and 2063, they note in the November 2020 issue of the Science journal.

This may come as a surprise to those who think of plants as carbon sinks. It is true that plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, but they also release large amounts of the toxic gas when decomposing.

Several other stages in a food system are directly or indirectly responsible for carbon emissions. For instance, felling forests to make way for farms and pastures removes a major carbon sink. Operation of farm machinery on fossil fuels and manufacture of agrochemicals and fertilisers, too, emit greenhouse gases. Even cattle burps release methane.

The September 2020 assessment by UNEP said reducing land-use change and conversion of natural habitats alone could lower emissions by 4.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (GtCO2e) a year. A carbon dioxide equivalent is used to measure the emissions from various greenhouse gases on the basis of their global-warming potential.

Reducing food loss and waste, which account for 8 per cent of anthropogenic emissions, could further lower the emission load by 4.5 GtCO2e. Improving production methods and reducing methane from livestock could lower emissions by up to 1.44 GtCO2e. And, replacing animal-based products in the human diet with plant-based food could result in a massive 8 GtCO2e of emission reduction.

But the authors of the Science study say global warming cannot be limited to 1.5°C just by employing any one strategy. They recommend a dramatic food transformation in addition to a complete transition away from fossil fuels to avert the harmful impacts of climate change.

The onus is now on the food sector. Unfortunately, unlike other emission-intensive sectors where cleaner and viable alternatives are available — electricity can be sourced from photovoltaic systems instead of coal-based power plants; electric vehicles can be used instead of diesel cars—the ways to decarbonise food are less clear. Carbon emissions are integral to the biological system. Besides, one cannot stop eating.

How to change the way we eat

There are other factors to consider. Hunger, malnutrition and diseases continue to haunt the world.

Food in the Anthropocene, a report published in February 2019 by the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health, a group of 37 scientists from 16 countries, said:

More than 820 million people have insufficient food and many more consume low-quality diets that cause micronutrient deficiencies and contribute to a substantial rise in the incidence of diet-related obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases, including coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

The commission seeks to answer one question: Can we feed a future population of 10 billion people healthy food within planetary boundaries?

The commission has set global targets for food systems that are environmentally sustainable and benefit human health. All of the 14 GtCO2e from this sector cannot be eliminated by 2050 as it is intrinsic to the biological processes in plants and animals; so the planetary boundary for food production emissions — the carbon budget for the sector — is set at a maximum of 5 GtCO2e.

The remaining 9 Gt would need to be mitigated through activities like shifting diets, changes in production practices, decarbonising the food value chain and reducing food loss and waste. However, no combination is sufficient to bring emissions within the planetary boundary under the “business as usual” dietary scenario.

The commission has thus proposed the first Planetary Health Diet that could reduce urban emissions by 60 per cent in 10 years. This diet is based on healthy and sustainable ingredients produced within planetary boundaries and adaptable to local contexts. It discourages overconsumption of any food to the extent that it impacts biodiversity, environment and human health, and proposes a shift to more plant-based food with reduced meats.

In July 2020, EAT published a report that says some countries are more responsible for the emissions from the food system; most of these are in the Group of 20 (G20) bloc. The study, Diets for a Better Future, has calculated the food-print of each G20 country and found that the bloc accounts for 75 per cent of the global food emissions.

EAT said increasing the consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts and lowering consumption of meat and dairy that goes beyond current national dietary guidelines (NDGs) would reduce the G20 food-print to 40 per cent of the carbon budget for food. However, NDGs will have to be ambitious enough to free up this portion of the carbon budget for food to create space for poor countries to improve diets and tackle undernutrition without destroying the planet.

However, while the EAT-Lancet Commission emphasises on reducing 9 GtCO2e emissions outside the carbon budget for food, an October 2020 report by WWF, Bending The Curve: The Restorative Power of Planet-Based Diets, said current NDGs would reduce it only by 1 Gt.

“Dietary changes take place at the local level, so it is important to translate the global agenda into actionable national-level analysis,” says Brent Loken, lead scientist, WWF-Global Food and lead author of the report.

Roadblocks on the way

Changing the food system is not an easy task. In a study published in The Lancet Global Health on January 1, 2020, researchers used retail prices (as from 2011) of 744 food items in 159 countries, and found that the most affordable EAT-Lancet diet costs $2.84 per day, with the most expensive share being fruits and vegetables (31.2 per cent), followed by legumes and nuts (18.7 per cent), meat, eggs and fish (15.2 per cent) and dairy (13.2 per cent).

This diet costs a small fraction of average incomes in high-income countries, but is not affordable for the world’s poor. Cost of an EAT-Lancet diet exceeds the household per capita income of 1.58 billion people, notes the study.

Business interests that have played a role in shaping the modern industrial food system, can also make the transition difficult.

In November 2020, the Danish government decided to promote vegetarian food two days a week and reduced lamb and beef options in state canteens to just once a week, as part of its efforts to reduce diet-related carbon footprint and meet emission reduction targets. But it had to rescind the order after backlash from trade unions.

Frédéric Leroy, professor of food science and biotechnology, Vrije Universiteit, Brussels, says conflict of interest is rampant in the push towards a planetary diet. The players that call for this shift include a variety of public-private partnerships that are backed by oil companies, large investors, Silicon Valley companies and food corporations; some examples include the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, FReSH initiative, Natural Capital Coalition and We Mean Business.

The model of climate change politics also tends to allow a few transnational firms to shape planetary regulations in their favour. Food companies like Mondelez International Inc are happy to “talk the talk” of reducing emissions while being major users of cash crops produced at the expense of environmental diversity.

“Alternate foods” — plant-based ultra-processed items like mock meats, fake dairy, fake eggs and lab-grown meat — are another aspect of interest. Multinational giants have realised large profit margins by adding value to cheap raw materials (protein extracts, starches and oils) through ultra-processing and producing such foods in bulk for cheaper.

The global plant-based meat market grows at a compound annual growth rate of 15.8 per cent per annum, and is set to reach $35.4 billion by 2027. On October 23 last year, the European Parliament allowed producers of plant-based “sausages” and “burgers” to continue promoting them as such, rejecting a demand by the industry that names associated with meat-based products be reserved.

But consumption of such foods gives a false sense of positive change, accordign to a section of experts. “We have international treaties on strategies like phasing out filament light-bulbs to persuade individuals that their actions and tiny influence on emissions is significant. Plant-based meat is performing a similar role and is likewise, a complete distraction from both climate and biodiversity issues,” said Martin Cohen, social scientist and visiting research fellow in philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, UK.

There are other fears that this focus on planet-based diets might prompt other emitters to shirk responsibility and put the onus of reducing emissions on the individual.

“This will not work as individuals are unable to exercise power-of-choice because of the environment in which they are in (for instance, the food is not available or prices are too high),” said Tim Benton, research director, emerging risks at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, UK.

But individuals can effect some change: demand for healthy and sustainable diets at affordable prices and facilitate necessary shift in subsidies and develop infrastructure for fruits and vegetables rather than grains and livestock, he adds.

Despite such adversities, experts believe tweaking food systems could be a game-changer. For instance, adaptation and mitigation strategies linked to the food system are not included in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) — steps countries take to reduce national emissions. At present, only some NDCs mention goals such as food loss and waste reduction, and sustainable diets.

A 2019 report by Exponential Roadmap Initiatve, a global scientific coalition, provides 36 solutions to halve emissions by 2030. It says nature-based solutions like forest protection, grazing management and fertiliser management can help achieve the ideal targets, while reforestation, biochar and improved agricultural practices have the potential to store up to 9.1 GtCO2e annually, storing 225 GtCO2e by the end of the century.

The 26th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021, saw discussions on lowering the agriculture sector's contribution to global warming. It remains to be seen how this affects food systems.

This was first published in Down To Earth’s annual State of India’s Environment 2022.

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