The global food system is the biggest driver of the destruction of the natural world, and a shift to predominantly plant-based diets is crucial to contain the damage, according to a report.
Agriculture is the main threat to 86% of the 28,000 known species at risk of extinction, said the Chatham House thinktank report. Without change, the loss of biodiversity will continue to accelerate and threaten the world’s ability to sustain humanity, the document said.
The root cause is a vicious circle of cheap food, the report said, where low costs generate greater demand for food and more waste, with more competition reducing costs through more deforestation of natural land and the use of polluting fertilizers and pesticides.
The report, supported by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), focused on three solutions. First, there is a shift to plant-based diets, because cattle, sheep and other animals have the greatest impact on the environment.
More than 80% of global agricultural land is used to raise animals, which provide only 18% of the calories ingested. Reversing the trend of increasing meat consumption removes the pressure to clear new land and cause damage to wildlife. It also frees existing land for the second solution, restoring native ecosystems to increase biodiversity.
Land availability also supports the third solution, said the report, which is to cultivate in a less intensive and harmful way, but to accept lower yields. Organic yields are on average about 75% of those in conventional intensive agriculture, he said.
Fixing the global food system would also solve the climate crisis, the report said. The food system is responsible for about 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions, with more than half coming from animals. Changes in food production could also solve the health problems suffered by 3 billion people, who have very little to eat or are overweight or obese, and which costs trillions of dollars a year in health.
“Politicians are still saying ‘my job is to make food cheaper for you’, no matter how toxic it is from the point of view of human or planetary health,” said Professor Tim Benton of Chatham House. “We must stop arguing that we have to subsidize the food system on behalf of the poor and, instead, deal with the poor out of poverty.”
Benton said that the impact of the food system on climate and health is becoming widely accepted, but that biodiversity is often seen as “good to have”.
Susan Gardner, director of Unep’s ecosystems division, said the current food system is a “double-edged sword” that provides cheap food, but does not take into account the hidden costs for our health and the natural world. “Reforming the way we produce and consume food is an urgent priority,” she said.
Jane Goodall, the renowned conservationist, said that intensive farming of billions of animals has seriously damaged the environment and inhuman overcrowding conditions risk new pandemic diseases spreading to people: “It must be eliminated as soon as possible.”
On Tuesday, a historical review by Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta concluded that the world was being put at extreme risk by the economy’s failure to take into account the rapid depletion of biodiversity.
The Chatham House report said that the world has lost half of its natural ecosystems and that the average size of the wildlife population has fallen by 68% since 1970. In contrast, farm animals, mainly cows and pigs, now account for 60% of all mammals by weight, with humans representing 36% and animals only 4%.
In reforming the global food system, “the convergence of global food consumption around predominantly vegetable diets is the most crucial element,” said the report. For example, he said, switching from beef to beans by the US population would free up fields equivalent to 42% of U.S. arable land for other uses, such as reforestation or more environmentally friendly agriculture.
In another example, the report said that if permanent pasture around the world that once was the forest returns to its original state, it would store 72 billion tons of carbon – roughly the equivalent of seven years of global fossil fuel emissions. Benton said the report was not advocating that everyone should go vegan, but should follow healthy diets that, as a result, are much poorer in meat.
The coming year offers a potentially unique opportunity to redesign the global food system, said Benton, with the top UN summits on biodiversity and climate, as well as the first UN World Summit on Food Systems and an international summit on Nutrition for Growth. The large sums spent by governments as nations recover from the Covid-19 pandemic also offer opportunities for “policy making that gives equal priority to public and planetary health,” the report said.
Philip Lymbery of Compassion in World Farming said: “The future of agriculture must be nature-friendly and regenerating, and our diets must become more plant-based, healthy and sustainable. Without ending industrial agriculture, we run the risk of having no future. “