01 June, 2018

Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet.
Cattle at an illegal settlement in the Jamanxim National
 Forest, state of Para, northern Brazil, November 29, 2009.
With 1,3 million hectares, the Jamanxim National Forest
is today a microsm that replicates what happens in the
 Amazon, where thousands of hectares of land are prey of
 illegal woodcutters, stock breeders and gold miners. 
The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.

The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. Other recent research shows 86% of all land mammals are now livestock or humans. The scientists also found that even the very lowest impact meat and dairy products still cause much more environmental harm than the least sustainable vegetable and cereal growing.


Read the story by the environment editor The Guardian, Damian Carrington - “Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth.”

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