[INFORMATIVE] Dish Disaster: the Eco-Impact Of Our Favourite Meals

Dish Disaster: the Eco-Impact Of Our Favourite Meals

By: Nitsuh Shewa

Food is a fundamental unit to life and culture, serving as a means to express love and traditions. While we can’t survive without it, we also can’t survive without our nurturing planet. As fascinating as it is, these two things have a rather direct relationship and may affect one another.

Did you know that what you eat affects the ecosystem? Let's dive deeper and have a better look.

Industrial farming and land use:
Large-scale agriculture significantly contributes to deforestation and habitat loss and often leads to many harmful activities like taking over forests or clearing lands for farm use.

According to recent statistics from Our World in Data, agriculture accounts for 70%-80% of tropical deforestation. This trend is escalating with the increasing production of soy and palm oil plantations.

Climate change:
Food goes through a hefty amount of production and modification, generating many by-products in the process. This contributes greatly to the emission of greenhouse gases. About one-third of all-human caused greenhouse gas emissions are interlinked to food production, driving climate change in the long run.Our climate is directly affected by the foods we eat and the way we produce them. Additionally, the climate crisis will impact food supply and production.

Some other factors affecting the GHG emission related to food are:

• nitrous oxide from fertilisers used for crop production
• carbon dioxide from cutting down forests for the expansion of farmland
• methane from cattle’s digestive process
• “Food mile”, the emission from transporting foods
• Other agricultural emissions from manure management, rice cultivation, burning of crop residues, and the use of fuel on farms.

Which foods cause the most GHG emission?
The emissions intensity is expressed in kilograms of “carbon dioxide equivalents”, which includes not only CO2 but all greenhouse gases.

Animal-based foods, particularly red meat, dairy, and farmed shrimp, are generally associated with the highest GHG emissions. This is because:

• Meat production often involves converting forests into grasslands, releasing carbon dioxide.
• Cows and sheep produce methane during digestion.
• Emissions from cattle manure.
• Chemical fertilisers used on crops for cattle feed emit nitrous oxide, another powerful greenhouse gas.
• In contrast, plant-based foods typically have lower greenhouse gas intensities.

Fishing and marine ecosystem:
Fishing is another major contributor to ecosystem disruption with several practices impacting the environment. Overfishing, the most common issue, involves the practice of catching fishes faster than they can reproduce, leading to a depletion of fish populations. Extreme cases of overfishing can lead to an extinction of species.

The removal of too many fishes disrupts the balance of the marine food chain, disturbing the natural predator-prey relationship. Predators that rely on food as their primary source will rapidly decline. This imbalance may potentially lead to an ecosystem collapse.

Overfishing is often accompanied by harmful practices intended to increase the fishing production but may damage habitats. Some bad fishing tactics like bottom trawling which involves a net dragged along the ocean floor to capture target species such as groundnuts or crabs, can significantly harm the seafloor habitat and inevitably hurt and damage the bottom-dwelling plants and animals such as coral reefs and seagrass beds, putting marine biodiversity in danger. Additionally, fishing produces many pollutants like plastic waste and chemicals such as oil spills. As much as we like to consume fish for amazing delicacies, the fishing tactics we use cause substantial environmental damage.

Water consumption:
Meat and dairy products require a high water footprint for production. Beef, in particular, requires 15 400 m 3 /ton of water which is particularly the highest water footprint of any food. Dairy products like cheese and butter also demand large amounts of water, making dairy-farming highly water-intensive. Additionally, dairy farming requires a significant amount of land to grow crops, which also requires water. Water is essential for growing crops, as well as raising livestock. A major part of this water usage comes from crop irrigation used to feed livestock, contributing significantly to the water footprint of animal products.

The water needed for growing crops depends on the type of crop and the land on where it is grown. Some crops require large amounts of water, while others need less. The water needs also vary by region, as some land require more water than others. Vegetables have relatively less water footprint and consumption of plant-based foods can help reduce overall water consumption.

Sustainability and Alternatives:
As farming and agriculture expand, so does the associated harm. Reducing the environmental impact of water and land use in food production is mandatory for a sustainable future. While we cannot completely prevent this, we can use some alternatives to mitigate it. In doing so we can help maintain a healthy ecosystem.

Sustainable Agriculture Practices:
We can take several steps to improve the quality of our meals and potentially protect the ecosystem. While these practices may not fully stop damage to our ecosystem, they can help create a platform for coexistence.

• Crop rotation or growing different crops together in the same fields helps reduce the need for chemical fertilisers and pesticides. This practice improves soil quality, making it last longer and enabling healthy soil to expand, hence increasing longevity and allowing more production.
• Organic farming usually avoids the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilisers and produces crops and vegetation using natural alternatives. This reduces water pollution and land degradation, providing people with a healthier alternative to vegetation, making it more ideal.
• Additionally, rotating livestock across different lands allows the grass and soil to recover. This method enhances soil health, allowing the land to heal and maintain its ability to produce crops.

We often overlook how much our food production can harm the environment and many organisms living in it. By considering these factors we can learn to do better for our ecosystem. Adopting plant based diets and regularly researching which foods may have the most GHG emission in order to avoid them or have them in less amounts, can help us make better choices. It's essential that we do this together as a society to ensure our ecosystem thrives!

Citations:
chart and demonstration about deforestation:
Ritchie, H., Spooner, F., & Roser, M. (2021). Deforestation and Forest Loss. Our World in Data. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation

information about GHG emission and food security:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (n.d.). IPCC. Retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/

food and climate relation:
United Nations. (n.d.). World’s food supply made insecure by climate change. United Nations. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/worlds-food-supply-made-insecure-climate-change