Make alternative proteins part of your climate story

Today, food and agriculture account for a third of all global emissions. Animal agriculture alone—including the crops and pastures to feed those animals—is responsible for between 11 and 20 percent of all emissions. A solution? Change how meat is made.

Compared to conventional meat, plant-based meat uses up to 93 percent less land and 99 percent less water.  Cultivated meat requires up to 90 percent less land than conventional beef, and could reduce air pollution by up to 94 percent.

Making meat without the animal can help us meet our obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement alongside other solutions, like ending our reliance on fossil fuels. But a world without fossil fuels is not enough. A study led by Oxford University found that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, the world cannot stay below 1.5° of warming without making meat differently.

The facts are clear: our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss, with agriculture alone threatening more than 85 percent of the 28,000 species at risk of extinction. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), we must restore at least a billion hectares of degraded land to meet the Paris Agreement and slow the rate of species extinction. Yet changing how we make meat is not yet prioritized by many who are seeking to protect the world’s biological diversity.

A 2022 study in the journal Nature documented how substituting just 20 percent of beef with microbial proteins from fermentation could cut deforestation in half by 2050. Alternative seafood can ease the burden on our overfished oceans and help preserve wild fish stocks for the coastal communities that rely on them to survive. By supporting a shift to alternative proteins, biodiversity groups big and small can free up massive amounts of land and water for restoration and recovery.

The inefficient process of cycling crops through animals is one of the key drivers of food insecurity. Today, more than three-quarters of our agricultural land is used to produce meat, dairy, and eggs, yet animal products account for less than a fifth of the global calorie supply. Meanwhile, one-third of all staple crops grown today are fed to farmed animals, while one in nine people around the world is undernourished. Given finite land and water, a growing global population, and crisis-level food security issues, we can no longer afford the inefficiencies and risks of cycling crops through animals to produce protein.

But more efficient ways of producing protein exist that can enhance food security even in land- and water-constrained environments. Alternative proteins play a critical role in a secure food supply that’s equipped to feed a growing world. Alt proteins can be globally scalable and regional—produced by both large companies and by small-scale farmers with indigenous crops adapted to local climates and suited to the needs and tastes of local communities.

According to the UNEP and the International Livestock Research Institute, increasing demand for meat and today’s unsustainable methods of meat production are two of the seven most likely causes of the next pandemic.

Antibiotic overuse is leading to antibiotic-resistant superbugs that already kill more than a million people a year. Wave after wave of avian flu, swine flu, and other viruses will continue with business-as-usual industrial animal agriculture. High population densities, prolonged heightened stress levels, poor sanitation, and unnatural diets create perfect conditions for viruses to leap from livestock to humans.

A solution? Reduce the world’s reliance on a key driver of antibiotic resistance, new diseases, and pandemics: raising animals for food. Given growing global demand for meat, eggs, and dairy, a large-scale shift to alternative proteins will be central to mitigating the risk of antibiotic resistance and future pandemics while feeding a growing population.

Top climate reports have made it clear that we must rapidly slash emissions to meet global climate targets and that business-as-usual agriculture combined with a global population nearing nine billion are throwing us off course. What’s missing from all these urgent calls to action? Rethinking how meat is made.

• Even if fossil fuels were eliminated overnight, emissions from the food system alone would jeopardize the Paris Agreement target of keeping global temperature rises below 1.5C (source).
• When renewable energy is used in production, cultivated meat can have a lower carbon footprint than the vast majority of today’s conventional meat and farmed seafood production. This remains true even when compared to extremely optimistic scenarios for improvements to conventional meat by 2030. (source).

Nearly 80 percent of total water consumption in the Colorado River basin is used for agriculture, with roughly half of that going toward the production of alfalfa hay for livestock, according to a 2020 study. A shift toward alternative proteins would free up significant land and water resources currently being used to raise animals for traditional meat and dairy.

• Switching from conventional meat to plant-based meat reduces water use by up to 72 percent for chicken, 87 percent for beef, and 81 percent for pork (source.)
• Cultivated meat could use 66 percent less water compared to conventional beef and result in lower environmental impacts in a variety of categories such as air pollution and acidification of soils compared to chicken, pork, and beef.

COVID-19, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and extreme drought have brought food insecurity to the forefront of many headlines in recent years. Shifting from industrialized animal agriculture toward alternative proteins is one of the most impactful ways we can strengthen stability and resilience within global food supply chains.

• Consider that the global animal agriculture sector uses one-third of the world’s grain supply, with only a fraction of that being converted into edible protein.
• Most of the calories from that feed will never make it to our plates. Take chicken. Chicken is the most efficient animal at turning crops into meat. Yet it requires nine calories of feed to produce just one calorie of consumable meat. Imagine preparing nine plates of food and throwing eight of them away.