Here at Earth’s Next Chapter we (I) love to talk grub.
I don’t consider myself a foodie, but I do enjoy trying new things, understanding the spices, food cultures, and techniques of different cuisines. Even the names of different local, traditional, or ethnic foods are fun to say: tostones, chapati, pho, schnitzel, and I was recently introduced to the colorfully-named southern breakfast dish: shit on a shingle. Delicious, but based on appearance, aptly named.
Food is so central to who we are, how we function, how we socialize, not to mention how long we live and how well.
And, in recent decades, we have significantly changed the way we produce food and the way we consume it. So, our conversation this week is not only about our individual and cultural health, but it’s also about carbon management, soil health, water availability and pollution, biodiversity, land use, as well global and local food security.
We’re taking each day this week to explore different aspects of our current and next chapter with respect to food and farming.
Today, I’m just going to share a few foundational stats and facts about our global food and farming situation, and then tomorrow through Friday, we’ll dig into (pardon the pun), more details. Throughout the week, we’ll start from a farming perspective, then move onto more of the food consumption and cultural side, and we’ll spend a good amount of time talking about the US of course, since that’s where most of you live.
Should be tasty.
A few stats (for fun!) on a Monday! (List of sources at the bottom)
Firstly - the land. About half of the globe’s habitable land is used for agriculture. 50%! Forests only account for about 37% of habitable global land in comparison.
It is likely, other than perhaps climate change, that humans’ biggest impact on the global environment is agricultural land expansion, and agricultural pressures are cited in the vast majority of threatened habitats or species: about 24,000 out of 28,000 endangered or threatened species listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN - the world authority on the matter).
However, crop yields, since the green revolution in the 1960s, have dramatically increased, meaning that we can produce the same amount that we did in 1961 in about 30% of the amount of land. This has undoubtedly led to less agricultural pressure and expansion in some areas. But of course, in 1961 there were just over 3 billion people and today, we have almost 8 billion. And the cost of soil health from some of those ‘green revolution’ approaches is catching up with us in some cases.
One of the biggest changes in recent years is the amount of land dedicated to livestock or crops to feed livestock. Of the global land devoted to agriculture (50% of the total habitable land), around 77% of that is supporting livestock-related food. However, meat and dairy make up only about 18% of our global calorie supply and only 37% of our protein supply.
In other words, the land we devote to animals and their feed far exceeds the benefit we get from them, nutritionally. Add to this that livestock directly contributes to carbon and methane emissions, and it seems as though we have a lot of opportunity to change our equations here. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that around 14.5% of our global carbon emissions come from livestock farming. However, this is pretty old data and newer research, listed below in the sources, suggests this is a significant underestimate.
Diet and Consumption:
It’s probably fairly obvious to say that we eat very differently based on where we live in the world. North America typically consumes the most calories and parts of sub-Saharan Africa the least, though this papers over lots of variations even within these regions. Asia consumes the most grains, North America is much higher in fats and sugars.
In the United States our total caloric intake has risen almost 1000 calories per day since the 1960s, significantly in the ‘sugar and fat’ category (mostly from more extensive use of vegetable oils), while our consumption of dairy and eggs has decreased.
About 80% of the food Americans buy comes from the grocery store (packaged and unpackaged foods), but a vast majority of that food is packaged. And it was recently determined that in America, over 70% of our packaged food is considered ‘ultra-processed’. Basically this is food made from the components extracted from other foods and then processed (to add flavor or shelf-life for example), and ours is generally significantly higher in salt, fat, and sugar than in other countries. A National Institute of Health study noted that for kids in America, the amount of the food they eat that is packaged and processed is around 70%.
There are signs however, that global and US food discussions are taking on a more sustainable and plant-based tone. Though it’s still a tiny fraction of the overall sales, the plant-based ‘product’ category grew 43% in dollar-sales over the last two years, far outpacing other categories.
Personally, I worry that this is still ‘processed food’ and sort of misses the point that the best plant-based foods are actual plants, but I digress and I’ll get into that later in the week!
And finally a few stats on farms:
It shouldn’t be shocking that given how much packaged food we eat, most of our food is produced by large corporations or very large farms.
While over 80% of the world’s 570 million farmers are smallholders (those who have less than 2 hectares/5 acres), they produce only about 30% of our global calories. In the U.S., the average size of farms has been increasing, and there are fewer farms as a result, but there are some interesting other trends too. While the size of large farms has been increasing, the number of small farms in the U.S. (1-9 acres) has also increased slightly. The number of women in farming also appears to have increased by over 25% (though this is pre-pandemic and I‘ll be curious if we can find out how things have changed during the last few years).
And while the average age of farmers is increasing in the U.S. (almost 60 years old), there is a significant crop (I’m so sorry) of new and young farmers coming into the…field (again, so sorry).
Well, I think that’s enough stats for now and we’ll launch into some more details on farming and farmers tomorrow, with a focus on the US, and highlighting not just where we are now, but where we can go in the next chapter.
Tomorrow’s installment will be looking at ‘Resilient Agriculture’ - socially, environmentally, and beyond.
Please enjoy your dinner. :-)
Sources:
and IUCN’s Red List of threatened species:
Our World in Data website
Proceedings of the Library of Sciences journal. Paper on livestock emissions
Old data, but still interesting from National Geographic on food consumption.
Science Daily article on processed foods
NIH Study on processed foods