{"id":1160,"date":"2018-06-04T03:20:47","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T01:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/?p=1160"},"modified":"2018-06-04T03:36:14","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T01:36:14","slug":"vegetarianism-veganism-not-an-option-for-people-living-in-non-arable-areas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/?p=1160","title":{"rendered":"Vegetarianism\/veganism not an option for people living in non-arable areas!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Pastoralists rarely eat meat – usually only on special occssions – but dairy products are an essential part of their diets.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An article entitled Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers<\/em><\/a> just published in Science magazine and widely broadcasted by The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0 and The Independent<\/a> newspapers is making some \u00a0startling claims. For this monumental meta-study, the authors J. Poore and T. Nemecek compiled data from 38,700 farms in 119 countries and analysed the environmental footprint of \u00a040 major food categories with regards to Greenhouse Gas emissions, land use, freshwater withdrawals, eutrophication and acidification. Their conclusion is that even the most benignly produced meat and dairy products have a far worse environmental impact than plant foods: ..” meat, aquaculture, eggs,and dairy use ~83% of the world\u2019s farmland and contribute 56 to 58% of food\u2019s different emissions, despite providing only 37% of our protein and 18% of our calories” <\/em>and recommend that \u201cavoiding meat and dairy is the \u2018single biggest way\u2019 to reduce your impact on Earth<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

While the attention to the environmental impact of agriculture and food production is welcome, the conclusions are over-simplified, misleading in some aspects and very Western-centric.<\/p>\n

This starts with the data that overwhelmingly derive\u00a0 from North America, Brazil, Europe, China and Australia. As the map provided in the supplementary materials illustrates hardly any studies from the African and Asian drylands\u00a0 have been included, reflecting the absence of Life Cycle Assessments from these countries. We can not blame this uneven data scenario on the authors, but it indicates that pastoralist systems were not included in the study.<\/p>\n

Emphasizing that livestock provides just 18% of calories is totally misleading, since livestock is not kept to provide calories but to convert low quality feed into high quality proteins with essential amino acids that can not be sourced from plants.\u00a0 Its akin to saying\u00a0 there are 50 times more cars than trucks in the world but they only transport less than 2% of the goods.<\/p>\n

Then there is the statement that livestock takes up\u00a0 83% of farmland. The term \u201ctakes up\u201d conjures up a situation where this land is exclusively used by livestock and not used for anything else. In reality, crops and livestock are largely integrated, as they should be. In addition, \u00a0large parts of the world are non-arable \u2013 they are too dry, too step, too cold, too hot to be able to be cultivated \u2013 but they can still used for food production by means of herding livestock.\u00a0 Statistically these areas are classified as “permanent pastures” and are more than double the size than arable land. So its only logical that livestock can be found over a much larger part of the world than crops.<\/p>\n

Most remarkably, the authors come to the conclusion that \u201cwithout meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% \u2013 an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined \u2013 and still feed the world<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

To achieve a reduction of such magnitude, we would have to stop raising livestock in the non-arable areas mentioned. Neither the authors of the study nor the journalists seem to be aware that if you remove livestock from these regions, which include the vast drylands of Africa and Asia, as well as mountainous areas in Asia and parts of Latin America, the local populations will lose their livelihoods. In these so-called marginal areas\u00a0 people have co-existed with and depended on livestock for millennia: reindeer herders in the tundra; yak herders in Asia\u2019s high altitude zones; keepers of Bactrian camels and dromedaries in the deserts; nomads relying on cattle, sheep, and goats in the semi-arid steppes and savannahs.<\/p>\n

If they are to stop livestock production, they will either starve or have to vacate the area. Thus such a blanket advisory to stop eating meat and dairy is an irresponsible recipe for disaster in already impoverished parts of the world and for people for whom livestock represents a much better survival option during the frequent\u00a0 droughts than growing of crops.<\/p>\n

Yes, the world as a whole needs to drastically reduce its consumption of livestock products, and every vegan or vegetarian in the Global North, Brazil and China is welcome. But nobody can extend that recommendation to the people whose livelihoods depend on livestock in the semi-arid and arid parts of the world! For this reason, I would really recommend that the authors of the study and the journalists formally retract that particular statement and reword their conclusions to include this particular caveat.<\/p>\n

Even in Europe and North America we need to retain some livestock in the system, as it is crucial for the provision of organic manure and \u2013 through grazing \u2013 for the conservation of biodiversity.\u00a0 Grazing is the most common nature conservation measure in Germany and its shepherds obtain the major income from such ‘environmental services’ rather than from the sale of products. As a new friend on Twitter, Ariel Greenwood<\/a> who grazes cattle for conservation in California expressed it: We should limit consumption of animal products to those raised in an ecologically restorative way.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

There is one statement by Joseph Poore that I totally agree with: \u00a0The large variability in environmental impact from different farms does present an opportunity for reducing the harm, without needing the global population to become vegan. If the most harmful half<\/strong> (<\/em>my emphasis) of meat and dairy production was replaced by plant-based food, this still delivers about two-thirds of the benefits of getting rid of all meat and dairy production<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Can we agree which is the most harmful half of meat and dairy production?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article entitled Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers just published in Science magazine and widely broadcasted by The Guardian\u00a0 and The Independent newspapers is making some \u00a0startling claims. For this monumental meta-study, the authors J. Poore and T. Nemecek compiled data from 38,700 farms in 119 countries and analysed the environmental footprint … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Vegetarianism\/veganism not an option for people living in non-arable areas!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9,11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein","category-food-security","category-livestock-keepers","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1170,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions\/1170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}