Global Warming

1
Global Warming Food Consumption Patterns

• Presented by
• Shea Riley
• Laura Cowie
• John Shields
• Veronica Castro
• Wasif Islam

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Agenda

• Global Warming
• Meat Production (affects)
• Fishing
• Deforestation
• Biofuels
• IPCC
• Food Consumption Patterns (Developed Developing
  Countries)
• Guest speaker and Prof.

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Environmental Impact of food production and
consumption

• The environmental impact of farming
• Need to increase world food production, to keep
  pace with the growing global population.
• Many regions in the world already suffer from
  severe symptoms of overexploitation, degradation,
  and reduced productivity caused by unbalanced
  management of natural agro-ecosystems. 1
• In the 50 years since 1950, global agricultural
  production has increased by 60 per cent.

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Food Production
5

• In 1996 3.1 billion people lived in rural
  areas, 2.5 billion dependent on agriculture
  labor, in poor countries, contribution to total
  GDP represents 40-60 percent, total value of
  output from worlds agro-ecosystems has been
  estimated as US1.3 trillion per year (2)
• Currently, cropland and managed pasture cover 28
  per cent of the global land surface, whereas
  permanent crops occupy around 131 million
  hectares.
• Thirty-eight per cent of global agriculture is in
  tropical regions and 23 per cent in subtropical
  regions. The irrigated areas cover at present 270
  million hectares globally, but they continue to
  expand annually by 3.3 million hectares. 3

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Forests represent natural ecosystems and perform
numerous functions such as carbon storage,
maintenance of soil fertility, and highly
efficient conversion of solar energy. The large
amounts of fossil energy currently used in modern
agriculture have transformed cultivated lands
from CO2-net-absorbers to CO2-emitters. 4
Problems Soil erosion, tree cutting, habitat
destruction, and fertility loss are problems more
frequently observed in poor rural areas, while
deterioration of soil and water, eutrophication,
salinization, and excess of nutrients are usually
typical of high-input farming, as is the case in
Europe and Latin America. Result Global
competition for freshwater
7
Meat Production

• The Vegetarian Union of North America (VUNA), a
  network of many independent vegetarian groups,
  challenges global warming activists and
  environmentalists to acknowledge that eating meat
  is one of the greatest causes of global warming.
  By eating lower on the food chain - ideally,
  an-all-plant-based diet -- humankind can take an
  essential and enormous step in reducing global
  warming.
• "Al Gore and climate activists have consistently
  failed to recognize one of the most inconvenient
  truths of our time that animal agriculture and
  animal product consumption on a global scale is
  perhaps the greatest (anthropogenic) cause of
  global warming today," said Saurabh Dalal,
  president of VUNA. "Given a personal choice
  between helping to save the planet and consuming
  animal products, too many people who should know
  better continue to gorge on their chicken wings
  and hamburgers."
• A 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture
  Organization (FAO) report entitled Livestock's
  Long Shadow (http//www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2
  006/1000448) concludes that global animal
  agriculture contributes more greenhouse gas
  emissions (in CO2 equivalents), an astonishing 18
  percent of the total, than all forms of
  transportation,.
• The production of meat and other animal products
  for food contributes significantly to the primary
  global warming gases carbon dioxide, methane, and
  nitrous oxide, accounting for 9, 37, and 65 of
  world totals, respectively. Furthermore, the
  global warming potential and effect of these
  gases is more striking since methane and nitrous
  oxide are 23 and 296 times more harmful than
  carbon dioxide. A University of Chicago study
  found that the average American diet, including
  all food processing steps, annually produces 1.5
  tons of CO2-equivalent more than a meat-free diet

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The Environmental Impact of Livestock Production

• The total effect on the environment due to animal
  farming can be divided into direct impacts such
  as gas emissions, pollution, and soil
  degradation, and indirect impacts such as the
  production of grain and animal feed required for
  cattle nutrition.
• It has been estimated that, in the year 2000, the
  global livestock population was 1,331 million
  cattle, 1,060 million sheep, 905 million pigs,
  and 235 million geese (this being the highest
  absolute increase since 1961).
• The major global issue raised by this number of
  animals is undoubtedly their need for food and
  space.

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Global Demand for Meat
The so-called Livestock Revolution occurring in
most developing countries has already caused
serious environmental problems of forest loss and
soil degradation.
10
Affect on Land

• Overgrazing, may be the cause of soil erosion,
  decreased fertility and organic content, water
  infiltration and soil compaction.
• These effects are already observable in large
  regions of Africa where the time required for
  land recovery is not respected anymore, and
  animals are kept in high numbers on the same spot
  for long periods.5

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Gases

• The greatest pressures on the environment from
  intensive farming are methane and ammonia (NH3)
  emissions, water and soil pollution due to slurry
  and manure accumulation, eutrophication and
  pathogenic contamination.
• It has been estimated that the annual global
  emissions of atmospheric ammonia by domestic
  animals account for 23 million tonnes of NH3-N.
• NH3 is a very important atmospheric pollutant
  with a variety of effects including a
  contribution to soil acidification which can lead
  to eutrophication when animal slurry contaminates
  water.

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Waste

• When animal excreta come into contact with water,
  additional pollution can be caused, because it
  often contains amounts of toxic residues,
  hormones, heavy metals or zoonotic
  micro-organisms.
• Another pollutant derived from livestock
  production is the solid manure which forms a
  large amount of organic waste to be disposed of.

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Environmental Impact at the Consumer Level

• The influence of consumers over total energy
  consumption and emmission account for 32 per cent
  of the total energy demand of the food sector.
  6
• A consumer could achieve a greater reduction in
  his/her environmental impact by choosing
  different food products rather than, for example,
  going shopping by bicycle instead of by car.
• It has been argued elsewhere that behavioural
  changes have the potential for greater reductions
  in energy consumption than technological
  improvements.

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Transportation

• Transportation is an important factor, both
  during the retail and distribution phases and in
  the process of household consumption.
• The energy spent in car use for eating out has
  been estimated at 20 MJ per outside meal.7
• Transportation processes have the largest impact
  in terms of energy consumption, global warming,
  acidification and eutrophication.