Food System Emissions

Generated Summary

This report examines the potential for reducing food system emissions through various philanthropic strategies. The study focuses on the significant contribution of food systems to global greenhouse gas emissions, with an emphasis on livestock emissions, crop emissions, and land-use changes. The research employed a systems-change approach, advocating for government and corporate policies to drive down agricultural emissions, particularly focusing on alternative proteins, enteric methane mitigation, and incentivizing low-carbon farming practices. The study assessed the scale, feasibility, and funding needs of various sub-strategies, highlighting the importance of addressing the climate impact of livestock farming, which is often neglected. The approach involved reviewing existing literature, data from various sources, and economic models to assess cost-effectiveness and identify key uncertainties and potential co-benefits and adverse effects of the proposed interventions. The primary objective was to determine the most promising philanthropic pathways for mitigating food system emissions, emphasizing the disproportionate role of livestock emissions and the underfunding of mitigation efforts in this area.

Key Findings & Statistics

• Food systems are responsible for around 26% (range: 21-37%) of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
• Livestock emissions account for 11-17% of global emissions and 42-65% of food system emissions.
• Livestock farming also has a large land demand and is the leading driver of deforestation.
• The mitigation potential for an agricultural ETS in Europe is estimated at up to 8 Gt CO₂e per year.
• Enteric methane emissions make up about 18% of food system emissions (2.8 GtCO2e per year).
• The current technical mitigation potential of currently available enteric methane interventions, which mostly address feedlot emissions, is around 1.2 Gt CO2/year.
• According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, food systems are responsible for around 26% (range: 21-37%) of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Figure 1).
• Livestock and fish farms contribute to 31% of food emissions.
• Crops for animal feed contribute to 6% of food emissions.
• Crops for human food contribute to 21% of food emissions.
• Land use for livestock contributes to 16% of food emissions.
• Land use change contributes to 18% of land use emissions.
• The EAT-Lancet commission promotes “a healthier diet with approximately 70% meat reduction globally relative to BAU13″ (Hayek et al, 2020). This would lead to an estimated reduction in food system emissions from 2020-2100 of 48%, or 648 Gt (Figure 1, Clark et al, 2020).
• The government spent only 8% of agricultural climate mitigation funding from federal R&D agencies on enteric methane, despite enteric methane contributing to 32% of agricultural emissions.
• Meat and dairy subsidies are estimated to be about $40 billion per year and $20 billion per year, respectively.
• We think the historical growth of the alt protein market from $2.2 billion in 2019 to $15 billion in 2023 was plausibly in large part due to such improvements but could also be in part because they were at a high point of a
• Meat and dairy subsidies are estimated to be about $40 billion per year and $20 billion per year, respectively, and public spending on meat and dairy is estimated to be on the order of 1,000 times more than public spending on novel food technologies.
• The largest source of funding for enteric methane is the $200 million Enteric Methane Research & Development Accelerator.
• The average German ate 52 kilograms of meat last year, down around 4.2 kilograms from 2021 levels and the lowest since the government started tracking meat consumption in 1989.
• The UK achieved a 27% reduction in consumer food waste, and the Ingka Group, which owns IKEA, reduced FLW by 54% in its restaurants.
• FLW makes up 5-6% of global emissions and 24% of food system emissions.
• Halving food waste could reduce cumulative food system emissions from 2020-2100 by 27%.
• The EU’s main subsidy program “rarely finances measures with high climate mitigation potential” and over 80% of subsidies support emissions-intensive animal products.
• According to empirical evidence, accounting for their environmental impacts would raise meat prices by 20-60%.
• The mitigation potential for an agricultural ETS in Europe is estimated at up to 8 Gt CO₂e per year, including systems change effects like policy leadership and technology spillover.

Other Important Findings

• The most promising philanthropic pathway to cut food system emissions is by reducing livestock farming, especially for ruminants like cattle, which need a lot of land and produce methane.
• Nonprofits can enable reduced livestock emissions by advocating for strategies that increase consumer demand for lower-emissions products like alternative proteins or encourage producers to switch to lower-emissions livestock farming practices.
• Government and corporate advocacy provide the highest leverage for reducing agricultural emissions.
• Alternative protein policy advocacy, implementing alternative protein demand commitments, pricing European agricultural emissions, and reducing enteric methane emissions as the most promising philanthropic sub-strategies.
• Transitioning away from livestock farming offers co-benefits such as reductions in agricultural land and water use, strengthened biosecurity, strengthened food security, reductions in animal suffering, and benefits for global health.
• Reducing enteric methane emissions would also lead to the co-benefit of improved local air quality.
• Our key uncertainties include the extent to which alt proteins can compete with conventional meat and reduce emissions, the scalability of cultivated meat, the realistic mitigation potential of enteric methane interventions, the risk that mainstreaming enteric methane mitigation leads to slower mitigation of overall agricultural emissions, and the feasibility of passing EU regulations that lead to large-scale emission reductions.
• We think it is important to direct more philanthropic funding towards mitigating food system emissions.
• We found that livestock emissions have a disproportionately large role in agricultural emissions and their mitigation efforts are also comparatively neglected.
• We think reducing demand for carbon-intensive livestock products and decreasing enteric methane emissions are the most promising pathways to reduce food system emissions.
• According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, food systems are responsible for around 26% (range: 21-37%) of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Figure 1).
• Livestock emissions arise from land use for livestock, enteric methane, manure management, pasture management, and fuel use in fisheries (Figure 1). It represents 11-17% of global emissions and 42-65% of food system emissions.
• We think the most effective government strategies will likely include measures to support alt protein innovation and incentives to shift cultural attitudes to meat. For example, Denmark’s Action Plan on Plant-Based Foods includes plant-based food grants, strategic research collaborations, and chef training programs on plant-based cooking.
• Recently, we have seen an increasing number of alt protein policy wins, including more funding for RD&D, commercialization support, inclusion in dietary guidelines, and growing recognition as national priorities.
• We think further philanthropic support for alternative proteins could plausibly lead to more favorable policies and public spending for alt proteins (see Assumption 2 in “Theory of change”). Still, we rate this only as medium feasibility because we are unsure of the future consumer acceptance of alt proteins and how much meat they can realistically displace.
• We are especially uncertain about the scalability of cultivated meat because of its high production cost, low consumer acceptance, regulatory barriers, and technical barriers to production at scale.
• Policy support for alt proteins already exists, mainly in terms of government spending on RD&D, but we think a funding gap still exists because 1) although government spending on alternative protein RD&D could be a highly effective investment to reach national climate targets, it is still low compared to spending on other decarbonization strategies, and 2) incumbent interests from the meat and dairy industries continue to challenge policies to reduce demand for livestock products.
• The mitigation potential for an agricultural ETS in Europe is estimated at up to 8 Gt CO₂e per year, including systems change effects like policy leadership and technology spillover.
• We rate feasibility as medium mainly because 1) large amounts of transition finance must be mobilized to incentivize passing such regulation and 2) a large number of diverse stakeholders must agree on its implementation strategy for it to be passed.
• We rate feasibility as medium because there are several promising options to reduce enteric methane emissions, but we are uncertain about their cost and acceptability to producers.
• The largest source of funding for enteric methane is the $200 million Enteric Methane Research & Development Accelerator, which is part of the Global Methane Hub.
• We think enteric methane interventions have become more politically tractable in recent years, partly due to the increased focus that the Global Methane Pledge has brought to methane abatement.
• FLW makes up 5-6% of global emissions and 24% of food system emissions.
• There is a clear financial and humanitarian incentive to reduce FLW and that these co-benefits could raise its salience compared to efforts more solely focused on climate mitigation.
• Reducing FLW is also politically neutral or supported, as demonstrated by its inclusion in the UN’s sustainable development goal (SDG) 12.3 (halve FLW from 2016 to 2030).
• We think increasing fertilizer use efficiency has a high feasibility due to previous examples of countries reducing their fertilizer use and associated emissions.
• We think that although regenerative agriculture has a large technical mitigation potential, the amount it can realistically mitigate is lower-scale than other interventions, especially those that reduce demand for carbon-intensive livestock products.
• The primary concern with regenerative agriculture is its potential for being more land-intensive than conventional farming, which can increase LUC emissions.
• We are also unsure about the permanence of some regenerative agriculture activities, such as whether increases in soil carbon will remain after a carbon-sequestering management practice has ceased.
• A shift in protein sources towards more alt proteins would lead to reduced animal suffering from practices such as lack of space, artificial insemination, increased risk of disease and lameness, and slaughter.
• Animal agriculture uses 73% of global antibiotics, and the United Nations Environment Programme states that “the widespread and excessive use of antibiotics in animal agriculture has been linked to the rise of antimicrobial resistance in both animals and humans”.
• We think governments are increasingly seeing alt proteins as a key strategy to strengthen national food security, biosecurity, and biotech manufacturing, in addition to being a climate mitigation strategy.
• In many cases, excessive fertilizer use can be reduced without impacting crop yields.

Limitations Noted in the Document

• The study acknowledges that some enteric methane interventions could cause significant harm to livestock animals.
• Efforts to shift individual behavior may have small effects that do not last or face challenges in scaling.
• We believe politically feasible regulations are unlikely to reach the full mitigation potential that an agricultural ETS could, in theory, capture.
• Some enteric methane interventions could significantly harm the welfare of livestock animals and raise biodiversity concerns.
• The variability and context- and site-specific nature of regenerative agriculture practices can make them difficult to scale easily.
• We think the funding need for FLW as low compared to other interventions we have investigated.
• We are unsure if RD&D will reduce costs and increase the efficacy of enteric methane technology enough to lead to large-scale mitigation.
• Many enteric methane interventions are still in the early stages of development and must be proven effective and safe for humans before implementation.
• Furthermore, they would also need supportive regulation and social acceptance before farmers are likely to switch to using them.

Conclusion

The report underscores the urgency of addressing food system emissions to meet climate goals. It emphasizes the need for a multi-pronged approach, prioritizing strategies that reduce livestock farming and promote alternative protein consumption. The study strongly recommends directing more philanthropic funding towards mitigating food system emissions, particularly those related to livestock. The findings highlight the potential of government and corporate advocacy, the importance of policy and demand commitments for alternative proteins, and the need for reducing enteric methane emissions. The study highlights the potential of government and corporate advocacy, the importance of policy and demand commitments for alternative proteins, and the need for reducing enteric methane emissions. The high feasibility of increasing fertilizer use efficiency and the potential of reducing food loss and waste were also noted. The study acknowledges the potential benefits of transitioning away from livestock farming, including reduced land and water use, improved biosecurity, and reduced animal suffering. However, it also recognizes the adverse effects, such as the potential negative impact on livestock farmers’ livelihoods and the uncertainties surrounding consumer acceptance of alternative proteins and the scalability of cultivated meat. The findings recommend a focus on strategies to reduce direct emissions, encourage the development of alternative protein markets, and implement regulations to incentivize low-carbon farming practices. The report stresses the need to address key uncertainties, such as the market viability of alternative proteins, and the political and social hurdles to implementing changes. The overall assessment suggests that the proposed sub-strategies could plausibly be within the range of cost-effectiveness for a top recommendation, despite the need for more research and more funding to accelerate the necessary changes. The report’s recommendations underscore the importance of coordinated action and increased investment in innovative solutions to reduce the environmental impact of food systems and promote a more sustainable future.