Globalised capitalism’s eating habits are responsible for one third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions

According to a new report from the World Bank, changing how we farm could cut global emissions by almost one third. Greenhouse gas emissions could be drastically reduced by simply altering how food is produced around the world. The agrifood industry – which combines agriculture and food – takes into account the whole production process.

It involves the whole journey, from food to plate including manufacture and retail. It is responsible for nearly a third of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. This is one sixth more than the whole world’s heat and electric emissions. 

Middle income countries are responsible for two thirds of emissions, taking seven of the top ten spots for emitters worldwide. The biggest culprits being China, Brazil, and India respectively.

Protecting our planet from agrifood risks

In line with the Paris Agreement on the climate crisis, emissions from agrifood must be cut to net zero by 2050. This is vital to keep global average temperatures from rising above 1.5º from pre-industrial levels. Agrifood emissions alone could make the world miss this target. 

In the foreword to the report, Axel van Trotsenburg, Senior Managing Director for Development Policy and Partnerships at the World Bank said: 

To protect our planet, we need to transform the way we produce and consume food.

Undeniably, the agrifood sector has a huge opportunity. It could single handedly cut nearly a third of global emissions through “affordable and readily available actions.” The new report is urging countries to invest more money in the solutions. 

The report said that middle-income countries should be making changes, including using land in more sustainable ways, and moving to livestock practices that are low-emissions. 

Trotsenburg commented:

Simply changing how middle-income countries use land, such as forests and ecosystems, for food production can cut agrifood emissions by a third by 2030.

Additionally, to pay for the shift to methods that use less emissions, countries should also think about cutting wasteful agriculture subsidies.

Countries like the United States should be doing more to provide technical assistance. Undoubtedly, their high income coupled with being the fourth-largest greenhouse gas emitter means they should be “shifting subsidies away from high-emitting food sources.”

Meanwhile, the report added that:

Low-income countries should focus on green and competitive growth and avoid building the high-emissions infrastructure that high-income countries must now replace.

Low-cost climate action

The agrifood industry has the potential to create substantial and low cost climate change action. Unlike other sectors, it has the ability to draw carbon out from the atmosphere through ecosystems and soils. 

The payoffs for investing in reducing agrifood emissions could be huge. Annual investments will need to increase by up to 18 times, to $260bn per year. This would halve current agrifood emissions by 2030 and put the world on track for net zero emissions by 2050. However, estimates show that the benefits in health, economic, and environmental terms could be as much as $4.3tn in 2030. 

Although additional resources would be needed, some of the costs can be covered by shifting money away from wasteful subsidies. Importantly, these costs are less than half the amount the world spends each year on agricultural subsidies. Many of which are both wasteful and harmful for the environment.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

Feature image via Lars Plougmann/Wikimedia, cropped and resized to 1200 by 900, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0