(h/t Raining Sky) Organically farmed food has a bigger climate impact than conventionally farmed food, due to the greater areas of land required. This is the finding of a new international study involving Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, published in the journal Nature.
The researchers developed a new method for assessing the climate impact of land-use, and used this, along with other methods, to compare organic and conventional food production.
The results show that organic food can result in much greater emissions.
“Our study shows that organic peas, farmed in Sweden, have around a 50 percent bigger climate impact than conventionally farmed peas. For some foodstuffs, there is an even bigger difference — for example, with organic Swedish winter wheat the difference is closer to 70 percent,” says Stefan Wirsenius, an associate professor from Chalmers, and one of those responsible for the study.
The reason why organic food is so much worse for the climate is that the yields per hectare are much lower, primarily because fertilizers are not used. To produce the same amount of organic food, you, therefore, need a much bigger area of land.
The ground-breaking aspect of the new study is the conclusion that this difference in land usage results in organic food causing a much larger climate impact.
“The greater land-use in organic farming leads indirectly to higher carbon dioxide emissions, thanks to deforestation,” explains Stefan Wirsenius. “The world’s food production is governed by international trade, so how we farm in Sweden influences deforestation in the tropics. If we use more land for the same amount of food, we contribute indirectly to bigger deforestation elsewhere in the world.”
Even organic meat and dairy products are — from a climate point of view — worse than their conventionally produced equivalents, claims Stefan Wirsenius.
“Because organic meat and milk production uses organic feed-stock, it also requires more land than conventional production. This means that the findings on organic wheat and peas in principle also apply to meat and milk products. We have not done any specific calculations on meat and milk, however, and have no concrete examples of this in the article,” he explains.
A new metric: Carbon Opportunity Cost
The researchers used a new metric, which they call “Carbon Opportunity Cost,” to evaluate the effect of greater land-use contributing to higher carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation.
This metric takes into account the amount of carbon that is stored in forests, and thus released as carbon dioxide as an effect of deforestation. The study is among the first in the world to make use of this metric.
“The fact that more land use leads to greater climate impact has not often been taken into account in earlier comparisons between organic and conventional food,” says Stefan Wirsenius. “This is a big oversight, because, as our study shows, this effect can be many times bigger than the greenhouse gas effects, which are normally included. It is also serious because today in Sweden, we have politicians whose goal is to increase the production of organic food. If that goal is implemented, the climate influence of Swedish food production will probably increase a lot.”
So why have earlier studies not taken into account land-use and its relationship to carbon dioxide emissions?
“There are surely many reasons. An important explanation, I think, is simply an earlier lack of good, easily applicable methods for measuring the effect. Our new method of measurement allows us to make broad environmental comparisons, with relative ease,” says Stefan Wirsenius.
The results of the study are published in the article “Assessing the efficiency of changes in land use for mitigating climate change” in the journal Nature.
The article is written by Timothy Searchinger, Princeton University, Stefan Wirsenius, Chalmers University of Technology, Tim Beringer, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and Patrice Dumas, Cired.
Read rest at Science Daily
So how many Birds and Small Mice are just in Organic Food production just so some freaking Tree Hugger and strict Vegan can have their Veggie Burger from Morning Star Products
Greens like to invoke sustainability into such discussions. Could the world’s current population be fed by a 100% organic food supply? If not, then it’s not sustainable.
Organic food is a luxury for the affluent. It’s very expensive because it’s in low supply. It’s another big idea that ignores the realities of poverty.
You’re acting like the left/greens actually give a damn about humans (that aren’t them). The end result of their chosen policies would be a huge reduction in human populations but it would be “the others” who would die off.
Steve, I cannot believe that ALL Green/Socialist people hate the human race. There may be an uber-section that has the intention of depopulation, covetly. They do need voters’ hearts, after all.
Masterminds like Maurice Strong stayed out of politics, deliberately. He could do much more behind the curtains.
All this poppycock we all need to go totaly Vegan over this Global Warming/Climate Change poppycock how they seem to forget that Livestock have been on earth for Eons but its only now their causing Enviromental devistation if you realy beleive the mindless nonsense from Bill Nye and the Union of Concerned Scientists
If the world went vegan we could never feed the current population let alone a growing one.
Vegans tend to be warmists. these people never look at the big picture.
What would happen to all the livestock if we went vegan?
No more native habitat at all. every piece of fertile land would be needed to feed the masses and then still fall short
I have no desire to go vegetarian. However, feeding grain to livestock then eating the meat is not efficient .
Beef requires 4 pounds of grain to produce a pound of meat. 3 pounds for pork and 2 pounds for poultry.
Livestock feed depends mostly on corn, soybeans and wheat, in that order. If humans chose to live on grain, it would be rice, wheat and soybeans. Corn out produces those grains 3 – 1 per acre.
I believe that the Earth could support more vegans than carnivores. We’re a long way from finding out, as we can and do produce surpluses, year in, year out. 5 billion bushels of corn are diverted to ethanol every year in the USA. Brazil runs on ethanol made from sugar cane. That’s tens of millions of acres growing car fuel. Local potato farmers throw away hundreds of tons of ” undersized” spuds. The most prolific crop you can grow is cabbage, more than 20 tons per acre.