3-2-1: The impact of lunch, eating for nature, and the easiest change you can make

January 26, 2025

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“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

― Jane Goodall

3-2-1: The impact of lunch, eating for nature, and the easiest change you can make

Three Ideas From Me

We all know that greenhouse gases are a critical threat to the planet (if you don’t, you’re probably a President of America) and that they come from many different sectors. Browsing the numbers over lunch, it’s clear that everyone, in every sphere of work, needs to get on with making changes with alacrity.

But little old me, in my little old adventuring world, can’t do very much about –say– energy-related emissions from manufacturing iron and steel.

That helplessness or pernicious ‘whataboutery‘, too often, is an excuse to therefore do nothing at all.

Yet billions of people around the world have a choice about what we eat every day, and food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions! And not all foods are equal: some foods are waaaaaay worse for emissions than others.

II.

Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitat loss is the biggest threat to biodiversity, and most of this loss is driven by agriculture. I used to just shrug at this and think, ‘that’s sad, but we’ve all got to eat.’ [Here are some wonderful photos showing the challenges of feeding the planet.]

But then I started to learn that not all food is equal here either, and that different foods require wildly different amounts of land to produce a gram of protein or a number of calories.

By changing what we all eat, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. That’s a lot of space for nature, and for riding bikes and hiking!

III.

Those of us who love the outdoors are all troubled by the pollution of our rivers and seas. Untreated sewage released by water companies is hitting the headlines, aided by brilliant campaigners like Feargal Sharkey. But even if that miraculously stopped overnight, the biggest water polluter remains: agriculture.

And, you’ve guessed it, not all foods are equal in terms of how much pollution they cause.

Two Quotes to Ponder

I find it very hard to restrict myself to just two books here, as I’ve read so many fascinating books about the food system. But seeing as pretty much everything I’ve written today has pointed to the environmental disaster of beef and dairy, I’ll quote from a book which points out that cows are important for biodiversity, when used in regenerative farming where food is a by-product of conservation. James Rebanks is a great voice for farmers, and I love his books.
“The current economics of farming are such that almost no genuinely sustainable farming is profitable at present. Farming for nature is economic suicide. Produce meat at a greater cost than intensively produced chicken or pork and you are considered an anachronism on the supermarket shelf.”

English Pastoral: An Inheritance

II.

“Can we transform agriculture from a system that literally consumes the planet to one that nurtures and respects this home that is all we will ever know? Can we cultivate from the earth meals that’s nourish us rather than the earth being the meal itself?”