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Graphic detail Oct 2nd 2021 edition

The beef with beef

Treating beef like coal

would make a big dent in
greenhouse-gas emissions
Cattle are a surprisingly large producer of
greenhouse gases

OCT 2ND 2021

Tofu Pork Beef

Beef emits 31 times more CO₂ per calorie than tofu does

Hydropower Oil Coal

Coal emits 24 times more CO₂ per unit of energy output than hydropower does

F ew dishes whet more palates than a juicy cut

of beef. One poll in 2014 found that steak was
Americans’ favourite food. Unfortunately, by
cooking so many cows, humans are cooking
themselves, too.

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The impact of food on greenhouse-gas (ghg)

emissions can slip under the radar. In a survey in
Britain last year, the share of respondents saying
that “producing plants and meat on farms” was a
“signi!cant contributor” to climate change was the
lowest among ten listed activities. Yet two papers
published this year in Nature Food !nd that food,
especially beef, creates more ghgs than previously
thought. Forgoing steaks may be one of the most
e"cient ways to reduce your carbon footprint.

In 2019 the un’s Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change estimated that the global food
system was responsible for 21-37% of ghg
emissions. This March researchers from the
European Commission and the un’s Food and
Agriculture O"ce released a study with a central
estimate near the top of this range. It attributed 34%
of ghgs produced in 2015 to food.

Annual emissions, CO₂-equivalent gigatonnes

Ten biggest sources in each category, 2010

Animal-based Plant-based

Compared with total Beef

emissions from 4.3
Rice
2.1
Japan
1.2
Chicken
0.9

Cow’s milk
Pork 1.6
Air travel Lamb &
1.2
0.85 Mutton
0.5
Bu!alo
milk 0.2
Sugarcane Bu!alo Wheat
Goat 0.4 meat 0.9
meat 0.2 0.4
Soyabeans Maize Eggs
Cassava 0.3
Horse
meat Potatoes
Other
Rapeseed &
beans
mustard seed
Sunflowers

Share of global emissions Emissions from beef production

2015, % Agriculture 34 By type, %
Farming 66
Beef 8.5 Cattle are big producers of methane,
a highly potent greenhouse gas

Animal-based
All other foods 19.4 Land-use changes 27
emissions Clearing land for grazing or
 All other
emissions Clearing land for grazing or
growing feed raises CO2 emissions
Plant-based
foods 9.9
Other 7
Includes animal feed, processing,
Other
transport, retail and packaging

This elevated share stems in part from accounting

choices. The paper assigns the full impact of
deforestation to the agriculture that results from it;
includes emissions after food is sold (such as from
waste and cooking); and counts non-food crops like
cotton. But even when the authors excluded
embedded emissions from sources like transport
and packaging, they still found that agriculture
generated 24% of ghgs. According to the World
Resources Institute, a research group, cars, trains,
ships and planes produce a total of 16%.

Another recent paper, by Xiaoming Xu of the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and
eight co-authors, allocates this impact among 171
crops and 16 animal products. It !nds that animal-
based foods account for 57% of agricultural ghgs,
versus 29% for food from plants. Beef and cow’s
milk alone made up 34%. Combined with the
earlier study’s results, this implies that cattle
produce 12% of ghg emissions.

CO₂-equivalent emissions per unit of energy production

Electricity emissions per gigawatt-hour, tonnes

Nuclear, wind, solar

Hydropower Biomass Natural gas Oil Coal

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800

Food emissions per 1,000 kcal, kg

Plant-based burgers* Dark chocolate Lamb & mutton
Tofu Eggs Pork Fish† Tomatoes Prawns† Beef

0 Rice 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

*Average of Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger †Farmed

Relative to other food sources, beef is uniquely

carbon-intensive. Because cattle emit methane and
need large pastures that are often created via
deforestation, they produce seven times as many
ghgs per calorie of meat as pigs do, and around
40% more than farmed prawns do. This makes beef
a bigger outlier among foods than coal is among
sources of electricity: burning coal generates just
14% more ghgs than burning oil, another common
fuel.

These !gures may understate the environmental

bene!ts of shrinking the cattle population.
Methane dissipates relatively fast, meaning that
past bovine emissions soon stop warming the
planet if those animals are not replaced. Such a
change could also raise output of plant-based
foods, by making land now used to grow animal
feed available for other crops. It takes 33 plant
calories to produce one calorie of beef.

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The simplest way to cut beef output is for people to

eat other animals instead, or become vegetarians.
But convincing carnivores to give up their burgers
is a tall order. Fortunately, lab-grown meats are
moving from Petri dishes to high-end restaurants
(see Technology Quarterly). Doing without beef
from live cattle is hard to imagine, but the same was
true of coal 100 years ago. Cultured meat could play
an essential role in staving o# a climate
catastrophe.7

Correction (Oct 1st 2021): A previous version of this

article stated that coal emits 34 times more CO2 per
unit of energy than hydropower. The correct !gure is
24 times. Sorry
Sources: “Food systems are responsible for a third of global
anthropogenic GHG emissions”, by Crippa et al., 2021; “Global
greenhouse gas emissions from animal-based foods are twice those of
plant-based foods”, by Xu et al., 2021; Quantis; Heller et al., 2018; J.
Poore, & T. Nemecek, 2018; The World Resources Institute; Pehl et al.,
2017; IPCC AR5; Our World in Data