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Global greenhouse gas emissions from animal-based foods are twice those of plant-based foods

Year of publication 2021

Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

Pages 9p.

Author Xu, X.; Sharma, P.; Shu, S. et al.

Publisher Springer Nature ;

Product type Article

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) Agriculture and land use are major sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but previous estimates were either highly aggregate or provided spatial details for subsectors obtained via different methodologies. Using a model-data integration approach that ensures full consistency between subsectors, we provide spatially explicit estimates of production- and consumption-based GHG emissions worldwide from the plant and animal-based human food in circa 2010. Global GHG emissions from the production of food were found to be 17,318 ± 1,675 TgCO2eq yr−1, of which 57% corresponds to the production of animal-based food (including livestock feed), 29% to plant-based foods, and 14% to other utilizations. Farmland management and land-use change represented major shares of total emissions (38% and 29%, respectively), whereas rice and beef were the largest contributing plant- and animal-based commodities (12% and 25%, respectively), and South and Southeast Asia and South America were the largest emitters of production-based GHGs.

This is a preprint version of an article published externally in Nature Foods Volume 2, pages724–732 (2021). Published: 13 September 2021.

Cite this content as:

Xu, X., Sharma, P., Shu, S. et al. Global greenhouse gas emissions from animal-based foods are twice those of plant-based foods. Nat Food 2, 724–732 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00358-x

Language English

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