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Agricultural lands (lands used for agricultural production, consisting of cropland, managed grassland and permanent crops including agro-forestry and bio-energy crops) occupy about 40- 50% of the Earth’s land surface and account for about a quarter of global Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
The graphic shown here – based on data from the meta-analysis by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in Science – summarises food’s share of total emissions and breaks it down by source. Agriculture is responsible for about a quarter of global GHG emissions.There are four key elements to consider when trying to quantify food GHG emissions. These are shown by category in the graphic
In the visualisation we see GHG emissions from 29 different food products – from beef at the top to nuts at the bottom.For each product you can see from which stage in the supply chain its emissions originate. This extends from land use changes on the left, through to transport and packaging on the right.In this comparison we look at the total GHG emissions per kilogram of food product. CO2 is the most important GHG, but not the only one – agriculture is a large source of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide.or most foods – and particularly the largest emitters – most GHG emissions result from land use change (shown in green), and from processes at the farm stage (brown). Farm-stage emissions include processes such as the application of fertilizers – both organic (“manure management”) and synthetic; and enteric fermentation (the production of methane in the stomachs of cattle). Combined, land use and farm-stage emissions account for more than 80% of the footprint for most foods.Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%. Source: Our World in Data - You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food?
Supplementary data graphic.pdfFood supply chains
Food supply chains
The graphic opposite provide a more detailed description the supply chains involved in food production. They begin with the extraction of resources needed to produce inputs for agricultural production, the initial impact of choice by farmers, and end at the retail store, the point of choice for consumers .
The see an expanded version of the graphic, click on the icon to expand as a separate webpage
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