> Or are we still going to go after individuals eating traditional food
I mean, yes, we should continue doing that. Our relationship with food is unhealthy and also a massive contributor to environmental decline. I'm not sure why you contrast this with other improvements we can make, many of which, individually, would be less impactful than a transition to a more sustainable diet.
Meat is unhealthy? You may want to take a deeper look at where that notion stems from. I recommend the book The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz for a history primer. Or just look at the lifespan in Hong Kong which is one of the top meat consumers in the world per capita.
I think it's suspect that the USA, the number one polluter and the unhealthiest country in the world now wants to dictate what other people should eat while consuming 10x the gasoline per capita as others. For environmental and health reasons of course.
Between us, there is indeed room for improvements, but when we are discussing this topic with our fellow Americans, we must put things into perspective. Compared to them we are perfectly fine, as their meat production and consumption is an absolute shitshow!
Farming is a small contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and the recent attacks on red meat for example are nonsensical if you look at the math that is used to justify it.
>Farming is a small contributor to greenhouse gas emissions
This is soo wrong:
>The AFOLU sector is responsible for just under a quarter (~10 – 12 GtCO2eq / yr) of anthropogenic GHG emissions mainly from deforestation and agricultural emissions from livestock, soil and nutrient management (robust evidence; high agreement)[11.2]. Anthropogenic forest degradation and biomass burning (forest fires and agricultural burning) also represent relevant contributions.
>
>Annual GHG emissions from agricultural production in 2000 – 2010 were estimated at 5.0 – 5.8 GtCO2eq / yr while annual GHG flux from land use and land-use change activities accounted for approximately 4.3 – 5.5 GtCO2eq / yr.
>
>Leveraging the mitigation potential in the sector is extremely important in meeting emission reduction targets (robust evidence; high agreement) [11.9].
>According to the August 8 Carbon Brief in-depth article on the SRCCL, Chapter 2 provides data on livestock methane emissions, about 66% is agricultural methane" and "about 33% of global methane emissions" come from livestock.[22][23]:38
Attacking our own food supply over a supposed 25% of emissions should be lower priority than for example taxing actual emissions so that the food suppliers can adapt, and people can stop going on vacations to Bali twice a year. Doing it this way will push farmers towards e.g. regenerative agriculture which can actually be carbon negative. Waging war on certain foods will accomplish relatively little and also alienate huge parts of the people we need to cooperate with us.
>and people can stop going on vacations to Bali twice a year.
Who goes to Bali twice a year? Those aren't representative at all, and why count on people who destroy so much to save our planet? We can ignore them and simply ban such spending. There are so many things I cannot buy (e.g explosive) because we know it's too dangerous for society. Why not prevent the very few from neutralizing all the efforts of millions? A Paris-Bali flight emits more than one year of heating and cooling for a whole family!
>taxing actual emissions so that the food suppliers can adapt
Wait. The only way this could have an impact is you make meat/fish so expensive that people stop buying it. Then, what's the point of adding taxes if you just want people to stop buying it? I bet you simply want to have the freedom to continue to do whatever you want only because you expect to have the means to pay this tax. So you'd only want others to change... and you argue that we cannot expect people to change (e.g become vegetarian versus to having the resources to eat meat/fish). But I understand why you don't believe you can get people to change since you start by excluding yourself from this possibility...
Also, can you explain why I've become vegetarian after I heard facts about the impact of agriculture? Facts that are now more and more spread (see OP's story). The money I save from meat and fish goes to farmers (I've since joined a cropsharing group, which is organic, of much better quality than what can be found in markets, and provide far more support to farmers than just paying more for the same quantity). I'm not pushing farmers to be carbon negative, I'm pulling them because I accepted to change and inviting others to do the same. There's really nothing preventing anyone to be vegetarian (or almost veggie) except ignorance and misconceptions.
> The AFOLU sector is responsible for just under a quarter
1/4 of world-wide emissions. In developed nations it isn't nearly that large of a fraction. The US agriculture industry is responsible for a little less than 1/10 of our emissions.
Does that chart separate out the transportation that's involved in agriculture, though? It has transportation at nearly 30%. If the answer to my question is "yes", then the question is how much of the transportation slice is part of the agricultural process (transportation of raw materials, to processing facilities, to packaging facilities, to grocery stores, etc).
And a further question, regardless of the answer to the above question, is: how much does this change depending on the type of agriculture? For example, I would imagine the supply chain for beef would have much more transportation involved than that for beans or soy (think of all the steps that go into making animal feed alone, and that is step 0).
I'm not sure what exactly is a 'healthy' relationship with food, or when the last time any significant fraction of the human population had attained this. Maybe before agriculture, but even that is dubious.
I'm not convinced it is possible at current population levels.
The point I got from the OP was that traditional culture was low-carbon from day 0, and that at least Britain's climate change minister was jetting about an AWFUL lot, and there are plenty of jet-setters pushing a vegan diet upon the world when home-kept chickens are obviously a net plus, both in terms of food waste (accounts for a significant carbon and other pollution footprint, as we pay to produce it) and in terms of proteins that don't require killing your chickens over (eggs).
Contrast that with having a cat or dog (look at amount of animals slaughtered for pet foods)
I agree that our systems need revamping in a large-scale way, particularly agriculture, as you imply.
The only way you comment makes sense to me is if you talk about male chickens and even then it is not necessary:
When keeping chickens at home like GP suggest you can keep the around and it would still be a net plus in the carbon calculations since you are just using food that would have been thrown away otherwise.
That sides, unless we are going to bring veganism into this there is no reason to do that.
Again, if you feed them from food scraps you can keep them alive as long as you fancy or until they die from old age and still be carbon negative compared to throwing the food to waste.
It is just a choice. If you are OK with keeping livestock but don't want to kill animals, keep them around.
If reducing CO2 emissions is more important, kill off male chickens as well as old ones and instead keep more of the productive ones and share some eggs (and some knowledge - if possible) with friends.
Unless you use artificial insemination to only produce hens, you’ll run into a problem. You will end up with many roosters who won’t produce eggs and you have to feed and care for them as well. Unless you have a gigantic yard or want wild roosters everywhere, you’ll end up killing a lot of them.
The hens you’ll have will produce eggs, but maybe only one a day and they’ll skip laying quite often. You can avoid that if you get modern hens who were selectively bred to lay excess eggs, but they will require more food than “table scraps” (they really need calcium supplements) and their bodies will be destroyed within two years. At that point you either kill them or let them suffer - neither us a good outcome for them.
There are plenty of scalable alternatives to raising chickens for their eggs. Plant-based options do require mono cropping, but it can feed the world and kill fewer animals.
> Unless you have a gigantic yard or want wild roosters everywhere, you’ll end up killing a lot of them.
Exactly what I tried to say above.
It is a choice: you can keep them and as long as you feed them mostly with grass and kitchen scraps you still reduce environmental impact by not consuming eggs from grain-fed chicken - even when you feed some roosters.
Choose a quiet breed though or be prepared to make some significant peace offerings towards your neighbors if you want to keep every rooster around until they die from old age ;-)
Personally I'd rather (rot13, blunt speak): pubc fbzr puvpxra arpxf. V terj hc ba n snez naq juvyr V qba'g gbyrengr navzny nohfr gurve yvirf nera'g fnperq gb zr. V jnag gurz gb yvir unccl yvirf jura va zl phfgbql naq n fjvsg, harkcrpgrq naq cnvayrff qrngu nsgrejneqf.
I mean, yes, we should continue doing that. Our relationship with food is unhealthy and also a massive contributor to environmental decline. I'm not sure why you contrast this with other improvements we can make, many of which, individually, would be less impactful than a transition to a more sustainable diet.