Farming has already caused the loss of an estimated 300 billion tonnes of stored carbon and put around 14% of species at risk of extinction through agricultural land use. A new study from the University of Oxford, Leiden University, and China Agricultural University, and published in Nature Food, provides one of the most detailed analyses yet of where these losses occur, which foods drive them, and how the two types of damage overlap. The 300 billion tonnes of carbon loss is equivalent to around 140 years of agricultural emissions at current rates.
The study finds that carbon loss and biodiversity loss are strongly correlated: two-thirds of both total losses are concentrated on just one-third of agricultural land, mainly spanning parts of South America, sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia. Half of all carbon loss occurs on just 12% of farmland. Because the losses overlap so heavily, targeting these areas could deliver gains for climate and nature simultaneously.
Animal-sourced foods drive 59% of food-related carbon loss and 71% of biodiversity loss, while providing less than 15% of global calories (excluding calories from fish). The disparity is stark: calorie for calorie, animal-sourced food causes eight times more carbon loss and 14 times more biodiversity loss than plant-sourced food. Beef and dairy alone account for 29% of the total carbon loss and 41% of the total biodiversity loss from farmland, driven by the sheer amount of land their production requires.
Around 18% of farmland’s carbon and biodiversity impacts are linked to internationally traded food, with animal products making up the majority of these trade flows. Brazil is the largest net exporter of both carbon and biodiversity loss; China is the largest net importer. The largest trade flows of environmental damage include exports of beef and pigmeat from Brazil to China.
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