Wasteful habits on the dinner table are likely taking their toll on the environment.
A new study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research revealed that up to 14 percent of greenhouse gas emissions coming from agriculture could be avoided if food were more efficiently used and distributed.
“Changing individual behavior could be one key towards mitigating the climate crisis,” says study author Prajal Pradhan.
The researchers investigated body types and food requirements for past and various future scenarios, as well as considered food demand and availability and related emissions. They discovered that global average food demand per individual remained almost constant, yet food availability rapidly increased in the past five decades.
The ratio, too, indicated that richer nations consumed more food than what is healthy – or just wasted it. The associated greenhouse gas emissions at this rate were predicted to climb from 0.5 today to 1.9 to 2.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide each year by 2050.
Agriculture is deemed a major climate change driver, accounting for over 20 percent of overall greenhouse gas emissions worldwide in 2010 alone. Preventing food waste and loss is therefore seen as a way to mitigate the current global warming situation.
It has been estimated that one-third of food produced around the world goes to waste – a great deal of resources going straight to the garbage bin, not to mention generating $1 trillion worth of waste annually.
The staggering amount of waste could feed some 2 billion people, including 800 million who remain undernourished. On average, food availability is seen to be theoretically higher than required, yet many in developing economies struggle to fight hunger or undernourishment.
The waste – mainly the 1.3 billion tons of food discarded every year – is projected to drastically rise with the increase in food waste of emerging countries such as China and India. These countries could potentially adopt Western nutrition lifestyles and lean more toward animal-based dietary sources that are more energy-intensive to produce.
The authors further warned that by 2050, one-tenth of agricultural emissions could be attributed to producing wasted food.
“Avoiding food loss could pose a leverage to various challenges at once, reducing environmental impacts of agriculture, saving resources used in food production, and enhanc[ing] local, regional, and global food security,” says co-author Jurgen Kropp.
The study was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
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