Average Carbon Footprint of Plant-Based Foods is 89% Lower than Animal-Based Foods

Results from a recent large-scale meta-analysis, assessing greenhouse gas emissions from food production across all continents, has shown the average carbon footprint of plant-based foods amounts to just 10.7% of that from animal-based foods. The authors highlight the importance of the findings, given that the global food system accounts for 34% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

The study, which presents the most comprehensive account of the greenhouse gas emissions of food production at both the continental and global scale to-date, used life cycle assessment and input-output values from 524 published papers, and established that, per kilogram, the average carbon footprint of plant-based foods amounts to 0.66kg of CO2 equivalents, compared to 6.15kg of CO2 equivalents for animal-based foods.

The results align with previous research showing that nutritious plant-based foods have a significantly lower environmental impact than animal-based products, and that a shift towards plant-rich diets in high income nations alone would drastically reduce agricultural production emissions.

References:

Feng, S., Lakshmanan, P., Zhang, Y. et al (2023). A comprehensive continental-scale analysis of carbon footprint of food production: Comparing continents around the world, Journal of Cleaner Production, 138939, ISSN 0959-6526

Sun, Z., Scherer, L., Tukker, A. et al (2022). Dietary change in high-income nations alone can lead to substantial double climate dividend. Nat Food 3, 29–37.