Climate activism has intensified in the past few years as the planet warms to dangerous levels, igniting more extreme heat, floods, storms and wildfires around the world.
The entire system of food production, such as the use of farming machinery, spraying of fertilizer and transportation of products, causes 17.3bn metric tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, according to the research. This enormous release of gases that fuel the climate crisis is more than double the entire emissions of the US and represents 35% of all global emissions, researchers said.
In case you’re curious about plants, they’re actually only 29%:
The use of cows, pigs and other animals for food, as well as livestock feed, is responsible for 57% of all food production emissions, the research found, with 29% coming from the cultivation of plant-based foods. The rest comes from other uses of land, such as for cotton or rubber. Beef alone accounts for a quarter of emissions produced by raising and growing food.
They said emissions.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study
As for the rest of what they said:
In case you’re curious about plants, they’re actually only 29%:
What this fails to account for is that a whole lot of land that produces beef can’t produce edible vegetables. It’s not so easy as flipping a switch.