Xiaoming Xu
- Event Type
- Seminar/Symposium
- Sponsor
- Department of Atmospheric Sciences
- Location
- 2079 NHB
- Date
- Sep 28, 2021 3:30 pm
- Speaker
- Xiaomin Xu, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Views
- 29
Global greenhouse gas emissions from animal-based foods are twice those of plant-based foods
Agriculture and land use are major sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but previous estimates were either highly aggregate or provided spatial details for subsectors obtained via different methodologies. Using a model–data integration approach that ensures full consistency between subsectors, we provide spatially explicit estimates of production- and consumption-based GHG emissions worldwide from plant- and animal-based human food in circa 2010. Global GHG emissions from the production of food were found to be 17,318 ± 1,675 TgCO2eq yr−1, of which 57% corresponds to the production of animal-based food (including livestock feed), 29% to plant-based foods and 14% to other utilizations. Farmland management and land-use change represented major shares of total emissions (38% and 29%, respectively), whereas rice and beef were the largest contributing plant- and animal-based commodities (12% and 25%, respectively), and South and Southeast Asia and South America were the largest emitters of production-based GHGs.