land use

The second of our features on the National Food strategy delves more deeply into the work, with some really interesting statistics which tell us some interesting things about the relationship between land use and calories.

The new food strategy for England, commissioned by the government, lays out in stark detail the damage the current food and farming system wreaks on the environment, as well as our health. It is the biggest destroyer of nature and a major source of climate warming, it says.

The report takes aim at overconsumption of meat. “Our current appetite for meat is unsustainable,” it says. “85% of farmland is used to feed livestock [and] we need some of that land back.”

That 85% of land provides only 32% of the calories we eat, it says: “By contrast, the 15% of farmland that is used to grow plant crops for human consumption provides 68% of our calories.” The report also tackles the myth that grass-fed livestock are greener, saying: “The more intensively you rear some animals, the more carbon-efficient they tend to be.”