Yesterday we had proper rainfall for the first time since mid May, the drought has been horrendous for wildlife as a whole, so, something a little different with this post.
What changes are required to our eating habits and agricultural methods in a changing climate, with increasing droughts and water shortages?
It is difficult for me to discuss this question without bringing in some of the wider issues surrounding food production, human health, wildlife and the environment. So please forgive me if I occasionally drift into some of these areas; I will on future posts anyway.
At the risk of offending some people — and I suspect I probably will — it seems obvious to me that we in France, as in many other developed countries, generally consume too much of almost everything that modern society has made readily available to us. We really have become a consumer society.
We are encouraged to consume everywhere we go, and food is no exception. Advertising and marketing are constant companions, whether we are in supermarkets, bars, restaurants or fast-food outlets. Special offers, multi-buy promotions and “buy two, get one free” deals are all designed to encourage us to purchase and consume more.
So, if we are being honest with ourselves, most of us could probably reduce the amount of food we eat. We often eat simply because food is available, and very frequently consume considerably more at a sitting than our bodies actually require. I suspect, however, that changing this behaviour may be considerably more difficult than it sounds.
That brings us to the question of what we eat and what we might reduce or avoid. If we put health and the wider environmental issues to one side for a moment and look purely at resource use, one thing becomes difficult to ignore: producing animal-derived foods generally requires substantially more resources than producing food for direct human consumption.
This is particularly relevant to land and water use because large quantities of crops and other feed materials are required to support livestock production.
At this point, let me be clear: I am not making a case for veganism or vegetarianism as such. For the moment, I am simply looking at the resource requirements involved in producing food.
When we look at basic human energy requirements, there is clearly an energy loss when plant material is converted into meat, dairy products, poultry and other animal foods. However, there is an important qualification here. Around 86% of livestock feed, measured by dry matter, is not currently edible by humans. This includes grass, hard maize, crop residues and various agricultural by-products.
That means the comparison is not simply a matter of saying that animals consume food that humans could otherwise eat. Much of what livestock consume cannot be eaten directly by us. Nevertheless, producing these feed materials still requires land, water, fuel and other resources.
According to figures derived from INRAE, the broad relationship between plant energy entering the food system and the energy ultimately available to humans can be illustrated roughly as follows:
1,000 kcal of plant food eaten directly → potentially around 1,000 kcal available to humans.
1,000 kcal of chicken → roughly 4,400 kcal of plant/feed energy may have passed through the production system.
1,000 kcal of beef → roughly 25,000 kcal of plant/feed energy.
1,000 kcal of sheep meat → potentially 30,000+ kcal of plant/feed energy.
These figures should not, however, be treated as universal constants. Feed composition, breed, age at slaughter, grazing versus housed systems, climate, crop yields and, importantly, the precise definition of “energy” can all substantially alter the ratios. INRAE also points out that energy-conversion efficiency is lower than protein-conversion efficiency and varies considerably between production systems.
Nevertheless, the underlying principle remains important: when we eat plants directly, we avoid the metabolic losses that inevitably occur when plants first pass through an animal.
Consequently, a predominantly plant-based diet can provide human dietary energy using considerably less primary food energy than a diet in which a large proportion of calories comes from livestock.
That does not mean that every plant food is automatically more resource-efficient than every animal food. There are enormous differences between crops in terms of yield, fertiliser requirements, irrigation, processing and transport. Likewise, livestock systems vary enormously, from extensive grazing systems to highly intensive production.
So the picture is complicated, but the broad resource implications are difficult to dismiss. Moving towards a greater proportion of plant-based food could reduce the amount of land required to produce our food and, as a consequence, potentially reduce associated demands for water, fertiliser, diesel and other inputs.
Water is where this becomes particularly concerning
Hard maize, which is widely used for livestock either as silage or in the production of various animal feeds, is a particular concern to me.
Across the cereal-growing regions of France, enormous quantities of water are being extracted from rivers and aquifers for irrigation, much of it applied through large irrigation systems. In a climate in which droughts are becoming more frequent and water shortages increasingly threaten both agriculture and natural ecosystems, I find it difficult to see this as a sustainable long-term approach.
We need to ask ourselves a fairly fundamental question: what should our limited water resources be used for, and can we continue producing the same crops in the same quantities in the same places as the climate changes?
Water used to produce food is not simply an agricultural issue. The same rivers and aquifers support wildlife, wetlands, forests, households and other economic activities. Once water reserves are depleted or river flows become critically low, the consequences extend far beyond the fields being irrigated.
The drought we are experiencing this year should therefore be regarded as a warning rather than simply another difficult agricultural season. Climate change is forcing us to reconsider not only how much food we produce, but also what food we produce, where we produce it, how much water we use to produce it, and ultimately what we choose to eat.
If water is becoming one of our most constrained resources, then continuing to produce food as though water availability were unlimited is not a strategy that can continue indefinitely.
The difficult part is that none of this has a simple answer. Agriculture provides livelihoods, food security and landscapes that people have depended upon for generations. Livestock also make use of land and feed resources that cannot always be converted directly into food for humans.
But that should not prevent us from asking whether our present system makes the best possible use of increasingly scarce land and water.
Perhaps the real question is not whether we should all become vegetarian or vegan. It is whether, in a world of increasing drought and water scarcity, we can continue consuming food in the quantities and proportions we currently do — and whether our agricultural systems can continue supplying that demand without exhausting the resources on which they ultimately depend.
Chris
