Improving diet quality while simultaneously reducing environmental impact is a critical focus globally. Metrics linking diet quality and sustainability have typically focused on a limited suite of ...indicators, and have not included food waste. To address this important research gap, we examine the relationship between food waste, diet quality, nutrient waste, and multiple measures of sustainability: use of cropland, irrigation water, pesticides, and fertilizers. Data on food intake, food waste, and application rates of agricultural amendments were collected from diverse US government sources. Diet quality was assessed using the Healthy Eating Index-2015. A biophysical simulation model was used to estimate the amount of cropland associated with wasted food. This analysis finds that US consumers wasted 422g of food per person daily, with 30 million acres of cropland used to produce this food every year. This accounts for 30% of daily calories available for consumption, one-quarter of daily food (by weight) available for consumption, and 7% of annual cropland acreage. Higher quality diets were associated with greater amounts of food waste and greater amounts of wasted irrigation water and pesticides, but less cropland waste. This is largely due to fruits and vegetables, which are health-promoting and require small amounts of cropland, but require substantial amounts of agricultural inputs. These results suggest that simultaneous efforts to improve diet quality and reduce food waste are necessary. Increasing consumers' knowledge about how to prepare and store fruits and vegetables will be one of the practical solutions to reducing food waste.
Innovative strategies are needed to improve the sustainability of beef production and consumption systems. Increasing reliance on regional or local food systems may improve resilience, and consumer ...demand for such foods is high. In the Northeastern U.S., the dairy sector may provide beef at a low environmental cost relative to other systems due to multi-functionality (i.e., milk and meat outputs). Additionally, landscape and market factors indicate suitability and demand for regional grass-fed beef. We used ISO-compliant life cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify the environmental burdens of grass-fed beef with management-intensive grazing (GF) and confinement dairy beef (DB) production systems in the Northeastern U.S. The impact scope included global warming potential, eutrophication and acidification potential, fossil fuel and water depletion, and agricultural land use. The foundation of the production system models was a herd-level, life cycle livestock feed requirements model, which we adapted and applied for the first time within LCA. Per kg carcass weight beef produced, DB had lower global warming potential, eutrophication potential, acidification potential, and agricultural land use than GF with higher fossil fuel depletion and water depletion. Calculating eutrophication and acidification per hectare agricultural land resulted in lower impacts for GF compared to DB. Maintaining the breeding herd accounted for over half of GF (60%) and DB (52%) impacts on average across categories. Sensitivity analyses indicated potential pasture carbon sequestration and lower enteric methane emissions under management-intensive grazing may substantially reduce the carbon footprint of GF (though not lower than DB), which should be explored with further research. Future research should also examine holistic strategies to reduce regional GF and DB system footprints, such as substituting food waste for traditional feeds and accounting for ecosystem services provided by pasture-based farming systems within LCA.
•Dairy beef has lower emissions and land use but uses more fossil fuel and water than grass-fed beef.•Per unit land, however, grass-fed has lower eutrophying and acidifying emissions than dairy beef.•Adding potential pasture carbon sequestration reduces GWP of grass-fed by 32%.•Holistic strategies to reduce impacts and enhance the food supply are suggested.
One widely recognized strategy to meet future food needs is reducing the amount of arable land used to produce livestock feed. Of all livestock products, beef is the largest land user per unit ...output. Whether beef production results in feed-food competition or a net positive contribution to the food supply, however, may depend largely on whether marginal land is used to grow forage. The land use ratio (LUR) was developed by van Zanten et al. (2016a) to identify livestock systems that produce more animal source food than would be produced by converting their associated feed land to food crop production – a perspective that is not addressed within life cycle assessment (LCA). van Zanten et al. (2016a) used country-specific and farm-level land suitability data, the latter of which is not available in many countries. To assess the LUR of beef systems in the USA, which may use large grassland areas of potentially varying quality across scales, an intermediate approach between farm and country-scale estimation is needed. In this paper, we enhanced the LUR by integrating geospatial data for crop suitability and yield estimation at multiple scales. By doing so, the LUR will also become more widely applicable for other studies. We applied our enhanced LUR for a grass-fed beef (GF) system and a dairy beef (DB) system in the Northeastern USA, including multiple scenarios limiting land conversion. All systems had LURs greater than one, indicating they produce less protein than conversion of their suitable feed land base to food cropping would. Because a large fraction of the forage land used in the GF system was suitable for crop production and moderately productive, its LUR was 3–6 times larger (less efficient land use from a food supply perspective) than the DB system. Future research should explore mechanisms to reduce the LUR and life cycle environmental burdens of both regional production systems.
•The land use ratio (LUR) quantifies land use efficiency in terms of the food supply.•Adding geospatial analyses widens the applicability of the LUR.•Regional grass-fed and dairy beef have LURs>1.•Holistic approaches to reduce LURs and environmental burdens are suggested.
The production of livestock feed in the USA is geographically concentrated, which poses several risks. Extreme weather events and disease outbreaks have the potential to disrupt production in these ...areas, which could reduce the national output of meat, dairy and eggs. Additionally, geographically concentrated livestock and feed production systems have been observed to contribute excessive nutrient loads to surrounding soil and water bodies, thereby threatening environmental sustainability. Geographic relocation of production systems has been proposed as an adaptation strategy to increase system resilience and this could take the shape of more geographically dispersed livestock feed production. We estimate the degree to which the demand for meat, dairy and eggs in the Northeast region is met with current levels of regional feed and livestock production, a term that we refer to as regional self-reliance. We combine mean annual (2001–2010) data on Northeast regional land use; crop output; meat, dairy and egg output; and food consumption with a livestock feed requirements model. An annual mean of over 6.1 million ha of land in the Northeast was dedicated to livestock feed from 2001 to 2010, with nearly 80% located in just three states (Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia). The region is a net importer of livestock feed (in terms of total digestible nutrients and crude protein), as well as meat, dairy and eggs (in terms of total human-edible energy and protein). This is the result of a confluence of long-term regional trends that include the movement of agricultural production out of the region with a concomitant increase in the regional population and an increase in the national demand for meat, dairy and eggs. Limited slaughter output in the region is a key limiting factor to increasing the region's self-reliance for livestock products.
Background: The large-scale ecological burdens of beef production are coupled with increasing global demand for beef. As the top producer and a leading global consumer of beef, the U.S. should lead ...the development of innovative strategies to reduce the pollution and resource use of this system. While much attention has been devoted to increasing production efficiency or reducing consumption, analyses of transformative approaches that view structural change as requisite for sustainability have been limited. Increasing reliance on local or regional foods is such an approach, and consumer demand for these foods is high. Accordingly, the objective of this research is to explore whether regional beef production systems provide opportunities to enhance sustainability and the food supply in the Northeastern United States. Methods: This project used a mixed-methods approach that included life cycle assessment and geospatial analysis with primary and secondary data. Objective 1 was an attributional, environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of regional grass-fed and dairy beef production systems. Life cycle inventories were initially developed with secondary data and expert opinion, and then further calibrated with producer interviews (n=12). Objective 2 used geospatial analysis to enhance a method that estimates the land use efficiency of livestock systems from a human food supply perspective, the land use ratio (LUR). Land use data was collected during farm interviews (Objective 1) and combined with spatial data on land cover and potential crop productivity for grass-fed and dairy beef case studies. Objective 3 used consequential life cycle assessment to assess whether substituting food waste for corn in regional dairy beef cattle rations could reduce environmental burdens and the LUR. The induced effects of shifting the application of food waste from anaerobic digestion to feed were included in the system boundary. Results: Per kg beef produced, Northeast dairy beef had lower global warming potential, eutrophication potential, acidification potential, and agricultural land use than grass-fed with higher fossil depletion and similar water depletion. However, per ha agricultural land, eutrophication and acidification of grass-fed were lower than dairy beef. Both grass-fed and dairy beef had LUR greater than one, indicating that converting suitable feed land to food crops could produce more human digestible protein. The LUR of grass-fed beef was 3-6 times larger (less efficient) than dairy beef. Finally, substituting food waste for corn in dairy beef cattle rations, instead of using it as a feedstock for anaerobic digestion, reduced global warming potential, acidification potential, and feed-food competition as measured by the LUR. Implications: Innovations in dairy, beef, and waste management systems can be strategies to move toward sustainability in the region. A pilot program to develop regional waste-fed dairy beef should be prioritized. Furthermore, states and municipalities should develop policies and support structures that encourage waste-to-feed. Finally, although accounting for ecosystem services provided by pasture-based farming systems was not possible in this project, they should not be ignored. Standardized methods are needed to account for ecosystem services in LCA for more holistic assessments of environmental and social sustainability in the future.
Affordability is often seen as a barrier to consuming sustainable diets. This study provides the first worldwide test of how retail food prices relate to empirically estimated environmental impacts ...and nutritional profile scores between and within food groups. We use prices for 811 retail food items commonly sold in 181 countries during 2011 and 2017, matched to estimated carbon and water footprints and nutritional profiles, to test whether healthier and more environmentally sustainable foods are more expensive between and within food groups. We find that within almost all groups, less expensive items have significantly lower carbon and water footprints. Associations are strongest for animal source foods, where each 10% lower price is associated with 20 grams lower CO2-equivalent carbon and 5 liters lower water footprint per 100kcal. Gradients between price and nutritional profile vary by food group, price range, and nutritional attribute. In contrast, lower-priced items have lower nutritional value in only some groups over some price ranges, and that relationship is sometimes reversed. These findings reveal opportunities to reduce financial and environmental costs of diets, contributing to transitions towards healthier, more environmentally sustainable food systems.
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