The next planetary boundary to consider is Land Use.
Looking at this I was astonished at the difference that a plant-based diet can make.
Scientists at the Stockholm Resilience Centre explain the issue [1] – Land Use Change occurs where forests, grasslands, wetlands and other vegetation types are converted to human use, and in most cases to agricultural land. [2]
It is a driving force behind the serious reductions in biodiversity and many other environmental problems.
How much can change?
It has been suggested that the land use change boundary should be measured as the “percent of original forest cover remaining from pre-industrial levels,” and should not be less than 54-75%. In 2015, at 62%, we had already passed this boundary into a high risk zone. [3]
Adopting a plant-based diet is a very effective way to deal with this problem. The reason for this is because agriculture is the main driver of land use change.
By weight, soya has more of almost every human essential nutrient than beef or lamb. When soya is fed to a cow or sheep you get about one tenth of the weight back in meat. And in the process, trees are being cut down in places such as the Amazon to make way for the soya farms and cattle. [4]
But livestock also need more than the space to grow their food. In the worst case, to produce 100g of protein, lamb and beef herd cattle need 75 to 80 times more land than is required to grow tofu (soybean). Even the humble pea is 50 times more effective than beef herd in terms of land use.
Just to make sure those remarkable numbers aren’t missed, here’s the details [5]
Land use (square metres) per 100 grams of protein:
Lamb and Mutton 184.8
Beef (beef herd) 163.6
Beef (dairy herd) 21.9
Peas 3.4
Tofu (soybean) 2.2
In Meat of the Matter George Monbiot notes that “Replacing the meat in our diets with soya spectacularly reduces the land area required per kilo of protein: by 70% in the case of chicken, 89% in the case of pork, and 97% in the case of beef. One study suggests that if we were all to switch to a plant-based diet, 15 million hectares of land in Britain currently used for farming could be returned to nature” [6]
Realising this to be the case I adopted a plant-based diet three years ago.
The logic is even more compelling now – during those three years yet more forest land has been cleared.
Furthermore, plant-based food was tasty then, and it’s getting better all the time. As increasing numbers of people make the transition away from meat and dairy to a plant-based diet, problems relating to land change usage can be solved.
One note to add before it is claimed that vegans eat soya products and are responsible for deforestation. The amount of soya grown to be consumed directly by humans is far less than that grown for livestock, and is far more efficiently used as shown above. If there was a wider uptake of a vegan diet then less soya would be consumed, not more.
[1] https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html
[2] https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32
[3] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/1259855
[4] There is no Planet B, Mike Berners Lee
https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Mike-Lancaster-University-Berners-Lee/There-Is-No-Planet-B–A-Handbook-for-the-Make-or-Break-Ye/25322017
[5] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
[6] https://www.monbiot.com/2017/10/06/the-meat-of-the-matter
