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Concept
Environmental impacts of animal agriculture
Summary
The environmental impacts of animal agriculture vary because of the wide variety of agricultural practices employed around the world. Despite this, all agricultural practices have been found to have a variety of effects on the environment to some extent. Animal agriculture, in particular meat production, can cause pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, disease, and significant consumption of land, food, and water. Meat is obtained through a variety of methods, including organic farming, free-range farming, intensive livestock production, and subsistence agriculture. The livestock sector also includes wool, egg and dairy production, the livestock used for tillage, and fish farming.
Animal agriculture is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Cows, sheep, and other ruminants digest their food by enteric fermentation, and their burps are the main source of methane emissions from land use, land-use change, and forestry. Together with methane and nitrous oxide from manure, this makes livestock the main source of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. A significant reduction in meat consumption is essential to mitigate climate change, especially as the human population increases by a projected 2.3 billion by the middle of the century.
Multiple studies have found that increases in meat consumption are currently associated with human population growth and rising individual incomes or GDP, and therefore, the environmental impacts of meat production and consumption will increase unless current behaviours change.
Changes in demand for meat will influence how much is produced, thus changing the environmental impact of meat production. It has been estimated that global meat consumption may double from 2000 to 2050, mostly as a consequence of the increasing world population but also partly because of increased per capita meat consumption (with much of the per capita consumption increase occurring in the developing world). The human population is projected to grow to 9 billion by 2050, and meat production is expected to increase by 40%.
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