The land footprint of food
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
by @EurCorrespond
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Replies:
16
@infobeautiful I should cut out my daily kilogram of coffee.
@infobeautiful There is ofc a relation between beef, milk, tofu and cheese.
@infobeautiful Most ecosystems need a large grazer species or they go away, and so does nigh-everything adapted to live there.
The human-centric "land area to feed humans" is, well, yet more mass extinction, rather than virtue.
Yes, open-loop farming practices are terrible things and should be replaced with more responsible practices. This is not the same thing as an argument that beef is unbearably agriculturally expensive or that agricultural monoculture is a desirable use of land.
@infobeautiful somebody please tell me how to grow 1kg of carrots on 30cm² 
@infobeautiful I am curious about the land usage per calory of some of theses, like between carrot and potatoes. On the other hand, I don't eat coffee or cheese for its calories :3
thanks for sharing, it's a nice way to show things
@infobeautiful Then I should have 4 times more sausages than cheese! 🤓
Does that footprint include water consumption? Since tomatoes need a lot of it, to have a good yield
One might grow a kilo of tomatoes on that land but the fertilizer needed is not included
@infobeautiful, there's one thing missing from that: time. Without that, it has to be asked whether that 87.8m² of land is permanently and irrevocably allocated to that 1kg of cheese, and why haven't we run out of land yet…
@infobeautiful Giving absoluite numbers is highly questionable. Cows may live in cages or on pastures. Pigs can even live in multi-story buildings, but I know them living in little styes. Is their food counted in? What if the food is human food scraps? A lot of questionmarks here.
@infobeautiful surprised not to see chicken on there
@infobeautiful I'm not against the message, but I don't think this particular infographic works really well.
A kg. of, say, carrots is in no way comparable to kg. of coffee or beef when looking at calories and nutrients.
So what's the message supposed to be?
@Kir @infobeautiful yeah. Maybe calories would be a better metric, if the goal is to compare (but that would make coffee meaningless). Hard to capture all in a single image.
@wortezimmer @Kir @infobeautiful thanks! That's less creative but a lot more informative. Thank you!
