The world’s population has eaten about 140 billion metric tons more food than we need.
New data from Brazil’s space research agency shows the devastation. The National Institute for Space Research said its satellite data showed an 84% increase in fire loss from the same period in 2018, well greater than what might typically be expected from losses in the fire-prone dry season that includes this month, it asserts.
Last Friday, Finland’s finance minister Mika Lintila called on European Union leaders to “urgently review the possibility of banning Brazilian beef imports” over the fires. Finland currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. In 2018, Brazil was the world’s largest exporter of beef, providing nearly 20% of total global beef exports, outpacing India, the second-largest exporter, by 527,000 metric tons carcass weight equivalent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The latest research is published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition. “High energy foods have been shown to be the major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, challenging the diet-environment-health triangle,” the authors said. “The waste of resources and the unnecessary ecological cost due to an excessive consumption of foods leading to obesity have been ignored so far.
Food production puts a strain on the world’s water and land resources, scientists say. It also causes the production of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that are contributing to climate change. Among their findings: The farmland needed to produce all that extra, unneeded food was about 400 times the size of the entire United States, according to the new calculations. Approximately 345,000 cubic kilometers—28 Lake Superiors—was needed to produce all the extra food we consume.
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