Considering tradeoffs in “local” food policies: examples from school feeding programmes

City, national, and multinational governments are increasingly leveraging nutrition programme spending, specifically pursuing policies that require or incentive “local” procurement, to meet a myriad of goals. However, these policies involve tradeoffs that are often not fully considered by government officials, planners, and advocates. This perspective article provides some examples of those tradeoffs from the peer-reviewed literature, which, we argue, are useful to consider in setting school feeding programme policies to achieve sustainability goals.

Read more

Factors influencing consumer purchase intent for meat and meat substitutes

The availability of new plant-based burgers, designed to address the environmental, health, and ethical issues associated with animal husbandry, represents a significant transition toward the alternative protein market. These meat substitutes aim at providing climate and health-conscious consumers with valuable options while maintaining the typical taste and feel of animal products. This study explores the appeal of alternative meat burgers as an option for reducing individual and collective meat consumption. We analyzed 169 U.S. burger consumers who tasted and reported their purchase intent for four types of burgers: a traditional beef burger, a mushroom/beef blended burger, a plant-based burger made with pea protein, and a plant-based burger made with animal-like protein (this refers to Impossible™ products that use a heme protein as an ingredient to closely replicate the mouthfeel and experience of eating a beef burger). We found that information about the product composition plays a critical role in predicting purchase intent. Moreover, product information increased purchase intent for all the burgers, except for the pea-protein one, and the provided information had the highest impact on the beef burger. Purchase intent could also be predicted by certain consumer socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, political affiliation, and income) as well as behavioral attitudes toward beef, blended, and plant-based products. Our results can help identify effective strategies in promoting meat alternatives, particularly in efforts to substitute traditional beef burgers with plant-based substitutes.

Read more

Economic and environmental performance of controlled-environment supply chains for leaf lettuce

We assess landed costs and selected environmental metrics for field-based and controlled-environment agriculture greenhouse (GH) supply chains for leaf lettuce delivered to New York City. Landed costs for a GH are 46 to 174 per cent higher than field production, with the lower value for an automated GH located in the peri-urban area. Energy use and global warming potential per kg lettuce delivered were larger for the GH, particularly if located in a peri-urban area. Water use was much higher for the field-based supply chain. Controlled-environment GH technologies will require further development to meet goals for lower costs and environmental impact.

Read more

Regenerative Grazing, Carbon, and Climate

Can regenerative agriculture mitigate climate change? Does regenerative grazing sequester more carbon? Arguments abound as to the role of regenerative agriculture—and grazing specifically—as a natural climate solution, each with their own supporting and dissenting evidence. Understanding the way that carbon is introduced to the atmosphere, captured by soils, and stored by soils is critical to defining a position on this topic.

Read more

Current state of enteric methane and the carbon footprint of beef and dairy cattle in the United States

Livestock is an integral part of societies worldwide and contributes to a host of human activities beyond food production, including income, heritage, insurance, labor, and culture. Livestock’s positive contributions to society are contrasted by environmental impacts, which include greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, biodiversity loss, and natural resource depletion, among others. Though environmental impacts of ruminant livestock production extend beyond GHG emissions (Rotz, 2020), considerable effort has been dedicated specifically to quantifying and mitigating enteric methane (CH4) emissions from beef and dairy cattle, which is the focus of this review.

Read more

Quantifying Biodiversity Co-benefits from Livestock Production A Case Study of Beef Grazing Management in Central Florida

Improved grazing management can enhance the multifunctionality of agroecosystems by drawing carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere and into soils complementing international efforts to curb and cease CO2 emissions. The adoption of improved grazing strategies to mitigate climate change, however, may come at the expensive of other critical agroecosystem co-benefits like biodiversity, and understanding these tradeoffs is important for informed decision making. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one approach to evaluate multiple environmental services associated with an agricultural product, i.e., 1 kg of beef live weight (LW). Few livestock LCAs include a biodiversity assessment due to difficulty and complexity in quantifying biodiversity impacts at appropriate spatial-temporal scales or beyond those associated with land use. We applied the recent Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Livestock Environmental Assessment Partnership (LEAP) biodiversity guidelines to a case study ranch located at Archbold Biological Stations Buck Island Ranch to 1) assist practitioners in understanding and differentiating between the regional (i.e., potential species loss) and site-specific (i.e., pressure-state-response) quantification approaches in the LEAP guidelines, and 2) evaluate the differences and similarities between the two approaches for quantifying biodiversity impacts under two types of pasture management. Our results illustrate how indicator selection and functional unit may result in discrepancies between the two approaches. Differences between methods can be attributed to differences in quantifying biodiversity impact potential species loss (land occupation) vs. biotic integrity (integrated measure of land and non-land related impacts) and whether biodiversity impacts are evaluated on a cumulative or a footprint basis. The growing global demand for livestock products and the interest in the livestock sector to capture and store atmospheric carbon demands that biodiversity impacts are incorporated into holistic evaluations of mitigation intervention co-benefits and tradeoffs.

Read more

PSIII-9 Hempseed Meal as an Effective Protein Supplement for Finishing Wethers

As our global agriculture landscape continues to change it has become more important than ever to find sustainable alternatives to feed livestock. Hempseed and its derivatives may provide alternative sources of nutrients for inclusion in livestock diets, however, due to the paucity of research on hemp and its byproducts, there is no authorization of the inclusion of these products in food animal diets. We hypothesized that the digestibility and use of hempseed meal would be similar to other livestock protein sources. Forty Western White-Faced wethers were used in a completely randomized block design with 5 treatments. These treatments included diets formulated to be near isonitrogenous with 0, 5, 10, 15, or 20% of diet DM as hemp seed meal, primarily as a substitute for dried distillers grains with solubles. Wethers were fed the diets individually for 90 d, which was followed by a 5 d balance trial with a total collection of urine and feces. There were no differences in DM intake (P = 0.44) or average daily gain (P= .16) between treatments. There were no differences in DM digestibility (P = 0.86) or N digestibility (P = 0.29) between treatments, although there was a slight increase in P digestibility as hemp meal inclusion increased until it represented 15% of the dietary DM (P = 0.02). There were no differences in the digestibility of Ca (P=0.44), Mg (P = 0.10), K (P = 0.85), or Na (P = 0.54). There were no differences in urinary N excretion (P=0.33) or urinary urea excretion (P=0.34) between treatments. Additionally, blood chemistry constituents were also not affected by treatment (P ≥ 0.10). Based on these data, it is concluded that hemp seed meal is a comparable protein supplement for sheep with no identified deleterious effects.

Read more

Strengthening Our Understanding of the Food-Energy-Water Nexus through Completing Suppressed Datasets

The demand for food, energy, and water (FEW) from agricultural production will rise with population growth, urbanization, and income. Agricultural production, however, contributes to freshwater depletion, energy consumption, and land use. Without effective mitigation, the food system’s environmental impact is estimated to increase by 50-92% between 2010 and 2050, which could be beyond the safe operating space for humanity. An extensive literature emphasizes the urgent need for multidisciplinary scientific efforts to better understand the FEW nexus.

Read more

Assessing the carbon footprint of fresh produce assembly and distribution in the U.S.

Transportation is the largest end-use contributor toward global warming. The
contemporary food system provides consumers with convenience, extensive choice, and the year-
round availability of fresh produce. In this paper, these achievements are recognized within the
context of the associated environmental impacts. While many analyses have considered the energy
and material efficiency of various options for food production and packaging, very few studies
have investigated the environmental impacts of the transport components of food supply chains.
This analysis adds to the existing literature by considering the GHG emissions associated with the
aggregation and distribution of fresh produce products consumed by American households. We
use a two-stage hybrid approach to identify the most efficient fresh produce assembly and
distribution patterns. In the first stage, the facility location problem is formulated as a cost
minimization problem. The result obtained in the first stage is used in the second stage to develop
a travel distance minimization problem to optimize the design of the supply chain network. This
approach allows the simultaneous consideration of two dimensions of sustainability including
carbon footprint and the total cost of the supply chain design. The proposed approach generates a
tradeoff analysis between environmental emissions and associated costs for making informed
decisions on designing sustainable supply chains.

Read more

Thanks to our funders/partners: