Environment Impact Of Food Production

Context

As the world’s population has expanded and gotten richer, the demand for food, energy and water has seen a rapid increase. Not only has demand for all three increased, but they are also strongly interlinked: food production requires water and energy; traditional energy production demands water resources; agriculture provides a potential energy source. This article focuses on the environmental impacts of food. Ensuring everyone in the world has access to a nutritious diet in a sustainable way is one of the greatest challenges we face.

Content

This dataset contains most 43 most common foods grown across the globe and 23 columns as their respective land, water usage and carbon footprints.

Columns

1. Land use change - Kg CO2 - equivalents per kg product
2. Animal Feed - Kg CO2 - equivalents per kg product
3. Farm - Kg CO2 - equivalents per kg product
4. Processing - Kg CO2 - equivalents per kg product
5. Transport - Kg CO2 - equivalents per kg product
6. Packaging - Kg CO2 - equivalents per kg product
7. Retail - Kg CO2 - equivalents per kg product

These represent greenhouse gas emissions per kg of food product(Kg CO2 - equivalents per kg product) across different stages in the lifecycle of food production.

Eutrophication – the pollution of water bodies and ecosystems with excess nutrients – is a major environmental problem. The runoff of nitrogen and other nutrients from agricultural production systems is a leading contributor.

Acknowledgements

https://ourworldindata.org

Inspiration

1. Which types of food have more negative impact on the environment?
2. What types of food production should be encouraged to consume nutritious diet in a sustainable way?
3. Which stage of food production contributes more to the greenhouse gas emmision?
4. Compare carbon footprint of plant-based foods?
5. Compare carbon footprint of animal-based foods?
6. Compare carbon footprint of protein rich foods?