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Eating for the Environment Which About a Quarter of the Calories Come from Animal-Based Products) Right Now The expanding Harvard universe THE BEEF ABOUT BEEF Since 2006, he has examined the effects on the planet of various diets, from vegan to lac- to-ovo to the mean American diet (MAD, in Eating for the Environment which about a quarter of the calories come from animal-based products). His findings have given him a strong message to deliver: hen Gidon Eshel sits down Eshel is a geophysicist; a research profes- lose the beef. for a meal, his plate holds sor of environmental science and physics at Beef represents only about 7 percent of a full agenda. There’s the Bard College, he spoke at the Radcliffe In- the calories consumed by Americans, but W food, of course—plant- stitute, where he is a fellow this year. His the hamburger habit has outsized effects. based, in his case. But beyond the barley field was conventional climate science when Beef production, Eshel’s research has shown, and snap peas spills a cornucopia of environ- he was a professor at the University of Chi- uses in aggregate 28 times more land—91 mental, social, and political considerations. cago, until a lunch conversation about the million acres of high-quality land to grow “When you make a choice between any two geophysical implications of food produc- crops for use as feed, and 771 million acres competing ingredients or any two competing tion led him to a new focus: environmental- of rangeland used as pasture for cattle—as meals,” Eshel said in a December lecture (on geophysical consequences of human diets. well as 11 times more irrigation water than “Rethinking the American Diet”), “you are making a whole cascade of important choices that you may or may not be aware of. For ex- ample, in that choice you deter- mine…the nature of rural com- munities” in terms of structure, land use, and population density; the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted “on your behalf” for food production; the biodiversity of rangelands; the likelihood of spe- cies extinctions; and the health of waterways and coastal ocean fisheries, where massive die-offs are one consequence of agricul- tural pollution. “You even get to take sides in things that we don’t often associate with food choices, like societal strife,” he said, citing the example of a water-rights dis- pute pitting alfalfa farmers against a Native American tribe in Ore- gon’s Klamath basin. And finally, of course, nutritional choices “de- termine your health as powerfully as genetics or exercise.” Illustration by Pete Ryan Harvard Magazine 11 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 RIGHT NOW the average of other livestock categories shows, more than half the species once na- such as pork and poultry. Beef production tive to the landscape have been lost. Explore More also creates five times the amount of green- Although Eshel has for the past decade house gases and six times as much water- emphasized the benefits of switching to a For more online-only articles on polluting reactive nitrogen. purely plant-based diet (in which foods such research in progress, see: “Farmers do a bunch of things” to the as peanuts, soy, and lentils play a prominent earth’s surface to affect the rate at which role), he recognizes that veganism is not for A Breakthrough in High- hydrobiogeochemical processes occur, Es- everyone, despite the clear health benefits. Pressure Physics? hel told his audience. Most importantly, they Now he’s calculated what would happen if Metallic hydrogen add nitrogen as fertilizer and they modify all the national resources required to pro- could revolutionize drainage so irrigation water leaves the soil duce the beef Americans consume annually energy use, space almost as quickly as it arrives, to speed plant (about 65 grams per person per day) were exploration, and growth and keep roots from rotting. But devoted to poultry production instead. The more. these chemical and physical modifications number of useful calories produced would harvardmag. have an unintended consequence: they de- increase fivefold. Such a diet would also com/hydrogen-17 grade the ability of soil biota to neutralize deliver four times the amount of protein, reactive compounds. Such microorganisms enough to meet the dietary needs of an ad- A Robotic Fix for Heart Failure require soil that retains water to do their ditional 140 million people. Given the re- An experimental device could someday work, which takes place slowly and steadily, sources required to produce it, the idea that restore the ability to pump blood in he explains. By speeding up surface and soil beef is indispensable, Eshel said, “just doesn’t patients with heart failure. hydrology, “You basically degrade an ecosys- make sense.” harvardmag.com/heartsleeve-17 tem’s ability to render those otherwise dan- But if people demand beef, how much gerous compounds harmless.” Ultimately, can be grown sustainably? Eshel calculates the reactive-nitrogen-laden runoff reaches that by combining feed that originates as of protein if planted with wheat or spelt. the coastal ocean, where it severely depletes an industrial byproduct (orange peels from When making their dietary choices, Eshel levels of dissolved oxygen, leading to mas- juice production, for example) with the best said in summing up his research, individuals sive fish kills in places like the northern part half of all the pastureland in the country, 33 “get to tip the scale of environmental, social, of the Gulf of Mexico “near the Mississippi percent of the current beef supply could be and political contests,” as well as improve River mouth.” maintained. Using all the pastureland, in- their personal health. Eating healthy foods Beyond its contribution to water pollu- cluding arid, minimally productive West- that use less land, therefore, “is one of the tion, agriculture is a significant source of ern rangelands, would affect more than 370 callings of our time….” vjonathan shaw greenhouse-gas emissions: nearly 10 percent million acres and produce only 5 additional of the total in the United States for agricul- percent of the current supply, at the great gidon eshel e-mail: tural production, rising to roughly a quarter environmental costs enumerated above. The [email protected] when the entire food chain, from farm to high-quality cropland used to grow cattle- gidon eshel website: plate, is considered. But the vast majority feed—if repurposed for crops that people www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/people/ of those emissions are attributable to live- eat—would deliver nine times the supply gidon-eshel stock. Almost half of the total land area in the lower 48 states (1.9 billion acres) is de- voted to agriculture: various pasturelands THE X FACTOR represent about a third of that, while corn, hay, and other feed crops account for almost all the rest. By comparison, all the lettuce, Why Is Cancer More tomatoes, fruits, and nuts people eat (in- cluding apples, citrus, and almonds) are grown in less than one-half of 1 percent of the Common in Men? agricultural lands: “a minuscule fraction of the total,” Eshel pointed out. Switching to a plant-based diet, his research has shown, ncologists know that men factors such as cigarette smoking and fac- would eliminate about 80 percent of green- are more prone to cancer than tory work. Yet the ratio of men with cancer house-gas emissions attributable to agricul- women; one in two men will to women with cancer remained largely un- ture in the United States, because most of O develop some form of the dis- changed across time, even as women began that comes from ruminant livestock emis- ease in a lifetime, compared with one in to smoke and enter the workforce in greater sions, and growing their feed grains. three women. numbers. Pediatric cancer specialists also Beef production also threatens biodi- But until recently, scientists have been noted a similar “male bias to cancer” among versity in Western rangelands. By the time unable to pinpoint why. In the past, they babies and very young children with leuke- grasslands have been moderately or in- theorized that men were more likely than mia. “It’s not simply exposures over a life- tensively used for grazing cattle, research women to encounter carcinogens through time,” explains Andrew Lane, assistant pro- 12 March - April 2017 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746.
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