Bug Burritos Anyone?

Not Geography Geography Lesson 20

Are Insect And Algae The Key To Greener Meat?

We have reached 20 posts! Apologies for the slight delay with this one, I have moved back to University and have been occupied with trying to get settled and feeling like a pensioner. But we're back, and are going to explore something new and a bit weird - reducing the harmful environmental effects of commercial animal farming by feeding our livestock insects and algae. Yum! 

A Porky Problem

Everybody loves a good bacon butty, or a steak pud, or some chicken nuggets on the way home from a long night out, but our consumption of these meaty meals is causing big problems for the functioning of our planet. In the last hundred years, Western meat consumption has exploded to enormous proportions as meat has become cheaper - first as a result of excess grain supplies post WW2, and then as industrial farms have adopted more efficient methods. In 2010 residents of Western Europe scarfed down 86kg of meat each, and our American friends managed an astounding 121kg of meat each in just one year. For (dubious) context - a back of the envelope calculation tells me that 86kg of meat is around 860 small-ish pork chops, which is a small barns worth of Babe's to be munching. Overall, total world meat consumption has quadrupled in just 25 years to 297 million tonnes. We have been truly 'meatified'. 

Also worth noting is the huge discrepancy in meat consumption between 'developed' and 'developing' regions; and if you have ever watched Man Vs. Food (highly recommend btw) you can guess which side is scoffing all the burgers. Cumulatively, all the people living in South and South East Asia, and Africa - which accounts for nearly half of Earth's population - consume only 16% of all the meat eaten in the world! There is a clear link here between affluence and meat eating, and it has been seen in dozens of studies how as countries and their populations grow richer (ie. China, Japan and Brazil), they start shunning the veg and reaching for the KFC. 

So Why Should I Put Down My Quarter-Pounder?

In recent years there has been a load of attention paid to the environmental implications of farming the millions of cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens required to meet the demand of our protein packed diets (Cowspiracy anyone?). As controversial as the anti-meat/Vegan/Veggie debates have become, it is widely agreed on that the impacts of large scale commercial livestock farming are disastrous for our environment and are contributing to the Greenhouse Gases driving climate change. 

In terms of carbon dioxide (CO2), livestock produce approx. 2 billion tons per year, which is about 9% of our total emission. This is already not ideal, but the methane produced by livestock is a greater concern, as each cow pumps out around 90kg of the stuff per year, with a negative impact 25 times greater than CO2. In broad terms, the various unpleasant gases produced by the enormous number of animals we are keeping to eat, are having equally enormous impacts on our atmosphere. All very bad stuff indeed. 

Additionally, I have never had a cow in my living room but I have been chased by one and can imagine that they require a hell of a lot of room to live. And unsurprisingly, you also need a large space dedicated to growing the grain to feed them. The implications of these two things have been evidenced in the widespread deforestation of predominantly developing countries to make way for farming, which means the loss of very precious plants and animals, as well as less vegetation to suck up all these emissions being released. Double bad stuff. 

A Potential Solution?

Now we have established how damaging all this meat eating has become, we are left with two options...

Our first option is to reduce the amount of meat we consume considerably, and this would obviously be the most effective solution because less meat = smaller farms and less animals = less Greenhouse Gases and less deforestation. If only it was that simple! Whilst there is a larger and larger following for veggie and vegan diets growing, and things like Meat Free Monday are popular, the greater proportion of people would not be chuffed if someone took all the pepperoni off their pizza and the mince from their spag bol. So whilst eating less meat is the final end goal, we clearly need more options.

The second option is to make our farming more efficient and less damaging somehow - to use less land and produce fewer emissions. Just this week it was suggested by the WWF and the UN that we could start feeding our livestock insects and algae, in order to use less land for growing their regular soy and grain diets. Personally, I think that it is a fab idea and there is already a small but growing market for insect-based livestock feeds, particularly in home-of-bacon Denmark. Farming insects and algae would require significantly less space and less inputs (water, fertiliser, energy); my cousin had pet stick insects a few years ago and they really didn't want for much, just some privet. I'm not a chemist or a zoologist so I don't know whether an insect/algae diet would reduce the methane and CO2 produced, but less deforestation would mean more carbon sequestration by the increased amount of vegetation, so less CO2 entering the atmosphere.

*Bonus third option: there is also a growing body of research suggesting we humans should also start munching down on some tasty many-legged critters, as they are high in protein we need, but are much less demanding than larger animals. One day we are mercilessly beating a cockroach with a slipper, then the next we are sauteing him in some lovely garlic butter and whacking him on some bruschetta. Who would wanna be a bug...

So there you have it - will we one day be feeding our livestock insects and algae to reduce their negative impacts on the environment? Will we one day be eating them ourselves..? Hope you enjoyed this week's topic, have a good week and go easy on the earwigs when you're making tea!