But this rethinking of agriculture needs to go bigger and bolder, fast, according to a new study, released last week by the Food System Economics Commission (FSEC), which spells out in sobering detail the social, economic and environmental costs of the current global food system – and the potential savings of a radical food systems overhaul. 

“In short, our food systems are destroying more value than they create,” says the report, the result of a four-year investigation led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Cornell University and the Brookings Institution’s Africa Growth Initiative. 

Food innovation has pulled off a remarkable feat, working to feed a global population that has doubled since 1970. But there are also a litany of “unaccounted costs” that fuel some of the greatest challenges we live with, from climate change to hunger, disease and inequality.  

The current cost of these unintended harms on people and the planet amount to a staggering US$15 trillion a year, or the equivalent of 12% of the global gross domestic product in 2020, the researchers found. The commission estimates that $11 trillion of that cost is attached to health, measured through the negative effect that diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cancer – which can be linked to food – have on labour productivity. Another $3 trillion a year is tied to the impact of agricultural-land-use and food-production practices on ecosystems and climate. These practices account for one-third of global greenhouse emissions, including deforestation that makes way for crops and livestock.  

The report authors analyzed a model of food-system transformation that they contend is a “uniquely powerful means of addressing the global climate, nature and health emergencies while offering a better life to hundreds of millions of people.” It includes a call to shift our diets to ones that are more plant-based, and limit consumption of sugars, meat and dairy. They say it is a path that would eliminate undernutrition by 2050 and prevent the premature death of 174 million people. Farmers would earn a better living, forests and biodiversity would be protected, and demand for irrigation water would plummet. The net benefits on incomes and reduced costs of this transformation amounts to US$5 to $10 trillion a year, they report.  

“The economic and planetary case for transforming our food systems is compelling,” the authors note. “But negotiating change across a multitude of diverse stakeholders with unequal power and varying prospects from the transformation is an enormous challenge.” 

Another study released last week, by the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, shows that Canada, in particular, is failing to invest enough in sustainable agriculture. The report calls on the federal government to allocate more funds to research, on the private sector to push for more favourable investment opportunities, and for a shift in intellectual property rights that could also spur more investment. The report notes that spending on agricultural innovation in Canada has declined 70% since 1986 and urges lawmakers to see that spending rise to 0.10% of GDP.  

In short, our food systems are destroying more value than they create.

 

– Food System Economics Commission

If nothing changes by 2050, food insecurity and undernutrition will continue to be major problems that leave 640 million people hungry worldwide, including 121 million children, according to the FSEC. India, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia will be hit especially hard.  

Climate change, which is already wreaking havoc on food production, will pack even more of a punch as extreme weather events become more frequent. This will create a domino effect in rising food prices that increasingly stretch the middle and lower classes, the report says, noting also that the current food system exposes workers to particularly low wages.  

Changing our food systems will require a global investment of between US$200 billion and $500 billion a year until 2050, a number the report says is “low compared to its economic benefits.” Much of that covers investments in rural infrastructure, including roads, irrigation expansion and access to energy; the protection and restoration of forests; reducing food waste; and supporting a dietary shift. Working in tandem with a low-carbon energy system, the food revolution “can ensure that global warming stays well below 1.5 degrees C at the end of this century,” the report states.  

The FSEC report calls on governments to shift incentives in agriculture production away from a focus on big producers that often are linked to harmful environmental practices. Taxing carbon and nitrogen pollution are two ways to turn food systems into net carbon sinks, it argues. The new revenues from those taxes should be directed into benefits for poorer households that might be struggling to eat, which in turn will drum up political support for the systemic transformations that need to happen.  

There is also more that national and international organizations can do to incentivize food innovation, especially in low- and middle-income countries, such as supporting low-emission farming systems or developing digital technologies that are useful to small-scale farmers. And, finally, government social safety nets need to keep the poorest in mind. Cash transfers distributed by governments through digital payment systems can target vulnerable populations – and children should be at the centre of these strategies, the report notes.   

For the experts at the FSEC, the biggest piece of the puzzle is changing what we eat. The impact of choosing healthier diets on well-being and land use accounts for 70% of the benefits of transforming food systems. On the other hand, what we eat – diets that are high in fats, sugars, salt and ultra-processed foods – will increase obesity by 70%, and 1.5 billion will struggle with obesity by 2050. The authors project that the cost of treating obesity will skyrocket to US$3 trillion by 2030.  

The report warns authorities to be mindful of the ripple effects of transformation, so as not to pit the winners and losers of the immediate change against one another. Fears over food affordability can get in the way of taking action, while transformation may affect the jobs that a community is used to relying on. That’s why developing downstream industries that complement the shift, especially in low-income countries, is crucial.   

“Daunting as the challenges of transforming food systems may be, there are reasons to be hopeful,” the report states, pointing to successes in Latin America, for example, where groups lobbied to raise taxes on sugary beverages despite corporate opposition. “Addressing squarely the concerns that shape policymakers’ vision of what is possible offers a pathway to reap large benefits for people and planet.” 

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Cell-cultured meat is produced using animal stem cells in large bioreactors that can each replace thousands of animals. The end result is a product that provides a bio-mimicked meat experience, without the eco-harm of farming or the animal-welfare concerns of slaughtering. But as the first cell-cultured meat products received final regulatory approval in the United States earlier this summer and they begin appearing on a handful of menus, they also face competitor contempt, cautious consumers and conflicting media messaging. 

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared cell-cultured meat produced by two California-based companies, Upside Foods and Good Meat, safe for human consumption. In June, it granted the two companies their first-ever approvals to sell their lab-grown chicken. But just as restaurants in Washington, D.C., and California begin serving up the meat, a study from the University of California, Berkeley, started serving up confusion about the eco-benefits of producing meat without mass animal farming. 

U.C. Davis researchers concluded that producing cell-cultured meat could actually be more burdensome to the environment than its traditionally farmed counterpart – a finding that is at odds with the prevailing research. The study states that cell-cultured meat production generates around 25 times the emissions of beef, which produces around 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Media outlets such as New Scientist ran with the damning stat. “There’s a big environmental downside to lab-grown meat,” read a San Francisco Chronicle headline. “New study is extremely embarrassing for lab-grown meat,” proclaimed Futurism. 

But as some proponents of alternative protein have subsequently pointed out, there are key points about the research that have not been made clear, notably that the study had not yet been peer-reviewed. “So its assumptions and conclusions are subject to change,” Good Food Institute (GFI) says in a statement. 

GFI is an international non-profit think tank with a focus on alternative proteins. GFI’s senior vice-president of science and technology, Liz Specht, called out New Scientist for reporting on the non-peer-reviewed environmental impact study, when the research “assumed commercial production of cultivated meat would rely on pharmaceutical-grade media to feed the cells – which food manufacturers won’t need to use.”  

Pharmaceutical-grade materials require more intensive methods of purification and around 20 times more energy than food-grade materials (according to a 2010 analysis). They’re also much more costly. “If the cultivated meat industry were to pursue this method of sourcing and purifying media inputs, the costs would likely be too high for the vast majority of products to be competitive with conventional meat,” the GFI statement reads. “As the UC Davis study demonstrates, it also comes at a high environmental cost. So it wouldn’t make economic or environmental sense for cultivated meat companies to take this method forward.”  

GFI recommends that media and consumers instead look to peer-reviewed studies, such as one published recently in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment that is based on data from more than 15 companies about their manufacturing. That meta-analysis, GFI explains, “found that cultivated meat produced at scale using renewable energy could reduce the carbon footprint by 92%, land use by 90%, and water use by 66% compared to conventional beef production.” 

“It’s really kind of a crazy study,” GFI president Bruce Friedrich said on a panel at the Animal and Vegan Advocacy Summit, held in Los Angeles in July. “It’s a bit like saying electric vehicles will never catch on because there is no charging infrastructure, which means there never will be a charging infrastructure. There’s never been innovation which involved taking exactly how it’s done now and making that billions of times larger.”   

“Just as we wouldn’t assess the environmental impact of solar panels based on 1980s prototype production methods,” Specht echoes, “we shouldn’t assess cultivated meat’s potential impact using R&D-scale processes.” 

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McDonald’s became the first company in Canada to serve up a portion of its Angus burgers (at least 30 per cent) from certified sources last year. Then Harvey’s began partnering with the Roundtable in August for its Original Burgers, joining A&W, Earls, Cactus Club Cafe and other food outlets in an effort to serve more environmentally responsible beef.

The fact that these restaurant chains are concerned about sustainable beef is welcome news. But what exactly is sustainable beef? The devil is in the details, and a closer look at the requirements imposed by the Roundtable reveals that they can be hazy and rife with loopholes.

The cattle conundrum

Beef cattle have been the bêtes noires of environmental movements for almost half a century.

Frances Moore Lappé skewered them in her bestseller of the 1970s, Diet for a Small Planet. She noted that it takes at least seven pounds of high-quality staples to produce one pound of grain-fed beef, in effect manufacturing scarcity and contributing to global hunger.

More recently, cattle have become symbols of consumer excess in the age of global warming. Our beef habit has been blamed for the carbon dioxide released when grasslands and forests in the Brazilian Amazon — long revered as the mainstay of global climate stability — are uprooted to grow soybeans for animal feed.

Booming sales of dairy and beef imitations are a sign of increased intentions to break loose from those environmental impacts and from the health concerns tied to eating red meat. Little wonder that beef sales are facing a decline in Canada.

All of which has prompted Canada’s beef industry to respond. The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association formed an alliance — the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef or CRSB — with McDonald’s Canada, Costco, Loblaws, the World Wildlife Fund and beef suppliers Cargill and JBS to “legitimize sustainable beef production in the public eye and underpin producers’ social licence to operate.”

To its credit, several aspects of the CRSB’s work go beyond hot air to grapple with issues of sustainability. The Roundtable deserves recognition for defining and benchmarking several pivotal and measurable sustainability challenges. It accepts the wide breadth of a “triple bottom line” approach and recognizes that sustainability is not as one-dimensional as reducing waste or greenhouse gases.

“Consumers are increasingly inquisitive about the food they’re eating and want to know it was produced in a socially responsible, economically viable and environmentally sound manner,” rancher Cherie Copithorne-Barnes, founding chair of the CRSB, said in a statement last summer.

To be deemed sustainable, ranchers and processors must show progress on issues such as soil health, water conservation, biodiversity, animal welfare and workers’ rights. From farm to fork, the Roundtable commits to delivering a product that “prioritizes planet, people, animals and progress.”

Green beef full of bull?

But how sustainable are those burgers advertised on in-store signs and menus across the country?

The CRSB’s basic requirements, as well as optional ratings for “excellence,” often appear vague and there are a few loopholes. On all-important matters such as air quality and greenhouse gases, for example, the only requirement is that operators should be “aware of management practices that support carbon sequestration and minimize emissions.”

The same loose wording goes for impacts on soil health, which should be “monitored and managed.”

On animal welfare, there are no requirements to minimize animal suffering beyond meeting Canada’s voluntary national farm animal code of practice, says Chronos Sustainability’s Darren Vanstone, who participated in Roundtable discussions as an animal welfare advocate.

“Research shows that one in five animals is injured or dies after 30 hours in transit,” says Geoff Urton.

An animal science expert and senior manager at B.C.’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Urton has represented Canada during livestock hearings of the International Organization for Standardization.

The Canadian, and therefore Roundtable, maximum travel time is 36 hours, Urton says. American transport time is capped at 28 hours; Europe limits it to eight. The distinction is important for human as well as animal health, because stressed animals have lower resistance to communicable diseases that might infect the meat supply.

And while customers seeking more sustainable meat products now expect to see antibiotic-free and no-added-hormones/steroids claims at places like A&W or butcher counters, the CRSB standard doesn’t require either.

These gaps have been a bone of contention for a coalition of 50 American consumer, animal welfare, worker, public health and environmental groups south of the border, which called out the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef for being toothless in June of last year.

“Weak performance measures set a low bar, open the doors to greenwashing, muddy the waters of ‘sustainable’ beef marketing claims and undercut efforts to recognize and reward credibly more sustainable producers and brands,” said the coalition, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the American Grassfed Association.

Smaller is better

Part of the problem is that the Canadian Roundtable doesn’t address systemic supply chain issues related to processors and retailers. Control of food processing and retail sectors by a small number of centralized corporations is “more pronounced in Canada than most countries,” says Rod MacRae, a professor of food studies at York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies and a longtime food policy analyst.

Two corporations (Cargill Foods and Brazil-based multinational JBS) control 80 per cent of beef processing, and four retailers capture 72 per cent of retail sales, MacRae’s research reveals.

The limited number of slaughterhouses makes it almost impossible to reduce animal travel times. And, MacRae says, the concentration of corporate ownership makes it almost impossible for ranchers, farm workers and processing workers to enjoy sustainable working and living conditions. The Roundtable’s own research confirms that a rancher with a herd of 200 cattle earns $17,559 a year, which is below the rural poverty line.

That’s not a foundation for sustainable rural communities, says MacRae.

Franco Naccarato agrees on the need for more small players. He heads the Ontario Independent Meat Processors association — which has 250 members from small abattoirs and butcher shops scattered across the province. These shops, and the small farms that rely on them to do custom work for independent and local retailers and restaurants, are pivotal to the meat industry becoming sustainable, he says.

First is the distance factor: the short trips from farm to abattoir and abattoir to retailer can cut transportation emissions.

Small and local processors are also key to reviving the circular economy that once thrived across the Canadian meat sector, when many towns and cities had abattoirs, butcher shops and tanneries, which together made it their business to use all parts of the animal, from prime meat cuts to bone and blood.

“You can’t design for sustainability without this balance in local economies,” Naccarato says.

Naccarato’s argument suggests that a sustainable product requires a sustainable business ecosystem, not just a sustainable ranch or animal. The absence of any discussion or measures to foster that ecosystem may be the Achilles heel of the Roundtable’s claims of advancing sustainability.

It’s a pivotal point both the critics and defenders of sustainable beef miss. People on both sides focus on beef as a standalone commodity, not one product from a living whole animal, or a dynamic food web governing the entire life cycle of meat.

Regenerative ranching

Perhaps the Roundtable could take a leaf from the fast-rising notion referred to as regenerative agriculture. The idea is being talked up in countercultural communities within the food sector, as well as by corporate heavyweights such as General Mills. The basic proposition should be music to the ears of Canadian cattle ranchers because it’s founded on the widespread practice of feeding cattle on pasture.

Supporters of regenerative agriculture believe that raising livestock on pasture and prairie grasses reduces and offsets many environmental downsides. Pasture and grasses have deep roots, which purify water as it seeps down to the water table. The roots also draw down carbon to store underground, where it belongs. In regenerative agriculture, a no-till approach means that no carbon dioxide is unearthed by plowing. Nor are pesticides permitted (or required) on pasture, a blessing for insects, birds and biodiversity.

The Roundtable deserves credit for owning up to the problem of sustainability. But in an era when reducing beef consumption is front and centre for environmental and health advocates, they’ll also be watching closely to make sure any green labels on burgers aren’t a load of bull.

Wayne Roberts is a Canadian food policy analyst and writer and former manager of the Toronto Food Policy Council.

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