Plant-Based Diets in Europe Would Almost Offset Food Lost to the Russia-Ukraine War

If people in the European Union and the UK moved to a plant-rich diet, the food saved would almost cover everything lost to the war in Ukraine, a new study finds.

Researchers from Leiden University in the Netherlands and China Agricultural University in Beijing traced crops through the global supply chain and modeled a switch to the EAT-Lancet planetary health diet across the EU and UK. Their results, published today in Nature Food, show the change would almost compensate for all production deficits from Russia and Ukraine. It would also save 4.1 billion cubic meters of water and 0.22 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions a year, and the freed-up farmland could lock away 17.4 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent.

The reason is simple: a huge share of Europe's crops goes to feed animals rather than people. Senior author Paul Behrens of Leiden University said in the university's release:

Animals are fed crops that could be eaten directly by people: 30-40 percent of all crops are fed to animals. In the EU and UK, this number rises to 60 percent. Animal agriculture also occupies about 80 percent of all agricultural land.

The EAT-Lancet diet is built around vegetables, fruit, whole grains, pulses and nuts, with small amounts of meat and dairy, so every step toward it counts.

It builds on earlier work showing that switching rich nations to a plant-rich diet would cut farm emissions by 61%, and the original EAT-Lancet report that called for the world to halve red meat.

Plant-based eating is good for food security as well as the planet!