Switching Rich Nations to a Plant-Rich Diet Would Cut Farm Emissions by 61%

If the world's rich nations switched to a plant-rich diet, the farm emissions from their food would fall by 61%, and the land freed up could soak up as much as 98 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent, a new study has found. That is about 14 years of today's global farm emissions.

Researchers at Leiden University modeled 54 high-income countries, home to 17% of the world's people and 68% of its GDP, adopting the EAT-Lancet planetary health diet, which is built on whole grains, legumes, nuts, fruit and vegetables. The study is published in Nature Food.

The authors call it a "double climate dividend": lower emissions plus carbon captured as unused farmland returns to forest and grassland. That much carbon removal could potentially cover rich nations' share of the CO2 removal needed for 1.5C. The US, France, Australia and Germany would deliver about half the benefit.

To put this in perspective, it's about the same positive impact as all countries signing up to and implementing the COP26 declaration on the transition to 100% zero emission cars and vans globally by 2040.

That is Dr. Sonja Vermeulen, lead global food scientist at WWF, who was not involved in the study, speaking to Carbon Brief.

It follows the 2020 finding that plant-based diets could pull up to 547 billion tonnes of CO2 from the air and last year's study showing animal foods cause twice the emissions of plant foods.

Less cattle ranching, more forest: the planet wins twice.