Foodprint

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A foodprint refers to the environmental pressures created by the food demands of individuals, organizations, and geopolitical entities.[1] Like other forms of ecological footprinting, a foodprint can include multiple parameters to quantify the overall environmental impact of food, including carbon footprinting, water footprinting, and foodshed mapping. Some foodprinting efforts also attempt to capture the social and ethical costs of food production by accounting for dimensions such as farm worker justice or prices received by farmers for goods as a share of food dollars.[2] Environmental advocacy organizations like the Earth Day Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council have publicized the foodprint concept as a way of engaging consumers on the environmental impacts of dietary choices.[3][4]

Methodology[edit]

Existing frameworks[edit]

Foodprinting can incorporate multiple parameters. Foodshed mapping can be used to give a land area estimate for a geographic region, but similar analysis can be employed to specific food products. Water footprinting and carbon footprinting are also used to compare the impacts of different food choices. This type of comparison is commonly used to differentiate between products that have high environmental footprints and their alternatives, like dairy[5] and meat.[6][7]

Life Cycle Assessment is one analytical framework frequently used to incorporated multiple dimensions of foodprinting, though it comes with particular challenges. Life cycle assessments for industrial products have discreet inflows and outflows that are easily measured and modeled. As biological systems with high variability, however, agricultural processes are more difficult to model.[8]

Existing research[edit]

Geographic foodprinting[edit]

On a city scale, researchers have conducted foodprint analyses for cities like Paris and Melbourne.[9][10] Researchers have also used a foodprint model to map the land required for feeding the United States.[11]

Dietary patterns[edit]

Foodprinting has also been applied to dietary patterns as a way of predicting impacts of consumption and production shifts on the environment. The EAT Lancet commission, for example, analyzed possible dietary patterns for impacts in GHG emissions, land, water and fertilizer use, and biodiversity, ultimately recommending the "Planetary Diet" that has a low foodprint in those parameters. Similar analysis from the IPCC focuses on carbon footprints of dietary patterns.[12] Other carbon-focused research determined that supplying and consuming the calories that fuel global obesity adds an additional 700 megatons per year of CO2 equivalents to the atmosphere, approximately 1.6% of global carbon emissions.[13]

The whole-diet models used to establish estimates of land requirements for the standard American diet can also be used as a comparison for projecting the land requirements of dietary shifts.[14] Using these techniques, researchers have compared the land-area foodprint of high and low-quality diets, and found that high-quality diets could use significantly less land than current consumption patterns.[15]

Use in environmental advocacy[edit]

Various organizations have publicized the concept of a foodprint, largely as a tool for understanding the impacts of consumer food choice on the environment. Non-profit organizations like FoodPrint educate consumers on environmental issues within food systems and provide resources for reducing personal foodprints.[16] The NRDC and other organizations have released similar initiatives.[4]

Foodprints are also increasingly referenced by sustainability advocates within the food industry: the California-based Zero Foodprint initiative, for example, adds a voluntary surcharge to restaurant bills to pay for soil health–related projects on participating farms. The non-profit was recognized with a Humanitarian of the Year Award from the James Beard Foundation.[17][18] Other companies reduce foodprints of restaurants and other businesses reducing food-related waste.[19][20] Restaurant chains like Panera and Chipotle have also embraced the concept of the foodprint, adding environmental impact scoring systems to their menu items. These initiatives vary in scope, however, and may struggle to communicate and contextualize the full range of environmental and social issues surrounding food production.[21]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Goldstein, Benjamin; Birkved, Morten; Fernández, John; Hauschild, Michael (2016-01-07). "Surveying the Environmental Footprint of Urban Food Consumption" (PDF). Journal of Industrial Ecology. 21 (1): 151–165. doi:10.1111/jiec.12384. hdl:1721.1/122022. ISSN 1088-1980. S2CID 155473257.
  2. ^ "What Is Food Justice and Why Is It Necessary?". FoodPrint. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  3. ^ "Foodprints for the Future". Earth Day. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  4. ^ a b June 05; Alum, 2013 Dana Gunders- (5 June 2013). "10 Steps to Reduce Your Own Foodprint on World Environment Day". NRDC. Retrieved 2020-03-03.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ "Which Plant-Based Milks are Best for the Environment?". FoodPrint. 2019-01-15. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  6. ^ Gerbens-Leenes, P. W.; Mekonnen, M. M.; Hoekstra, A. Y. (2013-03-01). "The water footprint of poultry, pork and beef: A comparative study in different countries and production systems". Water Resources and Industry. Water Footprint Assessment (WFA) for better water governance and sustainable development. 1–2: 25–36. doi:10.1016/j.wri.2013.03.001. ISSN 2212-3717.
  7. ^ Fabrique [merken, design & interactie. "Water footprint of crop and animal products: a comparison". waterfootprint.org. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  8. ^ "History of agricultural LCAs". Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  9. ^ Billen, Gilles; Barles, Sabine; Garnier, Josette; Rouillard, Joséphine; Benoit, Paul (2008-07-22). "The food-print of Paris: long-term reconstruction of the nitrogen flows imported into the city from its rural hinterland". Regional Environmental Change. 9 (1): 13–24. doi:10.1007/s10113-008-0051-y. ISSN 1436-3798.
  10. ^ Candy, Seona; Mark Turner, Graham; Sheridan, Jennifer; Carey, Rachel (February 2019). "Quantifying Melbourne's "Foodprint": A scenario modelling methodology to determine the environmental impact of feeding a city". Economia Agro-Alimentare (3): 371–399. doi:10.3280/ecag2018-003007. ISSN 1126-1668. S2CID 134220021.
  11. ^ "U. S. land capacity for feeding people could expand with dietary changes". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  12. ^ Briggs, Nassos Stylianou, Clara Guibourg and Helen (2019-08-09). "Climate change food calculator: What's your diet's carbon footprint?". BBC News. Retrieved 2020-03-03.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ Magkos, Faidon; Tetens, Inge; Bügel, Susanne Gjedsted; Felby, Claus; Schacht, Simon Rønnow; Hill, James O.; Ravussin, Eric; Astrup, Arne (2019-12-20). "The Environmental Foodprint of Obesity". Obesity. 28 (1): 73–79. doi:10.1002/oby.22657. ISSN 1930-7381. PMID 31858737. S2CID 209428101.
  14. ^ Peters, Christian J.; Picardy, Jamie; Darrouzet-Nardi, Amelia F.; Wilkins, Jennifer L.; Griffin, Timothy S.; Fick, Gary W. (2016-07-22). "Carrying capacity of U.S. agricultural land: Ten diet scenarios". Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. 4: 000116. Bibcode:2016EleSA...4.0116P. doi:10.12952/journal.elementa.000116. ISSN 2325-1026.
  15. ^ Conrad, Zach; Johnson, LuAnn K; Peters, Christian J; Jahns, Lisa (2018-01-29). "Capacity of the US Food System to Accommodate Improved Diet Quality: A Biophysical Model Projecting to 2030". Current Developments in Nutrition. 2 (4): nzy007. doi:10.1093/cdn/nzy007. ISSN 2475-2991. PMC 6041859. PMID 30019031.
  16. ^ "What is a FoodPrint?". FoodPrint. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
  17. ^ "S.F. nonprofit Zero Foodprint wins James Beard Award". San Francisco Chronicle. 2020-03-13. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
  18. ^ "Zero Foodprint". Archived from the original on 2023-04-04. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
  19. ^ "Foodprint Group". Foodprint Group. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
  20. ^ "FOODPRINT: RACE TO REDUCE" (PDF). Sustainable Restaurant Association. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-06-20.
  21. ^ Held, Lisa Elaine (30 November 2020). "On Restaurant Menus, Environmental Metrics are the New Calorie Counts". FoodPrint. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foodprint&oldid=1219938062"