It’s well known that producing foods such as beef can have an outsized footprint when it comes to carbon emissions.
It’s well known that producing foods such as beef can have an outsized footprint when it comes to carbon emissions. But a new study shows that some of these same staples can have an equally huge effect when it comes to biodiversity losses.
One of the main problems, the study found, results when food production overlaps with areas that have been identified as having the highest conservation priority.
Food production remains the main cause of biodiversity loss.
“Food production remains the main cause of biodiversity loss,” said Keiichiro Kanemoto, an associate professor at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) in Kyoto, Japan and one of the paper’s senior authors. “However, there is a painful lack of systematic data on which products and which countries contribute the most to this loss. Our research combines information about agricultural land use with species habitats to identify which crops cause the most pressure on biodiversity.”
Read more at Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Map: The map shows the land use and conservation priority index for major agricultural commodities. The grid cells are coloured according to the dominant crop grown, and the intensity of the colour, from lighter to darker shades, indicates the conservation priority of each cell. Credit: Hoang et al. 2023.
