Food for thought - carbon footprint of rice

Since I started reading about meats and their carbon footprints, I figured I should check the carbon footprint for some of my favourite food.  I grew up eating rice, so I googled rice carbon footprint.  It was a huge surprirse to me when I found out that rice has a much higher carbon footprint comparing to beef on the same weight basis.  According to this article, rice contributes 24 times more greenhouse gases to the environment than even beef and per pound rice is equivalent of 276  5 to 35? pounds of CO2-equivilant! NOTE: the author of the above mentioned article has had several discussions with readers to verify the actual CO2-equivalent figures based o n various literature sources. In one discussion he realizes that the calculation was off by 100 times, but does not believe that a number approximately 1000x smaller is the “right” number. Follow his discussions here. There has yet to be a conclusion - the number he still believed would to be 5 and 35 lbs of CO2-equivalent per lb rice produced. Something I should really look into as well…..

It might be one thing to stop eating beef, but it’s not really possible for me to stop eating rice!!  

So why does rice have such a high carbon footprint?  It is because methane is produced during flooded rice cultivation by the decomposition of organic matter in the soil.  Details to the carbon footprint of rice cultivation can be found in the agriculture section of the 2009 Draft U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report.

So what can we do?  Apparently the most significant factor for methane release is related to the amount of water that the rice is grown under!  In some areas where rice fields are not flooded, no methane is created!  Similarly, if the water level is more than 1m (so called deepwater rice fields), methane production is also limited.  In other words, if rice production is from shallow flooding (which is most of the case), then the amount of methane and therefore its carbon footprint is much much more significant.  

As someone growing up eating rice, most of the time I am quite picky about the type of rice (long grain, short grain, and so on) than the type of rice farming!  I will need to do a bit more research to find out the carbon footprint of my favourite type of rice…

Food for thought - cheeseburger carbon footprint

This was reported quite a while ago by Jamais Cascio of Open the Future.  Definitely some food for thought…. the carbon footprint of a cheeseburger is approximately 3.6-6.1 kg of CO2-equivalent per burger, similar to driving with 1L of gasoline.  Depending on the fuel efficiency, that means about 10km of driving….  Isn’t that amazing?!  WOW….  

A friend and I have talked about developing food carbon labels for a while, i guess it is already being developed.  When will we be seeing them on the mainstream market?  I can’t wait =)

Food carbon footprint - more than just meat

This is a great graph!! Note the source: Bon Appétit Management Co. Foundation, Ecotrust at the Dahlhousie University and UC Davis. This graph was also in an article by Raoul Rañoa of Los Angeles Times.  You can see his article here.  Note that greenhouse gas emissions are measured in CO2-e, which are grams of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions.  The figure above given is per 6-ounce portion.  

Like yesterday’s posting - beef has a large carbon footprint; but it’s more interesting to see how much larger beef’s carbon footprint is comparing to some other food.

Another supporting document for saving climate change one piece of meat at a time!

Reducing climate change impacts one piece of meat at a time

I grew up in a Taoist society; even though I never understood the religion that well and was never really “religious”.  For a child, it was just part of our culture - we pray so many times a year, especially during Gods’ birthdays, and we (try to) eat vegetarian food on 1st and 15th of each lunar month.  Why two days a month?  I think it’s because most people can’t give up meat and just be a vegetarian…  But being a vegetarian is a good thing, for Taoist it’s to spare lives (of animals).  Now, there’re other reasons to reduce meat consumption!  It’s hard to go cold turkey with meat, but it is not that hard to reduce meat intake - one meal at a time.  Like Earth Hour, it could be something that we participate once a year to once every few months to once a month to more often!  

This is a great article by  Kathy Freston on Huffington Post with very interesting stats about the startling effects of going vegetarian for Just One Day. The stats are for US only.  I assume that the stats is based on the total population of approximately 300 Million.  Canada has roughly 10% of the US population, so it’s easy to do the math:

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:

• 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
• 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
• 70 million gallons of gas — enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
• 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;
• 33 tons of antibiotics.

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:

• Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
• 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;
• 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;
• Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.

There’re more stats on the original article:

• if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the CO2 equivalent savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads; and
•  switching from standard American diet to a vegan diet is more effective in the fight against global warming than switching from a standard American car to a hybrid.

I propose to establish “vegetarian days” like the Taoists to reflect on our behaviour to the earth and reduce climate change impacts one meal at a time.  What do you say?