By the time the food we eat gets to our table, it has travelled a long way – from production, processing and distribution to all of us consumers.
“The food system is the biggest threat to biological diversity and one of the worst drivers of the climate crisis,” says Daniel Moran, a researcher at NTNU’s Department of Energy and Process Engineering.
Moran was lead author for a large study that has produced digital maps showing the pressure that the global food system exerts on the environment and climate.
“No one has done this before, and the mapping has been a gigantic task,” the researcher says. Moran collaborated with 16 researchers, including from the University of Leeds and the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Read more at: Norwegian University of Science and Technology
From beige (least) to red (most), the map shows the overall impact of food production on the environment. India and China exert the greatest pressure on the environment. The coastal areas of northern Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France have the greatest environmental impact in northern Europe. (Photo Credit: Halpern, B.S., Frazier, M., Verstaen, J. et al. The environmental footprint of global food production. Nat Sustain (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00965-x)