By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Kathleen Shannon for Wyoming News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

From slogans like “Where’s the beef?” to cheeseburgers on the Fourth of July, beef has long played an outsized role in American culture. Yet a growing body of evidence has found that beef is driving climate pollution and environmental destruction, and America eats more of it than anyone. Leading research institutions have advised Americans to decrease their beef consumption — but is beef consumption in the U.S. actually headed in the right direction?

“It’s pretty much universal across the peer reviewed scientific literature that we urgently need to curb agricultural greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the most catastrophic climate change scenarios,” Brent Kim, faculty scientist at the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University, tells Sentient. “One of the biggest and fastest ways we can achieve that is by cutting back on the amount of beef and milk that is produced.”

A Brief History of Beef Consumption in the U.S.

Cows aren’t native to the Americas, so beef wasn’t consumed in North America prior to colonization. This changed with the arrival of Europeans, who imported cows to the New World. American farmers and soldiers cleared land to make way for large beef ranches, displacing and killing Indigenous people and native bison in the process.

Over time, European immigrants came to the newly formed United States in increasing numbers, bringing with them a preference for meat when they could afford it. American farming and supply chains developed over time to meet that demand, and now, large swaths of land in the U.S. are dedicated to cattle ranching and industrial feedlots.

Why We Need to Eat Less Beef

Researchers at the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization have urged people in high-income countries to eat less beef, and there’s a good reason for that: it’s a major contributor to climate change.

Cows emit massive amounts of methane, one of the “big three” greenhouse gasses, through their burps and manure. In fact, nearly a third of all greenhouse gas emissions come from food production — and most of that is from cows.

Beef consumption in the U.S. also helps drive beef production, both here in and in countries that are clearing forests and other wild landscapes to meet this demand. Beef is the leading driver of deforestation worldwide, which releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, and is thus a major source of global warming. The mass removal of forested land also destroys the natural habitats that countless creatures rely on; it’s estimated that 135 species of plant, animal and insect go extinct every day due to deforestation around the world.

What Will Happen If We Don’t Eat Less Meat

Continuing to eat beef at this scale will have long term consequences. Kim points to a comprehensive 2023 study that found that food consumption alone could increase global temperatures by 1 degree Celsius by 2100, and that 75 percent of this increase would be attributable to foods that are significant sources of methane, like beef. Life will continue with that degree of warming, but it will be far less comfortable in some places and downright miserable in others.

How Much Beef Do Americans Eat?

When it comes to beef consumption in the U.S., there’s good news and bad news.

The good news is that Americans eat a lot less beef now than 50 years ago. That’s largely because Americans shifted to chicken in that time period, which became incredibly cheap at the expense of welfare for farmed birds. But back to beef.

In 1974, per-capita beef consumption in the U.S. was around 117 pounds; this began to decrease in the mid-1980s, however, and since 2008, Americans have been eating less than 90 pounds of beef every year on a per-capita basis. That’s a significant reduction.

The bad news is that America still eats more beef than any other country in the world — around 13.82 million tons every year, according to UN data. Even China, which has more than four times as many people as the U.S., consumes less total beef every year.

America also produces more beef than any other country in the world, with Brazil in a close second.

As we’ll see in a moment, a small subset of countries consume a disproportionate amount of the world’s beef, and this dynamic holds true in America itself as well: A 2023 study found that just 12 percent of Americans consume over half of all beef in the country.

How Does Beef Consumption in the U.S. Compare to the Rest of the World?

Behind the U.S., the country that eats the most beef is China, which consumed around 12.35 million tons in 2022. 

Just two nations, the U.S. and China, eat a little less than half of all beef that’s produced globally — but China has over 1.4 billion people, while the U.S. has 340 million, and still eats more beef.

The Problem of Rising Beef Consumption in China

China’s beef consumption is still concerning, especially when looking at long-term trends. Whereas per-capita beef consumption in the U.S. has fallen over the decades, it has skyrocketed in China, leaping from just under half a pound in 1972 to over 17 pounds in 2022. Importantly, this growth hasn’t been due to some one-off event that caused a sudden spike in beef consumption; rather, it’s been continuous and steady over time, and analysts expect it to keep rising.

And that’s a big problem. Sure, the average person in China still eats much less beef per year than the average American — but because China’s population is so much bigger, even a modest increase in beef consumption will have a huge effect on overall beef production.

For instance, suppose China’s beef consumption rose from 17 pounds to 30 pounds per-capita. The country would still be eating only around half as much beef as America on a per-person basis, but because its population is so large, this modest rise in personal consumption would cause total beef consumption in the country to reach 21 million tons — almost twice that of the U.S.

Meat Consumption in Argentina

Something worth noting is that although the United States consumes more beef in total than any other country, Argentina eats the most beef on a per-capita basis. The fact that Argentina has around one-seventh the population of the U.S. makes this less of a problem in global terms, though, and highlights the fact that if we truly want to bring beef consumption down to sustainable levels, the onus is really on the countries that consume the most beef on a total basis — that is, the U.S., China and Brazil.

To illustrate this, let’s look a bit closer at Argentina and the United States. In 2022, Argentina consumed a little over 2 million tons of beef in total and 101 pounds per capita, while Americans ate 12.9 million tons of total beef and 83 pounds per capita. This means that the average Argentinian was eating more beef every year than the average American.

But because Argentina’s population is so much smaller, the country has much less of an opportunity to make a global impact by changing its consumption habits. If the average Argentinian cut their beef consumption in half, this would reduce global beef consumption by around one million tons per year. But if the average American reduced their beef consumption by just 20 percent, this would bring down global beef consumption by over 2.5 million every year — a much larger impact requiring a much smaller change.

The Bottom Line

It’s clear that the United States needs to reduce its beef consumption. But the burdens aren’t exactly equal. “When we’re talking about reductions in animal product intake, it’s not a universal prescription for all countries,” Kim says. “There are low- and middle-income countries that have high rates of malnourishment and stunting, and something as small as increasing their animal product intake by one egg a day could play a dramatic role in preventing many of the lifelong impacts of stunting.”

At the end of the day, almost half of all beef is consumed in America or China. If we want to bring down beef consumption in a meaningful way, these are the first places that need to start finding alternative sources of protein.


Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Dawn Attride for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mark Richardson for Arkansas News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

It's no secret that industrial animal agriculture is draining our planet's resources and is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions - responsible for somewhere between 12 and nearly 20 percent of climate pollution. On a personal level, reducing meat consumption and adapting to a plant-forward diet are one of the most effective forms of climate action. When it comes to more systemic solutions however, lawmakers and development banks have favored interventions that tend to be tech-based, or human manufactured. These solutions, like dairy digesters that convert manure into biogas, or synthetic feed additives that reduce methane emissions from livestock, also tend to be hotly contested by a certain swath of environmentalists.

While such technologies promise to curb emissions, the reality is not so simple - and they also may do little to combat agriculture's stress on water, soils and biodiversity. These strategies often don't address issues like soil health or the deforestation of land - at least not directly.

A new report makes the case that the best way forward may lie in investing in nature-based solutions, rather than technological ones. The findings were published by The Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return Initiative (FAIRR), an investor network covering risks and opportunities in the global food system.

Investing in Nature Take Time, but Benefits Ecosystems

A nature-based solution uses natural techniques and ecosystems to address environmental challenges, such as planting trees or restoring wetlands to capture carbon.

The new FAIRR report is the "first of its kind" in developing a framework to attract investment for long-term climate solutions in a way that considers the whole planet holistically, Sajeev Mohankumar, senior technical specialist of climate and biodiversity at FAIRR, tells Sentient.

"Industrial farming produces more calories and produces more product per unit area because they are so efficient and their only goal is to maximize profit. But what we wanted to emphasize in this report is that that is not the only system of agriculture -- it also has to deliver for the animals in terms of welfare, human health and planetary health. That's where nature-based solutions come into play," he says.

FAIRR evaluated 22 on-farm interventions (12 nature-based, 10 tech-based) often cited to address agriculture's climate and nature risks. They found that nature-based solutions such as hedgerows (rows of shrubs that act as a carbon sink and reduce soil erosion) and silvopasture (integrating trees into grazing pastures) had a greater positive impact collectively on emissions reductions, biodiversity, freshwater use and the flow of nutrients across ecosystems. "Nature-based interventions can deliver 37 percent of the mitigation required to meet 2030 climate targets, along with significant nature co-benefits," the report states.

Nature-based solutions are touted as offering more holistic rewards, but can take time to show impact, which can be difficult to sell to investors. "I think there is a lack of knowledge in terms of connecting some of the financial returns to environmental outcomes," Mohankumar says. "This involves changing the behavior of farmers and tying them into a long-term contract...it takes a long time to yield benefits."

For example, technology like synthetic animal feed additives reduce methane emissions from livestock by roughly 10-30 percent, but offer few co-benefits for nature. Hedgerows, by comparison, reduce emissions but also have positive environmental benefits, such as reducing soil erosion and curbing nutrient runoff into water. On the other hand, hedgerows need to be planted in large quantities, and require a long timescale of up to 10 years to sequester significant amounts of carbon.

A Ticking Climate Clock Requires Thoughtful Solutions

Nature-based solutions have another added benefit: they tend to boost climate resilience, often in a more cost-effective way, according to a recent review of over 100 peer-reviewed articles. Sixty-five percent of studies found that nature-based solutions were better at reducing disaster risk, and 71 percent of studies found that they were more cost-effective than tech-based ones.

Currently, the majority of on-farm intervention investment flows toward technological advances, which, FAIRR says is "concerning." This is because tech-based climate interventions "are more likely to be aligned with intensive livestock production practices, and lead only to incremental emissions reductions relative to the long-term systemic changes from implementing nature-based interventions." In other words, these solutions cut down on emissions a little, without addressing the problems caused by industrial food systems, like poor animal welfare or water pollution.

Not every climate researcher sees a clear preference for technology or nature-based solutions. Sentient asked Richard Waite, director for Agriculture Initiatives, Food, Land and Water Program at the World Resources Institute (WRI), to take a look at FAIRR's research, with which he was not involved. Waite was a co-author of a 2019 report from WRI that recommended a suite of solutions to meet the challenge of feeding even more people on the planet - 9.7 billion by 2050 - without draining natural resources and driving up global temperatures to an unhealthy degree.

"This report looks at many interventions that are commonly cited when talking about reducing agriculture's impacts on climate and nature. It recommends more investment in nature-based solutions, while also noting that such interventions may lower food production," Waite tells Sentient.

"In our world of increasing food demand linked to agricultural expansion and deforestation," says Waite, "we must be very careful to assess any tradeoffs related to shifting to agricultural systems or practices that produce less food and require more land."

When it comes to food systems, tradeoffs can have significant consequences. For instance, shifting a factory farm to a regenerative beef operation could mean more space for farm animals to roam. That sounds like a better scenario for farm animals. But research has also shown that regenerative cattle ranches use twice as much land to produce the same amount of food. If Americans and other Global North populations were to continue to eat meat at even close to the same levels they do now, there is simply not enough farmland to shift all industrial farms to regenerative operations. And trying to make that shift would undoubtedly result in more emissions and more deforestation.

For Waite and WRI, a mix of solutions is key. "Our own research suggests that both tech-based and nature-based solutions will be essential to feeding 10 billion people by 2050, while protecting nature and the climate."

The Bottom Line

Fierce debates over climate solutions seem to be going strong, yet global temperatures - and food system emissions - continue to be heading in the wrong direction. If countries are serious about meeting their climate goals, they will likely need to consider comprehensive solutions that account for impacts to both climate and nature.


Dawn Attride wrote this article for Sentient.


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A recent poll by the National Wildlife Federation showed Texas farmers and ranchers benefit from voluntary conservation programs from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and many would like to see the programs expand.

Respondents said the funding helps improve their bottom line and protect soil and water.

Aviva Glaser, senior director of agriculture policy for the federation, said Texas producers use the programs in various ways.

"Prescribed grazing and brush management and range planting were very popular practices," Glaser pointed out. "There's been the Working Lands for Wildlife program that has helped with the Monarch butterfly decline through voluntary measures the farmers (and) ranchers are doing with the help of this funding."

She noted only 5% of the more than 500 farmers and ranchers polled disagree with increasing long-term funding from the USDA.

Almost 70% of producers said designating funds specifically to help farmers adopt climate smart agriculture practices is a good use of federal money.

Glaser pointed out the wildlife federation has created a mapping tool which shows how much federal funding each state has received and outlines how farmers and ranchers are using it.

"That could be a range of different practices," Glaser observed. "Practices like cover crops or grazing management or it could be a conservation easement. It could be putting in a buffer strip."

More than eight in 10 producers support passage of a new Farm Bill. The legislation is supposed to be renewed every five years but the last version was passed in 2018.

By Nina B. Elkadi for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Trimmel Gomes for Florida News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration.

In a new paper, University of Miami Professor Jennifer Jacquet and a team of researchers argue that the industry-funded National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) knew about the harms of beef production on climate change as early as 1989 and worked to obfuscate the science. In a subsequent paper, Jacquet and post-doctoral associate Loredana Loy trace how trade groups worked to incite doubt that consumers could make a difference, by choosing to eat less meat, on global climate emissions. There is some evidence, albeit indirect, that these efforts have paid off - a 2023 public poll of 1,404 U.S. adults found 74 percent of them said not eating meat would have little or no impact on climate change.

"Meat and dairy does not want the individual or the consumer to think they have any power, or to think that their choices make a difference at all," Jacquet tells Sentient. "They're constantly saying what you do as a consumer will not make a difference. 'Eating less meat and dairy will not make a difference.'"

Yet a large body of climate research from nonpartisan research groups like the World Resource Institute and EAT-Lancet have concluded that dietary change, in the form of reducing meat consumption, is a necessary component of reducing the anthropogenic effects of climate change.

In a parallel to Naomi Oreskes's and Eric Conway's Merchants of Doubt, which details how a group of scientists worked to incite doubt around scientific topics such as anthropogenic climate change and the harmful effects of tobacco, Jacquet's and Loy's research describes how the meat and dairy industry worked to create doubt that consumers can take action to address the harmful effects of beef on the environment. "I call them the moo-chants of doubt," Jacquet says.

In their other paper, Jacquet and her fellow researchers trace how this stems from a history of recognizing, then downplaying, the effects of the beef industry on global warming.

"There is a long, well-documented history of industry attempts to downplay, discredit and even outright deny science that demonstrates the harms of its activities and products. This strategy was honed to a fine art by the tobacco industry; the beef industry now appears to be following the tobacco model," Oreskes wrote to Sentient.

The question that underlies the research investigating the impacts of industry funding is just how much free will consumers have in their decision-making - especially if the information they receive is flawed.

Trade groups like the NCBA are funded by industry checkoffs, which farmers who sell the commodity pay into on each unit they sell. The checkoff industry is a pot of money worth over $1 billion, and is used for researching and marketing the commodity. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that a commodity program would work to make its commodity look good. But the result, in this case, Jacquet argues, is a misinformed public.

How the Beef Industry Funded Research

In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization published a report highlighting the impact of animal agriculture on greenhouse gas emissions. In it, the researchers found that the livestock sector is "responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions," which is a higher share than that of the transportation sector. The report ultimately warns against continuing on with "business as usual."

In response to this report, Jacquet et al. write, the beef industry commissioned studies to downplay these findings. In 2009, the NCBA gave University of California Davis Professor Frank Mitloehner a grant to investigate the claims made in the FAO report. Throughout his career, Mitloehner has received millions of dollars of industry funding, Jacquet writes, from corporations and trade groups like the NCBA, the National Pork Board and Eli Lilly, funding that was not always disclosed and that in part funded communications efforts to defend the industry.

Jacquet became interested in the origins of the grant, and its goals, and began digging deeper into NCBA archives. Through her archival work, she discovered that climate change was on the industry's radar long before the FAO report, and that the industry was building plans on how to counter claims that reducing meat consumption could have an impact on the environment.

Documented Obstruction

One of the documents Jacquet uncovered was a 1989 NCBA (then NCA) "Strategic Plan on the Environment," which acknowledged global warming and the great impact it could have on the industry. The recommendations set out in the plan include taking "a leadership role in positively influencing legislation and regulations," as well as a campaign to reach "influencers," then defined as media and educators, as well as lawmakers and the leadership of environmental organizations.

The public relations part of the plan mentions "vegetarian messaging" - messaging that encourages consumers to eat less meat - and included one strategy that recommended establishing "a system for monitoring the media and environmentalist advocacy groups actions."

In 1992, a campaign spearheaded by the Beyond Beef Coalition singled out "beef production as a major source of global warming" and encouraged consumers to decrease their beef consumption by 50 percent. The industry fought back with a campaign of its own, Loy and Jacquet write, urging consumers not to blame cows for climate change.

While fighting one campaign with another campaign seems like par for the course in public relations, Loy and Jacquet write that the NCA also urged radio and T.V. producers to refrain from publicizing campaigns like "Diet for a New America" (1990), and funded academic research at Texas A&M to rebut claims made in the Diet for a New America book, such as "it takes 40 times more fossil fuels to produce one pound of protein from feedlot beef than from wheat."

"They emphasized that individuals would not make a difference, and they also obstructed the sort of public understanding of the role of cows and climate change significantly," Jacquet says.

When asked for a response on the conclusion of these two most recent papers, Chief Executive Officer of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, Colin Woodall, wrote to Sentient: "The author of these papers takes significant liberties with the information available to her. Correcting misinformation with science-based data, is just one of the essential roles of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, one for which we are unapologetic. The Environmental Protection Agency has calculated beef's actual greenhouse gas emissions at just 2.3 percent of U.S. emissions. Meaning that any effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by lessening beef consumption would be inconsequential. Any suggestion to the contrary is irresponsible."

The trade group frequently cites the 2.3 percent figure, which is accurate, but missing important context, according to climate researchers who study food-related emissions. Focusing solely on U.S. emission percentages is misleading, writes Princeton University researcher Tim Searchinger "because overall U.S. emissions are so high." Per capita, these same emissions would be 24 percent "of an average European's total emissions and roughly all per capita emissions in sub-Saharan Africa." Also left out of this figure is just how much beef the average U.S. consumer eats - three times more than the global average.

Imagining a Different World

Changing your diet is one of the few things that an individual consumer can do to impact the climate, Jacquet tells Sentient. As household actions go, shifting to a plant-forward diet is one of the most effective, according to a 2021 study from Project Drawdown.

Reduced meat consumption helps curb how many cows are raised for food. Beef has an outsized climate impact due to the methane they burp into the atmosphere and the massive amounts of land and feed crops required over the course of their lifetime. And cutting back would also have other carbon benefits such as reverting pastureland back to forest and other wild landscapes, which helps keep carbon emissions out of the atmosphere.

Despite the relative consensus on the role of dietary shifts that emerged around 2018, industry misinformation has made its way to most of the public. In their paper, Loy and Jacquet write that "at least part of the reason for civil society's diminished ambition and hesitation to advocate for dietary change as a climate mitigation strategy was due to strategic opposition by the animal agriculture industry."

Through the 2000s and into the 2010s, trade organizations were still working against campaigns that encourage eating less beef, Loy and Jacquet argue. In 2021, Colorado governor Jared Polis declared a 'Meat Out Day' and encouraged residents to lessen their meat consumption. The Colorado Cattlemen's Association organized against this, resulting in 26 Colorado counties signing "Meat In" proclamations. The Governor then back-pedalled and declared one day 'Colorado Livestock Proud Day' the following week.

The industry campaigns and funding have been so effective in changing public perception, Jacquet and Loy argue, that they have influenced governmental policy and guidance.

"There's never been a huge buy-in on behalf of the government to address consumption," Jacquet says. The Biden administration's 2023 plan to reduce methane emissions did not mention reducing beef consumption once, for instance. "There's a lot of talk about tweaking production methods, very similar to how it is now with feed additives. Not about reducing head counts, by the way, but about proving efficiency. That is the grand narrative, I think, that we are all operating under."


Nina B. Elkadi wrote this article for Sentient.


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