Many people are unaware of the enormous environmental impact that agriculture and food production have on our natural world. Let’s take a closer look at this problem.

Agriculture occupies fifty percent of the world’s livable land. Agriculture consumes 70% of the world’s freshwater, and food accounts for one-quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture is also to blame for 78 percent of freshwater and ocean eutrophication, which is defined as the contamination of water with nutrient-rich compounds. Agriculture has an impact on wildlife as well; livestock accounts for more than 90% of all mammalian biomass on the planet, excluding humans.

So what can we do? Well, animals require significantly more land than crops grown for human consumption. Even though livestock feed pastures and farms account for more than three-quarters of all agricultural land, they yield fewer than 20% of total calories consumed by people. Eating less meat and replacing it with plant-based alternatives could help reduce the number of livestock needed to feed the world’s population while also reducing environmental effect. For more on this, continue reading the resource below.