A plant-based diet, Credit, Harvard health

Recently, reports emerged about an agreement by nearly two hundred countries to help identify the nature of food production, with the deal calling for mobilizing $200 billion a year in the financing from the private sector, governments and philanthropy, as wealthy nations succumbed to the idea of spending $30 billion a year by 2030 to assist poorer nations protect and restore their ecosystem.

At same time, a report emerged not only saying  40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions stem from the current nature in the global food production, but also that it could prove benefiting if U.S.’s  50 million Catholics (about one-fifth of the American population) shunned  meat diets on Fridays, since such a move in Wales led to the estimated reduction of 55,000 tons of carbon annually, equal to 82,000 fewer people flying round-trip from London to New York over the course of a year.

At about the same time, a BBC report concluded that when it came to the reduction of people’s individual carbon emissions, an  important move to take include achieving food sustainability, especially as the nature of global food production accounted for 35 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

In other words, the nature of food production plays a huge role in the fall of people’s carbon emissions, and since meat and dairy productions largely get blamed for the global growth of greenhouse gas emissions, it becomes understandable why U.S. Catholics and others become mentioned in the debate.

Beef generates 49.9 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per 100 g of protein, with the protein from lamb and mutton producing the second highest amount of greenhouse gas footprints, resulting into 19.9 kg of carbon dioxide per 100 g. Cows and sheep belch methane when they digest food, but the global warming impact of methane comes at 84 times higher than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Beef and cattle milk on a commodity-basis bring the most emissions, contributing 41 percent and 20 percent respectively of the sector’s overall greenhouse gas emissions, excluding emissions from cow manure and cattle.

Apart from contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions, the nature of  food production led to 70 percent of freshwater usage, occupying 40 percent of the earth’s lands, thereby becoming one of the drivers of habitat loss. Animal production accounted for 57 percent of global food-related emissions, compared to 32 percent contributed by plant-based foods, with global liv