TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Lüdeke, Matthias K. B.
A1  - Rösser, Dominik E.
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Embodied crop calories in animal products
JF  - Environmental research letters
N2  - Increases in animal products consumption and the associated environmental consequences have been a matter of scientific debate for decades. Consequences of such increases include rises in greenhouse gas emissions, growth of consumptive water use, and perturbation of global nutrients cycles. These consequences vary spatially depending on livestock types, their densities and their production system. In this letter, we investigate the spatial distribution of embodied crop calories in animal products. On a global scale, about 40% of the global crop calories are used as livestock feed (we refer to this ratio as crop balance for livestock) and about 4 kcal of crop products are used to generate 1 kcal of animal products (embodied crop calories of around 4). However, these values vary greatly around the world. In some regions, more than 100% of the crops produced is required to feed livestock requiring national or international trade to meet the deficit in livestock feed. Embodied crop calories vary between less than 1 for 20% of the livestock raising areas worldwide and greater than 10 for another 20% of the regions. Low values of embodied crop calories are related to production systems for ruminants based on fodder and forage, while large values are usually associated with production systems for non-ruminants fed on crop products. Additionally, we project the future feed demand considering three scenarios: (a) population growth, (b) population growth and changes in human dietary patterns and (c) changes in population, dietary patterns and feed conversion efficiency. When considering dietary changes, we project the global feed demand to be almost doubled (1.8-2.3 times) by 2050 compared to 2000, which would force us to produce almost equal or even more crops to raise our livestock than to directly nourish ourselves in the future. Feed demand is expected to increase over proportionally in Africa, South-Eastern Asia and Southern Asia, putting additional stress on these regions.
KW  - crop products
KW  - animal calories
KW  - dietary patterns
KW  - livestock feed
KW  - gridded data
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/4/044044
SN  - 1748-9326
VL  - 8
IS  - 4
PB  - IOP Publ. Ltd.
CY  - Bristol
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Reusser, Dominik Edwin
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Embodied greenhouse gas emissions in Diets
JF  - PLoS one
N2  - Changing food consumption patterns and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been a matter of scientific debate for decades. The agricultural sector is one of the major GHG emitters and thus holds a large potential for climate change mitigation through optimal management and dietary changes. We assess this potential, project emissions, and investigate dietary patterns and their changes globally on a per country basis between 1961 and 2007. Sixteen representative and spatially differentiated patterns with a per capita calorie intake ranging from 1,870 to >3,400 kcal/day were derived. Detailed analyses show that low calorie diets are decreasing worldwide, while in parallel diet composition is changing as well: a discernable shift towards more balanced diets in developing countries can be observed and steps towards more meat rich diets as a typical characteristics in developed countries. Low calorie diets which are mainly observable in developing countries show a similar emission burden than moderate and high calorie diets. This can be explained by a less efficient calorie production per unit of GHG emissions in developing countries. Very high calorie diets are common in the developed world and exhibit high total per capita emissions of 3.7-6.1 kg CO2eq./day due to high carbon intensity and high intake of animal products. In case of an unbridled demographic growth and changing dietary patterns the projected emissions from agriculture will approach 20 Gt CO2eq./yr by 2050.
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062228
SN  - 1932-6203
VL  - 8
IS  - 5
PB  - PLoS
CY  - San Fransisco
ER  -