Green Options

El Nino is blamed for changing rainfall patterns, and that, combined with inadequate harvests and increasing conflict has led to a drop in cereal production already affecting Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. This could increase the number of people relying on food aid.

There are more than a billion hungry people in the world today.

Mbonisi Tshuma, 23, eats meat almost every day of the week because he says a meal without meat is just not good enough.

“A meal without meat never tastes good that is why I eat meat everyday - meat is good, my friend,” he said.

Asked whether he would consider becoming vegetarian, Mbonisi said he would do so only if a gun were pointed to his head.

Like Mbonisi, many people around the world eat meat because it provides convenience, pleasure and in an age-old habit. Little do these people know that adopting a vegan diet could be one of the best ways to respond to what one writer refers to as arguably two of the world’s most urgent social issues: climate change and the food crisis.

It is one of the least discussed issues when we discuss solutions to the environmental crisis. It is not whether or not the food is organic or sprayed with synthetic chemicals, or whether or not it is grown locally. The underdiscussed issue is the importance of a vegetarian diet for addressing critical environmental issues.

As Albert Einstein said, “Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”

The big issue today is global climate change. It is likely to dwarf any environmental issues we faced in the past. As reported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization:

[T]he livestock sector is a major stressor on many ecosystems and on the planet as a whole. Globally it is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases…. It currently amounts to about 18 percent of the global warming effect — an even larger contribution than the transportation sector worldwide.

This is a critical issue. This is more critical than our power plants, our industries, the energy efficiency of our homes and appliances, or even transportation.

The FAO’ Food Security Summit, recently held in Rome, gathered together the international community to discuss about the state of poverty around the world. In 1996 the Millennium Goal aimed to cut by half the number of hungry people by 2015, then estimated at 800 million; today the goal is not only far from the original prediction but other 50 million are suffering. We need more food, we have to increase the production and Europe is starting to look at GMO cultivations to face this global crisis.

A worrying alarm arrives now from the Italian Farmers Association (CIA): mass amounts of food is sitting and rotting in their fields because sale prices don’t cover all of the costs of production. The result is a 1.5 million of tons wasted every year and 4 billion of Euro frittered away. All this with rising costs for Italian consumers and farmers.