"The US will need solar panels on 10.3M acres...to meet the goal of decarbonizing the economy by 2050."

That's less land than we use for ethanol production to supply ~5% of US transport fuel.

On most acres solar is 100x more land-efficient as bioenergy.
canarymedia.com/articles/solar… On the vast majority of the world's land, solar produces >100X the useable energy per acre as bioenergy.

Source: sustainablefoodfuture.org, Chapter 7.

The @FOLUCoalition has published a new report on regenerative agricultural practices and the importance of linking these practices to outcomes (including biodiversity, climate change mitigation, and yield) to guide decision-making. A quick thread: 1/
foodandlandusecoalition.org/knowledge-hub/… The report notes that although "regenerative agriculture" is attracting lots of interest, no universal definition exists. It (wisely IMO) does not advance yet another definition, but rather focuses on evidence around a dozen ag practices usually classified as "regenerative." 2/

NEW ARTICLE: GHG emissions from beef production were ~3 Gt CO2e in 2010, similar to India’s total annual emissions (the world’s 3rd-largest GHG emitter).

How can beef producers ⬇️ emissions, and how can purchasers encourage production with ⬇️ emissions?
wri.org/insights/oppor… Remember: to keep warming <1.5°C, the world needs to urgently reduce fossil fuel AND food/ag/land emissions, and emissions from both production (supply) AND consumption (demand).

So let's talk about reducing those beef production emissions. We highlight 4 main opportunities:

Global land use (13 billion hectares of ice-free land) in 100 emojis:

🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿
🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿
🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿
🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌾🌾🌾
🌾🌾🌾🌾🌾🌾🌾🌾🌾🌳
🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳
🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳
🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🏜🏜🏜
🏜🏜🏜🏜🏜🏜🏜🏜🏜🏙 Legend:

🌿 = pasture, used savannas and scrublands
🌾 = cropland
🌳 = forests
🟩 = unforested ecosystems with minimal human use
🏜 = other land (barren, rock)
🏙 = infrastructure

Each square = ~130 million hectares

Data for circa 2015.

Source: IPCC (2019), Figure 1.1.

Everyone wants to make agriculture regenerative.

What does that actually mean? @joefassler scratches below the surface and finds...#itscomplicated. thecounter.org/regenerative-a… Are we talking about scaling up specific agricultural practices? Are we talking about achieving broader outcomes? And are those outcomes purely environmental, or are they also economic and social and ethical? Depends who you ask:

Interesting article by @Sarah_Derouin about agroforestry in the US Midwest. Potential benefits mentioned include soil stabilization, water filtration/retention, diversification of revenue streams, C sequestration. Some pics of alley cropping/windbreaks: news.mongabay.com/2021/04/nuts-a… 1/ In the Peace Corps in Cameroon in the early 2000s I worked w/ farmers to promote alley cropping. One obstacle I often heard from farmers: planting trees can also mean planting less of what was "monocropped" before & farmers were hesitant to take land out of annual production. 2/

Time will tell, but I doubt the world will look back on 2020 as the year of “peak cow.” Still too many trends pushing global meat (including beef) demand upward—although 2020 may turn out to be a downward blip in consumption, as it was in GHG emissions.
cnbc.com/amp/2021/04/30… COVID created all kinds of market disruptions in 2020 (fao.org/3/ca9509en/CA9…). But remember the world is likely to add another 2 billion people between now and 2050, incomes will likely rise, cities will grow. Historically these are all associated with rising meat consumption.

Interesting article about tradeoffs b/t solar/wind expansion & conservation, due to land requirements. It's not trivial: recent Princeton study says net-zero might require >144M acres of land dedicated to wind/solar, an area larger than California! 1/2
latimes.com/business/story… I'd point out an additional comparison: solar is WAY more land-efficient than bioenergy. On most lands, solar would produce *100x* as much useable energy/acre vs. bioenergy. (US already dedicates >30M acres of cropland to ethanol, producing only 7% of US transport fuel.) 2/2

Can increasing carbon sequestration in soils—through practices broadly referred to as regenerative agriculture—be a leading climate solution? Our read of the evidence suggests that soil C sequestration has limited potential to mitigate climate change. 1/ wri.org/blog/2020/05/r… Although regenerative agriculture has no universal definition, it is often used to describe practices aimed at promoting soil health & restoring soil organic C.

Practices include no-till, cover crops, diverse crop rotations, improved grazing, and reduced chemical inputs. 2/

Thread: Delicious dishes from Cameroon 🇨🇲 with recipes. 1/ Ndole: often referred to as Cameroon’s national dish. Made with a bitter leaf, but spinach or other green will do in a pinch. Includes peanuts and meat or fish, can be eaten with plantains or another starch. africanbites.com/ndole/ 2/

Thread: You've probably heard of peak oil (hasn't happened yet). You may have heard of peak wild fish (happened in 1990s). But are we near peak beef? @davidfickling took a look at some of the trends. Below are a few thoughts. 1/
bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… @davidfickling It's clear that per capita beef consumption has peaked in places like the U.S. and Europe, where it's been declining since the 1970s (and largely replaced in diets by chicken). I discussed some of these trends here: wri.org/blog/2018/01/2… 2/

Hi @UN - great to see some advice on food-related climate action, but the best 2 rules of thumb to reduce diet-related emissions (in high-income countries) are minimizing food waste and eating a plant-rich diet: wri.org/blog/2017/10/t…. 1/

https://twitter.com/UN/status/1188622911080415235

@UN ~6% of global food GHGs from transport, so local food is not a leading climate strategy. science.sciencemag.org/content/360/63…

Re: organic, higher land use (lower yields) means GHGs can actually increase; halting deforestation while feeding 10B is a key challenge. advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/3/e1… 2/2

It's #ClimateWeek2019, so let's have a THREAD about carbon opportunity costs, since we can't keep warming below 2°C (let alone 1.5°) without halting deforestation - and probably reforesting large areas. How we produce and consume food has a large bearing on what's possible. 1/ In recent years, agriculture and associated land-use change have been responsible for roughly a quarter of total annual GHG emissions from all sectors. The data below are from 2010 (Source: sustainablefoodfuture.org). 2/

Thread: let's talk a bit more about the recent study that estimated the environmental impacts of U.S. food waste--and also included the finding that healthier diets actually result in higher amounts of food waste. 1/
wapo.st/2qHrTRN?tid=ss… First, the wasted resources are huge: an area of cropland the size of Pennsylvania (and that doesn't even count grazing land!), 4.2 trillion gallons of irrigation water, and 6 billion pounds of fertilizer each year. 1/4 of food (by weight) and 30% (by calories) wasted. Yikes! 2/