Could consumption of insects, cultured meat or imitation meat reduce global agricultural land use?
By Peter Alexander, Calum Brown, Almut Arneth, Clare Dias, J. Finnigan, D. Moran, Mark D. Rounsevell. 2017
323 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Animal products, i.e. meat, milk and eggs, provide an important component in global diets, but livestock dominate agricultural land use by area and are a major source of greenhouse gases. Cultural and personal associations with animal product consumption create barriers to moderating consumption, and hence reduced environmental impacts. Here we review alternatives to conventional animal products, including cultured meat, imitation meat and insects (i.e. entomophagy), and explore the potential change in global agricultural land requirements associated with each alternative. Stylised transformative consumption scenarios where half of current conventional animal products are substituted to provide at least equal protein and calories are considered. The analysis also considers and compares the agricultural land area given shifts between conventional animal product consumption. The results suggest that imitation meat and insects have the highest land use efficiency, but the land use requirements are only slightly greater for eggs and poultry meat. The efficiency of insects and their ability to convert agricultural by-products and food waste into food, suggests further research into insect production is warranted. Cultured meat does not appear to offer substantial benefits over poultry meat or eggs, with similar conversion efficiency, but higher direct energy requirements. Comparison with the land use savings from reduced consumer waste, including over-consumption, suggests greater benefits could be achieved from alternative dietary transformations considered. We conclude that although a diet with lower rates of animal product consumption is likely to create the greatest reduction in agricultural land, a mix of smaller changes in consumer behaviour, such as replacing beef with chicken, reducing food waste and potentially introducing insects more commonly into diets, would also achieve land savings and a more sustainable food system.
Subfields: Ecology, Food Science, Insect Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/286e07b929f66d77362e7730afce5e6632c2dc5d
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Citations in the corpus
- Considering Plant-Based Meat Substitutes and Cell-Based Meats: A Public Health and Food Systems Perspective (2020, background): “Comparisons which modeled conventional livestock feeds (Alexander et al., 2017) or soy and corn-derived inputs (Mattick et al.”
- Trade-offs between environment and livelihoods: Bridging the global land use and food security discussions (2017, unknown): “…scenarios are the replacement of meat products by insects, cultured meat or imitation meat, which could potentially reduce agricultural land demand by up to 38% based on current consumption levels of 2011, assuming a 50% replacement of meat products by these substitutes (Alexander et al. 2017).”
- Adaptation and development pathways for different types of farmers (2019, background): “Protein based on algae, fungus, legumes or insects can be produced at a fraction of the financial and environmental costs, of conventional livestock (Alexander et al., 2017).”
- Greedy or needy? Land use and climate impacts of food in 2050 under different livestock futures (2017, background): “…assumptions about the pace of technological advance and its commercial application, especially as it involves two novel technologies – large-scale production of cyanobacteria biomass and cell culturing (Alexander et al., 2017) – but worth including given the interest that the possibility attracts.”
- Potential Development of Sustainable 3D-Printed Meat Analogues: A Review (2021, background): “, mealworm larvae and adult crickets) on an equal weight basis [79].”
- The future of farming: Who will produce our food? (2021, background): “Fifth, current grain demands are strongly determined by meat consumption patterns, which are likely to change with dietary shifts and advances in nutritious and healthy meat alternatives (Rubio et al., 2020; Parodi et al., 2018; Alexander et al., 2017).”
- The Global Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus (2018, background): “However, imitation meats had relatively minor reductions in land use requirements compared to poultry and dairy, further emphasizing the importance of dietary change and waste reductions (Alexander et al., 2017).”