North American Diets Require More Land Than We Have: Study

[sl8]

From https://news.uoguelph.ca/2018/08/north-american-diets-require-land-study/

North American Diets Require More Land Than We Have: Study

Thursday, August 9, 2018

If the global population adopted recommended North American dietary guidelines, there wouldn’t be enough land to provide the food required, according to a new study co-authored by University of Guelph researchers.

The researchers found that global adherence to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines would require one giga-hectare of additional land—roughly the size of Canada—under current farming practice. Their findings were published in PLOS ONE today.

“The data shows that we would require more land than what we have if we adopt these guidelines. It is unsustainable,” said Prof. Madhur Anand, director of the Global Ecological Change and Sustainability lab where the study was undertaken.

“This is one of the first papers to look at how the adoption of Western dietary guidelines by the global population would translate into food production, including imports and exports, and specifically how that would dictate land use and the fallouts of that,” she said.

...

More at link.

-----------------------------------------------------------

On edit:

Link to study:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0200781
Global land use implications of dietary trends

From study:

...
Data Availability: All of the data we used for the analysis are publicly available on the USDA website (https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2010/dietaryguidelines2010.pdf) and the UN FAO website (http://www.fao.org/faostat/en).
...

[tonyt53]

1. Gotta call BS on this one. The US farmers produce much more than the US consumes.

So much of the farmland in the US is dedicated solely to grain crops that are meant solely for export. Hundreds of thousands of acres. Most of the prime cropland in the US is being used only for that purpose.

[Wounded Bear]

2. Not to mention...

that much of our grain crop goes to feed animals, which might be considered inefficient.

I take it this was a global study, so the export part of the equation should probably be in the data.

[sl8]

3. They're saying that the U.S. standards aren't feasible on a global scale.

The U.S. has a lot of arable land (and the technology to extract the most from it) per capita. Not so for much of the rest of the world.

[tonyt53]

4. So, basically, the study is worthless.

[Igel]

6. Yup. They're saying their hypothetical scenario isn't sustainable.

Well, actually, it's sustainable in perpetuity since it's just a hypothetical.

[FiveGoodMen]

5. Pretty much everything is unsustainable with 7+ billion people

[hunter]

7. First I had to find a link to U.S. Dietary guidelines...

Maybe this:

https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/

[sl8]

8. That looks like it.

Actually your link seems to be to a newer version than what they used, 2015 vs. 2010.

Here are the sources they provided:

...
Data Availability: All of the data we used for the analysis are publicly available on the USDA website (https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2010/dietaryguidelines2010.pdf) and the UN FAO website (http://www.fao.org/faostat/en).
...

[cstanleytech]

9. The biggest problem is clearly the worlds population growth and frankly it needs to be curbed and

curbed greatly.
Now while I find it distasteful the simple fact is since to many people will not take the responsibility and curb their desire to breed maybe its time for the worlds governments to step in and do it for them.