🍋How f***** up is our food system?

Read time: 3 minutes 14 seconds

Hi friend👋,

Happy Friday morning and welcome to the FIRST edition of the VITAMIN C newsletter (I’m excited!)

Over 500 of you signed up already - so many trailblazers united, what an honor!

I’m calling this newsletter the espresso shot of food and climate insights – quick, potent, and possibly the best part of your morning ☕️🌱.

So, grab a coffee and let’s go:

In today’s issue:

1. [Insights]: 📈 How f**** up is our food system?

2. Fast Snacks:

   - [Tool]: 🤖 AI librarian in your pocket

   - [Study]: 🥬 Don’t call it vegan

   - [Market map]: 🌍 Biodiversity startups  

3. [Motivation]: 💪You are never too old  

1. [Insights]: 📈How f***** up is our food system?

We’ve all heard it before: Our current food system is messed up! But what does that actually mean in numbers?

Here are some of the key statistics I often refer to, and thought would be useful to share with you:  

1.1 🛑 GHG emissions:

Our global food system is responsible for 20-37% of global greenhouse emissions. Some of the most often quoted sources are:

• 20% from Breakthrough Energy’s State of Transition (2023)

• 24% from Project Drawdown (2023)

• 26% from Poore and Nemecek, Science Magazine (2019)

• 34% from Crippa, Nature Food (2021)

• 21-37% from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2019)

Why do these figures vary?

Because of the different attribution models. Some potential differentiators are:

•  Food waste and emissions from cooking: Are they included or not?

• Land use: What part of deforestation is attributed to agriculture?

• Non-food agri products like cotton, wool or leather: Are they included or not?

—> For simplification, I personally blend the studies above and say that 30% of GHG emissions are attributable to our food system.

1.2 🛑 Biodiversity loss:

We often refer to biodiversity by another name - nature. It is the rich variety of living plants, animals and fungi and their homes - forests, grasslands, oceans, rivers.

Picture mother nature as a bank account, and now image making some serious withdrawals. That is what our food system is doing. According to WWF, 70% of all biodiversity loss on land and 50% in freshwater are due to our food system (WWF 2020).

1.3 🛑 Deforestation: 

75%+ of the forests that are being cut down in Asia, South America and Africa are being converted to cropland or used for livestock grazing (FAO 2021).

1.4 🛑 Freshwater draining:

Freshwater resources are being drained faster than a desert thirst – we are using 70% of the globe’s freshwater reserves for food (FAO 2017).

1.5 🛑 Food waste:

30% of good food is being tossed out every year (FAO 2019). That's like throwing your wallet in the bin every third grocery run.

In total, we waste 1.3 billion tons of edible food each year. That is 313 kg food waste per second.

→ So, now that we know these figures, what do we do?

If we want to solve the ecological crisis, we need a radical transformation of our global food system.

And that transformation will take the entire village - from activists to politicians, from startups to corporates, from consumers to investors.

We need:

• Activists to generate attention

• Politicians to drive regulation

• Start-ups to develop and launch new technologies

• Corporates to adapt those technologies and bring them to scale

• Consumers to change their purchasing behavior

• Public & private funding to generate the financial basis for innovation

It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation that is only going to work if we stop elbowing each other out of the way and do the heavy lifting together.

2. Today’s fast snacks

• [Tool]: 🤖 ChatGPT is great, but have you tried Perplexity.ai? It's like a librarian in your pocket. Perplexity considers itself an “answer engine” rather than a “search engine”. Why do I like it so much?  Unlike ChatGPT it does not use any forums, but entries from Google Scholar, Google Books and credible websites. It’s a great way to collect scientific sources - which must be double-checked of course.

• [Study]: 🥬 What’s the secret to getting people to eat more plant-based foods? A recent study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology suggests that people are more likely to choose a meat-free option if it's not labelled vegan.

• [Market map]: 🌍 Planet A Ventures created a treasure map for Europe's startup biodiversity heroes - check it out here.

3. [Motivation]: 💪You are never too old

We are never too old to take action.

If Margot Friedländer at 102 and Jane Goodall at 89 can stand up for the people and our planet, so can we!

That’s it for today!

Cheers, Lia