UVegan

Section 04

Environment

Food production is one of the largest human pressures on the planet, and animal foods account for an outsized share of it. The numbers in this section come from the strongest datasets available, named and linked, with honest hedges where estimates vary.

A bird's-eye view of patterned green and brown farmland stretching to the horizon.
Photo by Tom Fisk on Pexels
Environment 10 min

Why Animal Farming Needs So Much Land

Most of the world's farmland feeds animals, not people. The calorie math that explains why, from the strongest datasets.

Read on → Environment 9 min

The Water Footprint of Food, Compared to AI

Everyone is worried about AI's water use. Here is how it compares to what's on your plate, with named sources.

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The core dataset. Much of this section traces back to Poore & Nemecek 2018, a meta-analysis of about 38,700 farms published in Science, cross-checked against the IPCC land report and Xu et al. 2021 in Nature Food.