The answer: China must take responsibility for developing sustainable international trade, according to scientists and economists from around the world – including Cornell’s Mario Herrero. Their research published Oct. 18 in the journal Nature Sustainability.
Demand for food – notably livestock products and feed – is accompanied by an increase of greenhouse gas emissions, threatening the world’s collective greenhouse gas draw-down efforts.
“The Chinese demand for livestock products is significantly increasing,” said food systems expert Herrero, the Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences, Department of Global Development, in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and a scholar in the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.
The environmental footprint of Chinese demand, goes beyond the land in China.
This new research found that additional agricultural land, in Australia or the United States and other countries, is effectively being exported to China in the form of global farm products.
Satisfying China’s appetite for livestock products – which range from an increase of 16% to 30% across all the scientific and economic scenarios – will require about 7.5 million to 30 million more acres of pasture between 2020 and 2050. That will result in up to a 16% increase in agricultural greenhouse gas emissions among international partners.