Photo by Michael Piazza / Styled by Catrine Kelty

Chances are that when you buy meat, you’re thinking about how far it traveled to get to your plate, how the animals were raised and whether they were treated with antibiotics and hormones. Maybe over the past few years, you’ve joined the Meatless Monday movement as part of your own efforts to eat less meat for personal health and a range of other reasons. While you’re not a vegetarian, you embrace the benefits of a plant-based diet, making you part of the generational wave in this country that’s moving meat off of the center of the plate. 

But even if you fit this description of a considerate meat-eater, you may still have questions about the connection between meat-eating and climate change. How can we continue to tweak our diets and change our consumption patterns in ways that will best serve our goals of reducing emissions and slowing the impact of a warming climate? 

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, livestock contribute 14.5% of overall emissions from human causes, with cows being raised for meat and dairy contributing 65% of those emissions. When they digest their food, cows emit methane, a greenhouse gas more powerful than CO2. 

Land use also has an impact on emissions—when forests are cut down to make way for agriculture (beef, soy, palm oil and wood are the primary culprits for the majority of deforestation around the world), carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Fewer forests also mean diminished ability for those trees to capture carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. 

And while plant-based diets have been on the rise in the U.S. in recent years, so has meat-eating—in North America and around the globe. Last year, the USDA projected that meat-eating in North America was about to hit an all-time high, with the average consumer projected to eat 222.2 pounds of meat and poultry in 2018. Combine this with rising global demand for meat and the outlook for reducing livestock-related emissions doesn’t seem promising. But there are still measures we can take. 

The first steps, if you haven’t taken them already, are to curb overall meat consumption and switch to sourcing your family’s meat from smaller-scale diversified farms. If food quality, animal welfare and supporting a regional farm economy were among your reasons for changing your meat-buying habits, you can add climate-friendliness to the list, as well. 

That’s because smaller scale, diversified farms use far fewer petroleum-based inputs (like fertilizer) and generate fewer fossil fuel emissions. Generally speaking, farmers practicing diversified and sustainable agriculture practice soil and water management, cover cropping and composting, and encourage biodiversity on their farms. Supporting these farmers is supporting the type of knowledge and expertise that can help communities build resiliency as the climate changes. 

If you’ve made this shift, you know that meat from smaller-scale farms that operate outside of industrial agriculture costs more money. So for many people who want to eat this type of meat, it often means eating less of it overall. But the cost difference can also drive a creative approach to eating animal protein—like saving meat-eating for special occasions; moving it away from the center of the plate (using it as a garnish or condiment as opposed to the main feature); or experimenting with buying whole animals and/or lesser-known cuts of meat, which gives farmers more flexibility in their operations and pricing. 

Overall, say researchers, if we make small changes with an eye to a larger, longer term cultural shift, we could make a significant impact reducing emissions from livestock and cutting down our contribution to climate change. 

Leigh’s climate-themed series will appear as online exclusives during the fall of 2019, culminating in an entire issue dedicated to the subject in February 2020. Sign up for our e-newsletters to be notified when each installment goes live.