Decarbonizing Protein: Three Levers That Could Transform the Industry

The challenge of decarbonizing the world’s food production systems comes with an unsavory combination of trends: Though the global production of food generates 21% of global greenhouse gas emissions (even without accounting for transportation, packaging, or refrigeration), this massively important and carbon-intensive sector receives a paltry 3% of total global climate investment. 

“If all emissions outside of food went down to zero tomorrow, we still would not be on pace to reach even a two-degree target,” notes Kevin Karl, a research associate at Columbia University’s Center for Climate Systems Research. “We simply cannot leave emissions from food systems untouched. It’s an important part of the future of a sustainable climate.” 

Part of the explanation for the underinvestment in food system decarbonization may be, ironically, a preponderance of possible solutions. The growing number of potential paths forward has led to a lack of strong support for any of them — and plenty of heated disagreement about which to prioritize. 

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A subset of these solutions focuses on expanding the accessibility and uptake of “alternative meats,” which are made from plant-based proteins, fermentation processes, or lab-grown cultivation. Brands with name recognition in this category include plant-based protein pioneers Beyond Meat, founded in 2009, and Impossible Foods, founded in 2011, both of which are among more than 1,300 alternative protein companies globally, according to the Good Food Institute. Despite the growing number of companies in the space, alternative meats currently account for less than 1% of the global protein supply — and unlike the alternative dairy players, alternative meat companies have struggled to expand their customer base. 

A distinctly different set of solutions takes for granted that animal agriculture will continue, with proponents arguing that the sector’s environmental impact can be significantly curtailed through the use of better agricultural practices. To be sure, the environmental impact of animal agriculture has been profound: While roughly 35% of global protein comes from livestock, the sector emits a disproportionate 60% of emissions from the global food system. What’s more, livestock-derived proteins are linked to half of all global deforestation as well as extensive water use. 

Of course, livestock production methods vary widely, points out Walter Baethgen, senior research scientist and director of the Regional and Sectoral Research program in the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at the Columbia University Climate School. “Are you talking about something that is completely unsustainable or about a production system that is maintaining biodiversity and has a relatively low carbon footprint?” he says. “It’s not about the what; it’s about the how it’s being produced.” 

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Compounding the complexity of the problem in food systems is the strong emotional and cultural components inherent in any discussion of what’s on the dinner table. Many people bristle at the suggestion of nixing the meat from their favorite family recipes and worry about the nutritional implications of food production changes. What’s more, the food-linked problems likely to be top of mind vary dramatically across geographic and class contexts. In richer communities, for example, people tend to overindulge in animal-derived products, while in poorer ones, nutrient-dense provisions — including meat — remain scarce.

A myopic focus on emissions reduction in food production could be short-sided — and likely harmful — say many of the experts dedicated to improving the sector’s sustainability. They point out that climate priorities should be acknowledged as inexorably linked with other priorities of utmost importance, like ensuring access to nutritious and affordable food for a growing global population and protecting farmers’ livelihoods. 

Amid much disagreement about the top goals and viable solutions for the world’s food production problems, top experts agree on a few key points: the necessity of enhancing human nutrition, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, restoring ecosystems degraded by agriculture, and generally improving the efficiency of protein production. 

In a recent daylong workshop convened by CBS’s Climate Knowledge Initiative, 10 of the world’s foremost experts on improving the sustainability of protein production discussed these points of agreement — as well as their many areas of divergence. In the discussion, three key levers for change emerged: productivity improvements, policy and financing tools, and consumer choice.  

Key Lever No. 1: Improving efficiency and productivity in protein production globally could benefit both profit margins and the planet.

In very different ways, both animal agriculture and alternative protein production will need to find creative, large-scale means of improving their efficiency — and therefore, their carbon intensity and economics. 

Livestock Agriculture

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On the livestock agriculture side, productivity improvements can lower methane emissions from animals by increasing the efficiency of converting resources (such as feed, pastures, and water) into animal-based protein. These approaches include herd vaccination and other disease prevention measures, improving animal health, selective breeding, and optimizing animal diets with less land- and water-intensive animal feed.   

A workshop participant pointed to a 2023 report from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization that assessed greenhouse gas emissions from livestock systems, noting that some of the report’s top suggestions for lowering the GHG intensity of these systems, like improving animal welfare and improving breeding practices, “actually have an altruistic and economic benefit.” They added, “Improving the economics of the food system, improving producer livelihoods, expanding food availability and affordability — there’s going to be a natural uplift and uptake from these practices.” 

Ruaraidh Petre, executive director of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, echoed this optimism about the self-reinforcing benefits of productivity improvements. He emphasized one of them in particular:

“In my opinion, the biggest thing we can start doing for livestock is getting the animals’ health sorted.” He cited data from an Oxford Analytica report that found a 60% global livestock vaccination rate would yield a productivity increase of 52.5% (compared to a 0% vaccination rate). “If we could get to 60% or more, we could reduce herd size significantly and still feed far more people,” Petre said, adding that even a 40% vaccination rate would be associated with a 5.2% reduction in land required for producing beef. 

An important caveat to solutions focused on vaccinations and other productivity increases is the fact that high-income countries like the United States already have high livestock vaccination rates and general farm efficiency; it’s in low- and middle-income countries where these types of improvements can represent the greatest potential.  

Jessica Fanzo, professor of climate and director of the Food for Humanity Initiative at the Columbia Climate School, cited this point as well, noting that while high-income countries have plenty of their own changes to make in food systems and policy, low- and middle-income countries can make great progress by focusing on productivity and animal health.

“For these countries, it’s about not making the same mistakes that other countries have made in our unsustainable food systems,” Fanzo said. “How can they take some of these technologies and potentially grow their livestock sector so there’s more access, without it becoming completely unsustainable?” 

Alternative Proteins

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Efficiency concerns and possible solutions take on dramatically different shapes in the alternative protein space — though, unsurprisingly, a key overlap is the need to get the economics right. 

Could productivity improvements in food systems also mean completely rethinking what land productivity means in the context of farming? One champion of this approach is Patrick Brown, founder of Impossible Foods and professor emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University. Brown pointed to the disastrous biodiversity and ecosystem loss that has resulted from clearing lands for livestock. He said he believes that “anything we do to make the food system less destructive involves freeing up land that’s currently devoted to animal agriculture” — roughly 80% of all agricultural land, which, in total, covers half of the earth’s human-habitable surface.

“That’s an area that really needs a tremendous amount of investment and research, to figure out how to restore functional, biodiverse, carbon-sequestering ecosystems on land degraded by animal agriculture,” Brown added. He stressed that — unlike certain types of carbon emissions, like those from fossil fuels — the GHG and other environmental impacts of animal agriculture are largely reversible. “If you allow those ecosystems to recover on that land, you not only put the brakes on the ecodiversity collapse, but you’re actually turning back the clock on global heating.”

Policy drivers that incentivize the restoration of degraded pasturelands are slowly emerging. One such driver, payments for ecosystem services (PES), represents a variety of mechanisms that can compensate livestock and other farmers to adopt sustainable practices in food production, thereby reducing their emissions and improving carbon sequestration. PES were introduced in the early 1990s and have become increasingly popular since then, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Brown believes a payment system along these lines could be applied to cattle ranchers, for example, who move away from food production and transition to ecosystem restoration. He noted it might be in their economic interest: Today, according to the USDA Census of Agriculture, more than 70% of U.S. beef cattle farmers lose money on their operations. And in the European Union, he added, the industry gets more than 100% of its income from subsidies. 

Some food system experts say such a scenario is theoretically sound but practically infeasible.  For one thing, a PES operation large enough to pay a large swath of cattle farmers would be expensive and create direct tradeoffs with food production, among other policy hurdles.

Key Lever No. 2: Pushing policy and financing innovations will be a necessary part of effecting food system change. 

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“To me, the key thing needed to transform is policy, policy, policy,” said Columbia’s Fanzo, adding that decision-makers formulating policies can assist populations to make sustainable choices easier that fit with their lifestyles and culture, as opposed to assuming people will make choices based on altruism alone.”

In Fanzo’s reckoning, much of the work for policymakers in high-income countries will need to focus on incentivizing consumers to change their patterns (that is, to eat less meat — an admittedly difficult ask), and in low- and middle-income countries, governments will need to focus on incentivizing more sustainable farming practices. 

As a good example of a government doing the latter through a high-level policy mechanism, Fanzo pointed to Uruguay. Columbia’s Baethgen, who is also vice president of the National Agricultural Research Institute of Uruguay, described the country’s Sovereign Sustainability-Linked Bond (SSLB), whose interest rate is linked to specific climate goals set by the country. If Uruguay beats its climate targets, the interest rate falls; if it comes up short, the interest rate goes up. 

“Investors are willing to make a little less money for something like this,” Baethgen said. “At the higher level, I think there are financial-tool innovations that should be explored more.”

Importantly, one of the only moments of consensus among the experts gathered at the workshop was about the salience of one policy in particular: a tax on carbon. All the experts agreed that it would likely do the most to rapidly improve the sustainability of food systems.

“I think a carbon tax would be the single most transformative policy step that could be taken,” said Brown of Impossible Foods, “and it would have very interesting effects on the animal agriculture industry.” 

However, many of the experts conceded that the hope for a meaningful carbon price, especially also one capturing land-use and agricultural emissions in a meaninful way,  is likely a fanciful one. In the meantime, more piecemeal policies could prove transformative as well, they said.

Animal Agriculture

For animal agriculture, Petre of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef laid out a number of national- and regional-level policies that could dramatically improve the sustainability of the sector.

National level:

• Support for sustainable husbandry, health, and grazing management practices;
• Public infrastructure for animal health services, like veterinarians, paraveterinarian networks, and vaccine supplies; and
• Better access to markets for small-scale producers, women, youth, and pastoralists.  

Regional level:

• Communication systems that track animal disease and vector awareness, particularly as climate change upends familiar patterns; and
• Trade between countries that maintains a balance between domestic use and export (many low- and middle-income countries need the beef they’re exporting, Petre noted).

Petre also underlined, again, the need for massive investment, both public and private, to transform livestock farming — and the frustrating dearth of it. 

“Many investors avoid livestock because they worry about reputational risks, not realizing the huge potential upsides of such investments,” Petre said. “Well, if nobody invests, nothing’s going to change. It’s as simple as that.” 

“There is a great opportunity here for industry incumbents to accelerate the transition,” said Cassandra Kelly, an independent board chair member at FutureFeed, which produces a natural feed ingredient for livestock that can significantly reduce their methane emissions. She pointed out that FutureFeed was a strategic investment of GrainCorp, along with other major food supply chain organizations.. “Their collective investment of capital and expertise has accelerated the success of the company’s underlying science and helped create an increasingly vibrant and growing industry,” she said. ,” she said.

Alternative Proteins

Maille O’Donnell, senior policy specialist of public investment and industry at the Good Food Institute, said she believes alternative protein adoption will struggle to reach an adequate scale until it can sufficiently finance infrastructure at scale.. 

“It can be really challenging to finance commercial-scale manufacturing facilities,” she said. 

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Financing for the space grew significantly between 2014 and 2021 but has since slowed significantly. The vast majority of the funding has come from venture capital, with much less from debt providers and governments — which has resulted in a “valley of death” problem, said O’Donnell.

“When it comes to scaling commercially, VC is not the best form of capital to finance infrastructure,” she said.

Some analysts say that with the right policy support, alternative proteins can represent up to 22% of the global protein market as soon as 2035. What’s more, the carbon emissions saved per dollar of investment in alternative proteins is higher than in light-road transport — including electric vehicles. 

O’Donnell said the Good Food Institute estimates that governments around the world have committed roughly $1.7 billion to the alternative protein ecosystem, with many stepping up their commitments in 2023. Still, she said, this number is too low. 

To address the alternative protein industry’s specific barriers, O’Donnell added, the Good Food Institute recommends that public policies focus on supporting commercialization through manufacturing grants and tax credits, loans and loan guarantees, and funding for contract development and manufacturing organizations.

Key Lever No. 3: Whether through education or incentives, consumers will need to start making more sustainable choices.

Can educating food buyers about the sustainability of their choices drive lower-carbon trends? Many experts were doubtful — but what is clear is that consumers don’t know enough about the environmental impacts of everything on their plates.

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Columbia’s Fanzo shared that according to one survey, many Americans didn’t know that livestock contributes to climate change. In another study she mentioned, Americans were asked to rate the impact of various food factors on their purchase decisions. Only 31% of respondents reported that environmental sustainability had an impact of 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale, trailing behind taste (85%), price (76%), healthfulness (62%), and convenience (57%).

Brown of Impossible Foods said the key to reducing demand for meat will be in creating alternative products that many consumers will freely choose. “It’s totally market-based,” he said. 

Columbia’s Baethgen agreed on those points. Now that a majority of the world’s population lives in cities, he said, it’s more important than ever to educate them about how their food gets made — and the many impacts of that process.

“People are getting further and further away from understanding how their food is produced,” Baethgen said. “That ignorance is dangerous. We need to spend a lot more effort educating people.” 

Read more about Columbia Business School’s Climate Knowledge Initiative