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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Go bananas and save the world by GS Mudur


For your sake, and earth’s sake, have fish instead of mutton. If you are truly climate-friendly, go bananas.

According to a study that analysed greenhouse gas emissions associated with a set of common Indian food items, fish is a superior alternative to mutton, not just for humans but also for the planet’s health, while bananas are the most climate-friendly.

The study, by scientists at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, says mutton has the highest global warming potential among the food items analysed.

The exercise involved assessing greenhouse gas emissions during each stage of the life cycle of the food item from the farm to the dinner plate — production, processing and cooking — to generate a comparative chart.

The study, published this week in the journal Agriculture Ecosystems and Environment, has shown that a kilogram of mutton has a global warming potential 12 times higher than a kilogram of fish. The global warming potential of poultry meat — chicken or duck — is only slightly higher than that of fish. And milk and curd are associated with higher emissions than eggs.

“Ruminants — whether for mutton or for milk — are associated with methane emissions,” said Himanshu Pathak, a senior soil scientist in the environmental division at the IARI and the lead author of the study.

Livestock belch out or release methane gas as they digest their food. And a methane molecule released into the atmosphere, Pathak said, has a 25 times greater capacity for trapping heat than a carbon dioxide molecule.

Rice, meat, dairy products and fish are associated with high methane emissions while wheat, vegetables and fruits contribute to an oxide of nitrogen — another greenhouse gas that has an even greater heat-trapping capacity than methane.

Bananas had the least global warming potential, according to the IARI analysis.

Much of the emissions associated with bananas emerge from their transportation from plantations to retail outlets.

The IARI researchers say the study was designed to generate raw data about the global warming potential of Indian food items, and is not intended to get people to tweak their food habits for the sake of the planet.

Medical studies have long suggested that white meat — fish or poultry — is better for human health than red meat such as mutton.

“We need to generate our own greenhouse gas emissions data,” said Pathak.

He recalled how Indian scientists were caught by surprise in the early 1990s when US researchers suggested that India’s paddy fields were producing a large amount of methane.

The claim prompted an indigenous investigation which showed that the US estimate was much higher than the actual methane contribution of paddy.

The IARI study indicates that transportation of food in India contributes only one per cent to the emissions. Studies in Europe suggest that transportation accounts for 8 per cent to 30 per cent of food emissions.

The IARI team also computed the global warming potential for balanced meals — vegetarian and non-vegetarian — consumed by Indian men and women. It found the levels lower (583g to 1,031g carbon dioxide equivalent per day) than the per capita global warming potential linked to food consumption (1,200g to 1,500g carbon dioxide equivalent per day) in some industrialised countries.

“Data on global warming potential of food items may be used to either change personal options or to guide future policy decisions on crops,” Pathak said. “It’s important to have such data based on scientific research.”

Future research, the researchers say, could focus on rice with lower methane emissions — for example, aerobic rice, which does not need to be cultivated in fully submerged fields, or direct-seeded rice.