ABSTRACT
Food and nutrition security is the most fundamental right to every living being, though in the present times, the concept of food consumption in human race is much more than just being an essence for living. The wide differences in food choices, varieties in tastes, and association of food with sociocultural practices in many cases have led to the evolution of a diverse and huge food market with remarkably different and complex trails of processing systems. The global population is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050 which will increase the food demand to almost double (Foley et al. 2011). Even in the today’s world, nearly 1 billion people are undernourished, which suggests that food systems are under immense pressure to produce sufficiently and ensure that it reaches
6.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 125 6.2 Food-Producing Systems and GHG Emissions .................................................................... 126
6.2.1 Crop Cultivation ....................................................................................................... 126 6.2.2 Livestock Rearing and Dairy .................................................................................... 127 6.2.3 Food Miles ................................................................................................................ 127
6.3 Scope of Reducing GHG Emissions from Croplands and Agricultural Soils as Carbon Offsetting Option .................................................................................................................. 128 6.3.1 Reducing Emissions from Crop Cultivation and Livestock Rearing ........................ 129 6.3.2 Improving Food-Processing Efficiency .................................................................... 129 6.3.3 Wise Packaging and Transport ................................................................................. 130
6.4 Carbon Footprinting as a Quantitative Representation of GHG Efficiency and Its Application to Food Production ............................................................................................ 131 6.4.1 Counting C Sequestration ......................................................................................... 132 6.4.2 Incorporating Land-Use Change .............................................................................. 133 6.4.3 The Case of Biofuels ................................................................................................. 133
6.5 Case Studies .......................................................................................................................... 134 6.5.1 Crop Cultivation ....................................................................................................... 134 6.5.2 Dairy and Meat Production ...................................................................................... 134
6.6 Carbon Labeling and Policy Implications ............................................................................ 136 6.7 Recommendations for Further Research Directions ............................................................ 137 6.8 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 137 Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... 137 References ...................................................................................................................................... 138
increased by 20% in the last two decades, and it seems unrealistic to double the production by 2050. This means that more land would need to be created for agriculture which may lead to deforestation and hence environmental externalities. Such environmental externalities may also include climate change, which eventually will cause a great uncertainty to food-producing systems. It is therefore proposed that food production systems must increase productivity with efficient consumption and lowest possible environmental costs, mainly greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This chapter attempts to present an overview of carbon footprints (CFs) of food production systems and identification of approaches having lowest CF. The concept of CF calculation and its application to agriculture have been discussed in detail by Pandey and Agrawal (2014). In this review, detailed discussion of challenges before application of CFs to food production along with case studies is provided.
