Page 66 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 20

Food Health
Food Health

Pastoralists of Marsabit, rural Kenya, Feb 2018. Photo: Kan-
dukuru Nagarjun (CC BY 2.0)

LIVESTOCK AND CLIMATE:

The Problem Is The Industrial System

by GRAIN | 1st Oct 2021
https://grain.org/en/article/6740-livestock-and-climate-the-problem-is-the-industrial-system

cademics who work agroecology and local markets in up to 37%.
closely with pastoralist turning it around. Over that period,
communities through a lot has changed. In the past, when We have also grown a lot more
Athe PASTRES research trying to understand what’s causing aware of the outsized role that the
programme have issued a cry in the climate change, after transport and meat and dairy industry plays in
dark for nuance and rebalancing in energy, governments only looked at producing emissions. The problem,
the global debate about meat, dairy agricultural production, ignoring the so it is said, lies mainly with rumi-
and climate. We want to support and wider series of events that enable nants, like cattle, that naturally let
echo their call, as it’s crucial to get most people to eat every day. Today, off methane as they digest food.
the messaging and the action right. people are looking at food systems (Methane heats the climate way
per se, a much smarter approach. more than carbon dioxide but only
For more than ten years, GRAIN In 2007, the International Panel on sticks around for a short time.) This
has been working to expose the Climate Change said that agriculture has put beef and dairy at the centre
role of the industrial food system contributes 10-12% of overall an- of discussion. But they are not
in driving the climate crisis – and nual greenhouse gas emissions while really the problem, as we have tried
the role of peasant food producers, today it says that food systems cause to show. The problem is industrial

66 | we tell the true afrikan story