Food & environment II: the fishing industy

Today I am going to write about the fishing industry.  Nowadays about 20% of the animal protein we consume proceeds from fish.

Until the 1950 the fishing industry fished about 20 million tones /year, and in the present it is over 100 million tones/year. A considerable increase. And with that increase the environmental impacts have also increased.  Some of the most important of them I would like to comment here:

Overfishing: There are about 40 species of marine animals we consume.  As we fish over 100 million tones of them a year, there is an enormous pressure on them and their ecosystems. It is almost impossible that the fish populations stay constant, so the result is the disappearance of a very important food supply for millions of people. According to the journal Science, by 2048 there will be no more in the wild caught fish

Effects on habit: Some fishing techniques also may cause habitat destruction. Dynamite fishing and cyanide fishing, which are illegal in many places, harm surrounding habitat. Bottom trawling, the practice of pulling a fishing net along the sea bottom behind trawlers, removes around 5 to 25% of an area's seabed life on a single run. Also the practice of aquaculture has its effects:  contamination of water (by antibiotics, chemical substances, and organic residues), loss of biodiversity, deforestation.

By-catch: not only fish and crustaceans are caught in the nets or traps, also enormous numbers of dolphins, whales, sharks, seabirds, sea turtles and other animals find their deaths in the nets every year.

Ecological disruption of the food chain: All animals and plants are linked to each other by the food chain. The plants get eaten by the herbivores, the herbivores by the carnivores, and they by the decomposers. Take away one level and the entire food chain will collapse. This is exactly what is happening, as we are fishing mainly the 2º level; the fish who eat plankton and are supposed to be eaten by other fish

The environmental impacts of fishing are disastrous. But what is there to do against it? Eat less fish. It is still recommended to eat fish twice a week, but I wouldn’t pass that recommendation. Also for your own health: more and more fish get contaminated with all the chemical substances we throw in sea, and have heavy metals in their flesh which are poisonous for us.

Here I have a map from the FAD, with the consumption of fish per year and per capita. It’s not surprising to see that those countries which also over consume meat, do the same with fish

And here I leave a link to the national geographic website, were you can see with many sorts of seafood their toxic levels, omega 3 levels, food chain level and sustainability ranking. It’s very interesting to investigate it a bit and become conscious of your choice what seafood to eat!

https://admin.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/take-action/impact-of-seafood/#/seafood-decision-guide/

Greetings,  and have a lovely day!

Food & environment I: animal products

In this first part dedicated to food, I will write about the effects to the environment of our diet with animal products. Please don’t stop reading now, thinking I am some extreme vegetarian trying to make everyone vegetarians. I just want to put scientific facts and evidence on a row to make people conscious of their choice to eat animal products.

For decades there have been numerous investigations wherever meat consumption is good or bad. Well, the truth is, human beings are omnivores. We need both vegetable and animal products. The problem is that nowadays our animal-product consumption is waaaaay too high. This is not only bad for the environment, but also for human health.

Livestock are releasing all day gases, with enormous quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more harmful than CO2 . Additionally, their excrements and urine greatly contaminate the soil and water, making it useless.

Another point is that livestock need a lot of space. An example is that, for the livestock production for North America, they have cut more than 20 million hectares of tropical forest in Latin America. This has produced loss of biodiversity, deforestation, loss of soil.

The chart here below indicates the CO2 emissions and amount of land to produce just 1 Kg of various animal products.

	CO2 emissions (kg)	Amount of land (m²)
1 kg Cow meat	14-32	27-49
1 kg pork meat	4-10	9-12
1 kg chicken meat	3,7-7	8-10
1 kg eggs	4-5	4,5-6
1 kg milk	0,8-1,3	1-2

 Source: Livestock science128

Now, another huge problem about livestock is that their diet is mainly based on grains, which, in fact is, what we humans eat. To give you the real number: over 40% of worldwide production of grain is given to livestock.  And that while more than a billion people worldwide suffer from hunger daily…

The last point I want to write about is the overconsumption of meat. It is extremely costly to produce meat, as you have just seen with the facts I have presented. Nonetheless, we seem to be eating more meat as the years pass by.

Let me show you one last chart, of the WHO, about the medium consumption of meat per person per year:

Region	Meat (kg)
North America	123
Europe	74
South America	70
Central America	47
Asia	28
Africa	25

 Source: WHO 2007

There is absolutely NO need to consume so much meat! Because if you calculate it, it turns out a medium North American eats 330 grams of meat per day! More than 3 times as much as recommended (100 grams per day)

Excess of meat consumption (as well as egg and dairy products) are a big problem for human health. It is related with obesity, heart diseases, hypertension, diabetes and certain forms of cancer.

This has been a very summarized text about animal products consumption. But knowing myself, I have to stop writing now, or I will be able to write an entire book about it hahaha. Anyway, it’s worth dedicating more posts about this topic, which I will be publishing the following days.

Thanks for reading, and if you have anything to say don’t doubt to comment!

Rooftop farms

By coincidence today I heard on the news something very interesting: in New York a group of young adults have started using rooftops of buildings as a place to plant vegetables and herbs. Little by little this is becoming something more common, because also other cities in other parts of the world have such rooftop farms.

My first thought was: GREAT! That is a really good idea. It has so many advantages! Let’s see if I can cite some of them:

-       It will reduce our carbon footprint: as the products come from near, there is no need for transportation as trucks, trains or airplanes, all big users of nonrenewable resources. This also reduces health problems; the air quality in the city will become a LOT better.

-     You know exactly where it comes from, if it is genetically modified, if it has been treated with pesticides and so on. Basically I think the product from the rooftop farms are quite healthy. And have the advantage of being very fresh when you eat them.

-     The vegetal coverage of the roofs reduces heating of the building (reducing in that way extra energy consumption by air conditionings!), it protects the roof from the weather, and as plants absorb water it will reduce quantity of storm water.

-     Plants produce oxygen, and filter the air. Like I said before, it will produce a mayor increase in air quality

There are many more advantages, but I think these are the most important

Maybe we should all (when possible) make our own little rooftop farms ;)

Here is a video about one of such projects: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3mLPy0ttqc

My new blog :)

Well, this is my new blog :) To me it is a place where I can write all the things that cross my mind, and publish the texts I usually write. I won’t complicate it too much by writing a thousand things, I'll just leave it simple and clear: My main goal is to write about the environment. (But also about other things!)

This is a topic that interests me incredibly and is without doubt a very important issue for everyone. In the last decades there has been an increased interest in the environment. This is mainly because after the industrial revolution, humans have developed an industrialized economy and have been using all the resources for their own use, in an irresponsible manner, with the consequence that we have been contaminating the earth and using up nonrenewable resources. Now we finally understand that, if we don't change our way of treating the earth, we will have to suffer the grave consequences. 

So…I’ll write. About the environment. About the problems that affect all humans. About social-political problems. And also simply about life. About the things I experience in my daily life, about the way I learn to live truly and in harmony.

I simply love writing, even though sometimes the words don’t come to me with ease (like today haha)

I hope people will be interested in what I will write. I hope they will give me their opinions, discuss with me, say that I am wrong or that I am right etc.

And maybe what I mainly hope is that, through this blog, I can reach many people to make them conscious about everything that is happening around us.

 It’s time for a worldwide change in consciousness! Let us start today to create a better tomorrow!