What is the carbon footprint of food?
Food produces a quarter to a third of global greenhouse gas emissions: 26% (Poore and Nemecek 2018) to 34%, or 18 Gt CO₂e in 2015 (Crippa et al. 2021). Per kilogram, foods range from under 0.5 kg CO₂e for potatoes and apples to 99.5 kg for beef.
The carbon footprint of food is the greenhouse gas emitted to grow, raise, process, transport, package and sell it, and to deal with what is wasted. Two facts dominate. First, the spread between foods is enormous: a kilogram of beef from a beef herd carries more than 200 times the emissions of a kilogram of potatoes. Second, almost all of a food’s footprint is created on the farm and by clearing land for it, so what you eat matters far more than how far it travelled.
Food’s share of global emissions
Three widely cited estimates put the global food system at between a fifth and well over a third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. They differ mainly in what they count as part of the food system and in the years they cover.
| Source | Share of global emissions | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science | 26% | Farming, land use, and the supply chain to retail, built from life-cycle data on about 38,700 farms in 119 countries |
| Crippa et al. (2021), Nature Food (EDGAR-FOOD) | 34% (18 Gt CO₂e, 2015) | Production to consumption, including retail, transport, consumption, fuel production, waste management, industrial processes and packaging |
| IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land (2019) | 21–37% | Agriculture and land use plus pre- and post-production activities, 2007–2016 (medium confidence) |
Crippa and colleagues found that agriculture and land use made up 71% of food-system emissions, with the rest from supply-chain activities. The IPCC put agriculture, forestry and other land use alone at 23% of net human emissions (12.0 ± 2.9 Gt CO₂e a year in 2007–2016), before adding anything that happens off the farm. See AFOLU and FLAG for how land-sector emissions are reported.
Where food emissions come from
Our World in Data’s breakdown of the Poore and Nemecek estimate splits food’s 26% into four parts:
Share of food’s greenhouse gas emissions by source. Source: Poore & Nemecek (2018), via Our World in Data, “Food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions”.
- Livestock and fisheries (31%) are on-farm emissions only: methane from cattle digestion (enteric fermentation), manure and pasture management, and fuel for fishing boats.
- Crop production (27%) is 21% for crops people eat and 6% for animal feed: nitrous oxide from fertiliser and manure, methane from flooded rice fields, and fuel for farm machinery.
- Land use (24%) is mostly land-use change, the carbon released when forest and grassland are converted to farmland. Land for livestock accounts for 16 points of it, twice the 8 points for crops people eat.
- Supply chains (18%) cover processing, transport, packaging and retail. Transport is only 6% of food’s emissions globally.
The footprint of common foods
Poore and Nemecek’s product figures are the standard reference for comparing foods (see our reference page on the study). They are global averages from farm to retail shelf, with methane and nitrous oxide converted to CO₂e by their warming over 100 years. Cooking and household waste are not included.
| Food | kg CO₂e per kg |
|---|---|
| Beef (beef herd) | 99.48 |
| Dark chocolate | 46.65 |
| Lamb and mutton | 39.72 |
| Beef (dairy herd) | 33.3 |
| Coffee | 28.53 |
| Prawns (farmed) | 26.87 |
| Cheese | 23.88 |
| Fish (farmed) | 13.63 |
| Pig meat | 12.31 |
| Poultry meat | 9.87 |
| Eggs | 4.67 |
| Rice | 4.45 |
| Tofu | 3.16 |
| Milk | 3.15 |
| Tomatoes | 2.09 |
| Wheat and rye | 1.57 |
| Peas | 0.98 |
| Bananas | 0.86 |
| Potatoes | 0.46 |
| Apples | 0.43 |
| Nuts | 0.43 |
Animal products sit at the top because animals turn feed into food inefficiently, ruminants such as cattle and sheep emit methane, and grazing and feed crops need large areas of land. Chocolate and coffee are the main plant-based exceptions, largely because of land cleared to grow them. The low figure for nuts is partly a dataset effect: new orchards store carbon, which offsets most of the farm emissions in the land-use stage. For beef specifically, see the carbon footprint of beef. The full set of factors, with their sources, is on the food product emission factors page.
Per 100 g of protein and per 1,000 kcal
Per kilogram compares foods with very different nutritional value. Measured per unit of protein, the protein-rich foods line up like this:
| Food | kg CO₂e per 100 g protein | kg CO₂e per 1,000 kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Beef (beef herd) | 49.9 | 36.4 |
| Lamb and mutton | 19.9 | 12.5 |
| Beef (dairy herd) | 16.9 | 12.2 |
| Cheese | 10.8 | 6.2 |
| Pig meat | 7.6 | 5.2 |
| Fish (farmed) | 6.0 | 7.6 |
| Poultry meat | 5.7 | 5.3 |
| Eggs | 4.2 | 3.2 |
| Tofu | 2.0 | 1.2 |
| Peas | 0.4 | 0.3 |
The ranking barely changes. The variation within each food is wide (Poore and Nemecek found impacts “can vary 50-fold among producers of the same product”), but the authors concluded that “impacts of the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes”.
What you eat versus where it comes from
“Eat local” is common advice, but transport is a small part of most foods’ footprints. Splitting each food’s per-kilogram figure into supply-chain stages:
| Food | kg CO₂e per kg | Land, farm and feed | Transport |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beef (beef herd) | 99.48 | 83% | 0.5% |
| Cheese | 23.88 | 83% | 0.6% |
| Pig meat | 12.31 | 73% | 4.1% |
| Poultry meat | 9.87 | 70% | 3.9% |
| Eggs | 4.67 | 91% | 1.8% |
| Rice | 4.45 | 79% | 2.1% |
| Tofu | 3.16 | 46% | 5.6% |
| Wheat and rye | 1.57 | 58% | 8.0% |
| Bananas | 0.86 | 28% | 34% |
Transport only becomes a large share for foods whose total footprint is already small, such as bananas. Studies of whole diets agree: a study of diets across the EU by Vilma Sandström and colleagues, summarised by Our World in Data, found food transport made up only 6% of emissions, while dairy, meat and eggs made up 83%. The exception is air freight, which emits about 50 times more CO₂e than shipping per tonne-kilometre but accounts for only 0.16% of food miles.
Hannah Ritchie, who wrote much of Our World in Data’s work on food emissions, covers food and farming at book length in Not the End of the World (2024). It is one of 14 books in our list of the best climate change books.
Food waste
Our World in Data estimates that one quarter of the emissions from food production, 3.3 billion tonnes of CO₂e, comes from food that is lost in supply chains or wasted by consumers. Wasted food carries the full footprint of producing it, so preventing waste of high-emission foods saves the most. Packaging, refrigeration and processing add emissions of their own, but they can help prevent food waste. Our waste streams calculator covers the disposal side for organisations.
Worked example: swapping beef
| Beef eaten per year | 2 × 0.15 kg × 52 weeks = 15.6 kg |
| Beef (beef herd) | 15.6 kg × 99.48 = ≈ 1,552 kg CO₂e |
| Same weight of chicken | 15.6 kg × 9.87 = ≈ 154 kg CO₂e (saves ≈ 1.4 t) |
| Same weight of tofu | 15.6 kg × 3.16 = ≈ 49 kg CO₂e (saves ≈ 1.5 t) |
Global averages, farm to retail. Sourcing the same beef locally would save under 1% (transport is 0.5% of its footprint). For your own figure, use the personal carbon footprint calculator; for a product, the food product carbon footprint calculator; for catering at an event, the event carbon footprint calculator. For whole diets rather than single foods, the carbon footprint of a vegan diet compares six UK diet groups, from vegan to high meat.
Frequently asked questions
Beef from beef herds, at about 99.5 kg CO₂e per kilogram on global averages (Poore & Nemecek 2018). Next come dark chocolate (46.7 kg), lamb and mutton (39.7 kg), beef from dairy herds (33.3 kg), coffee (28.5 kg), farmed prawns (26.9 kg) and cheese (23.9 kg).
Only slightly. Transport is about 6% of food’s global emissions and under 1% of beef’s footprint. Most emissions come from farming and land use, so what you eat matters far more than where it was produced. The exception is air-freighted food, which is rare (0.16% of food miles) but high-emission.
Between about a quarter and a third. Poore and Nemecek (2018) estimate 26%; Crippa et al. (2021) estimate 34%, or 18 Gt CO₂e in 2015; the IPCC gives a range of 21–37% for 2007–2016. The estimates differ mainly in which supply-chain and consumption activities they include.
Usually, but not always. Dark chocolate and coffee have per-kilogram footprints higher than pork or chicken, and rice (4.45 kg CO₂e per kg) is higher than most other staples because flooded paddies emit methane. Compared as sources of protein, plant foods such as tofu (2.0 kg per 100 g protein) and peas (0.4 kg) are far below meat and dairy.
Globally, food accounts for about 26–34% of greenhouse gas emissions, up to 18 Gt CO₂e a year. Per kilogram, footprints range from under 0.5 kg CO₂e for potatoes and apples to about 99.5 kg for beef from beef herds, on global averages from farm to retail (Poore & Nemecek 2018). Most emissions come from farming and land use; transport is about 6%.