Key Terms
- Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity: The amount of greenhouse gases, measured in carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), emitted per unit of output. In this indicator, it is expressed per kilocalorie of food produced.
- Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e): A standard unit for aggregating and comparing GHG emissions. It expresses the impact of different GHGs in terms of the amount of CO2 that would create the same amount of warming.
Historical Data Methodology and Challenges
GHG emissions intensity is calculated by dividing the total agriculture production emissions (CO2e) by total food supply (kilocalories, or kcal), both obtained from FAOSTAT.
There is no perfect normalization factor for measuring GHG intensity. For example, because sugars and processed grains are very GHG-efficient, the world could improve performance on this metric while worsening nutrition. Comparing per unit of protein does not work well when considering foods that should be included in a healthy diet that have relatively low levels of protein (e.g., fruits, vegetables, some grains, etc.). While more complex nutrient quality indices are being developed, there is no consensus on which is best and global data is not yet available to incorporate such complex indices into the denominator of this indicator. GHG emissions intensity per kilocalorie should be improved alongside other improvements in nutrient intake to ensure healthy diets for all. Additionally, this metric is influenced by both the environmental efficiency of agricultural practices (including fertilizer use, livestock management and energy consumption) and consumption patterns (e.g., food loss and waste rates, dietary composition). Moreover, it is important to note that emissions intensity metrics have limitations. Countries with extensive production systems and lower productivity per hectare may show higher emissions intensities, even if their absolute contribution to global warming is relatively small. Therefore, this metric should be considered alongside absolute emissions and other contextual factors.
Target Methodology
This target was developed by scaling the absolute GHG emissions values from agricultural production, as published in the World Resources Report on Creating a Sustainable Food Future, to align with FAOSTAT values by comparing data from 2010 in both sources. We then calculated the mean between GHG emissions from agricultural production in 2010 and the 2050 projection for these emissions in the Breakthrough Technologies scenario, thereby creating a linear pathway between the observed value in 2010 and the target in 2050. The 2030 target was set as the midpoint of this pathway. To convert these GHG emissions targets into intensity targets, data on kilocalories in the global food supply, published annually by FAOSTAT, served as the denominator. Using a similar approach and assuming linear growth, we estimated the global food supply size in 2030 and 2050 based on the projection from the "Creating a Sustainable Food Future" report that global kilocalorie demand would grow by 55% between 2010 and 2050. Finally, the absolute agricultural production emissions targets for 2030 and 2050 were divided by the projected number of kilocalories in the global food supply for each year to obtain targets for GHG emissions intensity in terms of grams of CO2e per 1,000 kilocalories. The baseline year was updated to 2017 instead of 2010 to reflect more current data.