Protecting their world.
A plant-based dietary shift is one of the most impactful actions we can take to protect and heal our living world, safeguarding the wellbeing of all children, today and into the future.
As well as being foundational to personal health, plant-based eating is a vital ingredient in restoring the health of our planet. There’s never been a more important time to embrace this positive change.
People, planet, plate.
The world is currently home to 8 billion humans and rising, but even greater is the livestock population, with 92 billion land animals alone raised and killed for food each year. At such numbers, it is unsurprising that animal agriculture is a major driver of the climate and nature crisis.
A widely cited 2021 study suggests that livestock contributes a fifth of direct greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, around 36 percent of all habitable land is devoted to farming animals, making it the leading threat to biodiversity globally. In fact, so great is the dominance of humans and their farmed animals that together they make up 96 percent of all mammals on Earth – with wild mammals making up just 4 percent by weight.
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Growing food for farmed animals uses nearly 40 percent of crop water globally, while factory farms and feed crop fields release excess nutrients into water bodies, triggering harmful algae blooms, fish die-offs, and dead zones in rivers and oceans.
The scope and scale of harms caused by our appetite for animal products is enormous, and the need for win-win strategies to protect people and the planet cannot be overstated. This is where plant-based solutions offer a recipe for hope.
A recipe for hope.
As well as being a crucial climate solution, a large-scale shift to plant-based diets would enable us to produce enough nutritious food for the entire human population on just a quarter of the land. Doing so would enable the recovery of natural ecosystems and the web of life they support, while reducing water use, soil degradation and pollution from fertiliser and factory farm waste.
Eating plant-based offers a reprieve for our oceans too, reducing warming emissions and nitrogen runoff from land, and halting the direct harm to marine life caused by trawling and fish farms.
The need for major dietary shifts, particularly in countries with meat-heavy western
Image credit: Farm Transparency Project
diets, is supported by a wealth of evidence and recommended by major bodies such as
the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and the EAT-Lancet Commission as a vital step to secure both human and planetary health.
Sustaining your journey.
Despite the clear scientific consensus, contradictory narratives and greenwashing are rife, with every day seeming to bring a new claim in defence of business-as-usual consumption. We know the challenges of information overload and trying to unpick the competing claims. Growing Plant Based is developing science-backed resources that take the pressure off, to ensure that you are feeding your family in a way that is sustainable – both for the planet and for you. If you would like to sustain this work please consider making a donation today.
Join us in endorsing
The Plant Based Treaty.
Join the movement calling for national governments to respond to the climate emergency with a global Plant Based Treaty which halts the expansion of animal agriculture, aids the transition toward a plant-based food system and restores key ecosystems.
What the experts say.
A well-planned plant-based diet supports all life stages. As a mother of a thriving toddler, focusing on plant-based eating goes beyond health for my family—it’s also about fostering environmental awareness and compassion for animals from an early age.
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Growing Plant-Based acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and we pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.