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Where livestock emissions come from
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization — livestock emissions model (GLEAM) and the 2024 State of Food and Agriculture report
Climate cost per kilo of food: 8 foods compared
Source: Poore and Nemecek 2018 — the largest food-system meta-analysis ever published, in Science. Covers 38,700 farms in 119 countries and roughly 90% of the world's calories and protein.
Beef is the long red bar; tofu and beans are the short green bars. Sorted by kilograms of CO₂-equivalent emissions per kilogram of food, measured from cradle to farm gate (includes feed, land use, and on-farm energy; excludes packaging and transport beyond the farm).
Livestock emissions by country
Source: Climate Watch (World Resources Institute) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
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Who emits most — by total, and by person
Source: Climate Watch (World Resources Institute) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Two ways of asking the same question. By total answers where is the mass of the problem — China, the United States, India, Brazil. By person answers whose lifestyle is most carbon-intensive — New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Ireland. Bar color shows Global Methane Pledge status: green countries signed, orange countries did not.
By total emissions
Billion tonnes of CO₂-equivalent per year
By emissions per person
Tonnes of CO₂-equivalent per person per year
Atmospheric methane — agriculture is about 36% of the human-caused total
Live signal: NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory — atmospheric methane trend, pulled daily through the Permafrost and Methane Tracker (a sibling dashboard in this portfolio)
Each vertical stripe is one month, from 1983 on the left to today on the right. The colour of each stripe shows the atmospheric methane level that month — teal at the cool end shifting to deep red at the warm end.
What drives this
- Crop stress →Feed crops, pasture drought, and herd stress shape livestock supply chains.
- Methane in the air →Atmospheric methane from NOAA is the live signal this page borrows.
- Deforestation →Pasture and feed expansion are major land-use pressure points.
What this drives
- Climate tipping risk →Methane and land-use emissions add near-term warming pressure.
- Ocean heat →Extra greenhouse gases ultimately load more heat into the ocean.
Global Methane Pledge coverage
Source: Global Methane Pledge — official signatory list maintained by the United States and European Union
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Why studies give different numbers
How we know this
- Live signal: Global atmospheric methane concentration, in parts per billion, from the NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory — read daily through the Permafrost and Methane Tracker, a sibling dashboard in this portfolio. This is a measure of the whole atmospheric methane budget, not a livestock-only meter; agriculture is roughly 36% of human methane (per the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group 1).
- Reference statistics: Sector shares, country totals, and per-food footprints come from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's livestock emissions model (GLEAM) and 2024 State of Food and Agriculture report; the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group 3; Climate Watch (a country-emissions database from the World Resources Institute); and Poore and Nemecek 2018 in Science. Numbers are transcribed by hand and refreshed after annual releases.
- Headline range (11–20%): Reflects honest methodological choices — whether to count direct livestock emissions only, life-cycle emissions including feed and processing, or also the opportunity cost of using pasture and feed land for livestock instead of letting it return to natural ecosystem. Not measurement error.
- Methane Pledge map: Green = signed the Global Methane Pledge; orange = did not sign. The four major non-signers — China, India, Russia, and Iran — together produce roughly 30% of global methane emissions. For the 15 largest livestock-emitting countries, the signed/not-signed status comes from the curated country file used elsewhere on this page; for every other country, it falls back to the Global Methane Pledge's official signatory list.
- Location: The dashboard defaults to a worldwide view. You can pick a country from the selector, or click "Use my location" to have the dashboard read your country from your network address. Nothing is sent anywhere or stored without that click.
- Curated country profiles: Roughly 30 countries have a per-person meat-consumption figure, livestock share of national emissions, Methane Pledge signing date, and a one-sentence "why this country matters" note. Meat consumption from Our World in Data (drawing on UN Food and Agriculture Organization Food Balance Sheets); national emissions share from country greenhouse-gas inventories via Climate Watch.
- Primary data sources: UN Food and Agriculture Organization — GLEAM livestock model · NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory atmospheric methane trend · Our World in Data — meat production and consumption · How this page is built