Our Planet, Our Plate
Our Planet, Our Plate, Joyce D’Silva, September 2026.
We were delighted to welcome Joyce D’Silva from Compassion in World Farming to speak to us about how our choices about what we eat and drink can impact the planet. Joyce has worked for Compassion in World Farming for 45 years! What impressed us most in her talk was that every point she made was backed up with reputable data, and very clearly argued.
Joyce began by demonstrating how much of the world’s crop production goes to animal feed. In the EU only 40% of cereal produced goes for human consumption, the rest being used as animal feed. The figures for soy are even more startling, given that only 7% of the world’s soy is used for human consumption, all the rest going to farmed animals such as poultry, cows and pigs with some also going into industrial use and oils. For every 100% of human-edible grain fed to animals, for beef we only get back 3% of the calories we have fed in, 10% for pork, 12% for chicken, 22% for eggs and 40% for dairy products.
Overall animal agriculture uses up 80% of farmland but provides only 18% of our calories. With less farm animals, and with humans eating more plants, it would be possible to release considerable amounts of farmland for nature, for redressing biodiversity loss.
Joyce went on to tell us about the water used to produce 1L of different types of milk: cow milk 628L, almond milk 371L, oat milk 48L, soy milk 28L. Yet again, moving to plant based has a definite environmental gain. The same is true when looking at how many litres of water are used to produce 1kg of these foodstuffs: beef 15,415L, nuts 9063L, pork 5988L, chicken 4325L, eggs 3265L, milk 1020L, vegetables 322L.
In fact, the International Water Management Institute was quoted as saying, ‘The production of meat from animals fed on irrigated crops has a direct impact on water resources, much more so than if the meat is derived from grazing animals and animals fed on residues’.
Joyce went on to discuss Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) from different food sources telling us that the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) states: ‘Animal agriculture, including animal feed production is estimated to contribute 14.5%-20% of global human-caused GHG emissions’ (UNEP 2023, What’s cooking?). Dietary GHG emissions (kg CO2e) per 2,000 calories: high meat-eaters 7.19; medium meat-eaters 5.63; low meat-eaters 4.67; fish-eaters 3.91; vegetarians 3.81; and vegans 2.89.
We were then reminded how much intensive farming methods degrade the soil with Joyce reminding us that Professor John Crawford, renowned soil scientist tells us that if we carry on as we are then there may only be 60 years of good soils left. Intensive farming methods also often involve routine use of antibiotics which can lead to antibiotic resistance developing in humans over time.
Both red meat and highly processed meat have been linked to cancer in those who consume them.
Joyce rounded off this section of her talk by quoting Professor Walter Willett, heart health expert from Havard, who says, ‘If you step back and look at the data, the optimum amount of red meat you eat should be zero’. Furthermore, there is evidence of health benefits of a more plant-based diet.
There are so many ways in which our current agricultural systems are damaging the planet such as deforestation for soy or beef production; water cycle disruption; damage to nature; fertilizer overuse; and then there is the whole question of how farm animals are treated within intensive farming!
Back in 1789 Jeremy Bentham said “The question is not ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but, ‘Can they suffer?’”. In order to reduce the suffering of farm animals Joyce devoted years of her life to getting animal sentience acknowledged so that it should follow that they be treated better. Defining sentience can itself be tricky but Joyce quoted Professor Marc Bekoff who defines it as “The ability to feel, perceive, or be conscious, or to experience subjectivity”, and Professor John Webstre who states “A sentient animal is one for whom feelings matter”. It cannot just be the level of intelligence of an animal that matters, because we (most of us) do not consider that less intelligent humans deserve less respect. How do you work out the intelligence of an animal species anyway? An octopus can figure out how to undo a screw top bottle, and sheep can remember up to around 50 sheep faces.
Compassion in World Farming’s nine-year campaign to get animals recognised as ‘sentient beings’ finally achieved this in the European Treaty, 1988-1997, leading in turn to the following statement being included in The Lisbon Treaty of 2009, ‘In formulating and implementing the Union's agriculture, fisheries, transport, internal market, research and technological development and space policies, the Union and the Member States shall, since animals are sentient beings, pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals, while respecting the legislative or administrative provisions and customs of the EU countries relating in particular to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage’. This was a critical turning point.
And yet there is still plenty of work for CiWF, as we still have factory farming, involving the breeding of highly productive breeds of animals, overcrowding, confinement, mutilation, unnatural diets and often excessive transport.
As just one example, 80 billion chickens are reared/slaughtered p.a. – over 1 billion of them in the UK. Nearly all of these are fast-growing breeds with resulting leg problems. According to Defra over 27% of broilers go lame.
Joyce then took us back to thinking about the soil and the over-riding need to ‘rewild the soil’. This can be achieved by: mixing it up – growing a rich diversity of crops rotationally; keeping it covered up – using ‘cover crops’; leaving it the right way up – minimizing soil disturbance; and by returning farmed animals to being on mixed, rotational farms.
On the day I wrote this I happened to glance out of an upstairs window mid-morning to see a veritable ‘murmuration’ of seagulls following a tractor in the field opposite. We have lived here for 30 years but had never seen that number of gulls swarming around the field and I am sure that is because a few years ago the land was leased to a different farmer with different ways, and we are already seeing soil recovery. If the soil was not full of good things to eat the gulls would not be there!
Joyce rounded off her talk by summarising what needs to be done:
Switch to regenerative or organic farming, moving away from industrial agriculture
Reduce meat and dairy from farmed animals
Respect animals as sentient, living creatures
After all, as Ghandi told us, ‘The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animal are treated’.