Researchers conducted a study to determine if replacing dietary fats from palm oil, soy and other agricultural crops with fats created synthetically in chemical or biological processes could help reduce climate change-causing greenhouse gases.
The researchers' analysis finds a reduction in carbon emissions and other benefits, such the opening of agricultural lands to reforestation which benefits biodiversity and creates a carbon sink.Agriculture is one of the hardest human activities to decarbonize; people must eat, but the land-use practices associated with growing crops account for roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Davis and his co-authors highlight other environmental and societal benefits of farm-free food in the paper, including a reduction in water use and watershed pollution, local control over food production, diminished risk of weather-related food shortages, and less need for low-paying and physically demanding agricultural labor.
"The beauty of the fats is that you can synthesize them with processes that don't involve biology. It's all chemistry, and because of that, you can operate at higher pressures and temperatures that allow excellent efficiency," Davis said."You could therefore build big reactors to do this at large scales.
Vegetable oil biofuels are increasingly used as an alternative to fossil fuels despite the growing controversy regarding their sustainability. In a study, researchers investigated the effect of ...
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