This is the Shortest Path to Fixing the Planet
How to do it in 30 years
I’ve dedicated my career to solving one problem: how to restore ecosystems on a large scale. Then one of the most powerful men in the world casually threw a mind bomb at me. It changed my entire strategy.
Up until that point, my team and I had already mastered the ability to rapidly reforest large tracts of land with minimal cost. Our area of operations is coastal Ecuador. The question then became: can we do this on a global scale?
Around this time, I had the chance to speak privately with a high-profile billionaire who backs a large portfolio of social impact ventures. He asked me, only somewhat hypothetically, “Let’s say you have unlimited money, and your goal is to save the entire biosphere, but you have to focus on one thing. What do you do?”
It’s a great question, and in that moment I didn’t have an answer. We never spoke again. The opportunity of a lifetime disappeared.
That was about five years ago. I have since devoted much of my waking hours to properly respond to that question. Now I have the answer.
Where to start
The framework I used to solve this problem has three parts:
- figure out how to fix the root cause rather than the symptoms (i.e., upstream problem-solving)
- focus on leverage points with the lowest barriers to entry and the highest return on investment (i.e., be strategic)
- identify the primary choke points and bypass or disable them (i.e., be pragmatic)
According to this model, the solution is not carbon credits. It’s not physically planting trees. It’s not geoengineering or solar panels or electric cars or artificial intelligence or the United Nations. It’s food.
More specifically, the solution is 1) using the laws of supply and demand to trigger the global-scale abandonment of marginal farmland without sacrificing food output and quality, and then 2) facilitating nature’s reclamation of that land (at scale) through the natural process of ecological succession.
A worldwide land-use transition of this magnitude will lead to massive atmospheric carbon removal, near-surface air temperature reductions by up to 2°C, mitigation of wildfires and floods, and a long list of other ancillary ecological effects that will literally change the face of our planet in a few decades. Data and references for all of these claims can be found here.
What the secret is
The gigantic ecological footprint of human food production is not a secret. The secret is 1) how to actually fix it in a way that is realistic and 2) the planet-wide impact this will have in a relatively short period of time.
No, this doesn’t require everyone to become vegan. That message falls mostly on deaf ears. It also doesn’t require politicians or NGOs — although both can help in certain targeted ways.
The entire roadmap hinges on one single adjustment in human food production that will simultaneously:
- halt worldwide deforestation;
- free up an entire continent worth of land for reforestation and natural regeneration;
- offset the CO2 emissions of every single train, plane, automobile, and ship in the world;
- and lower near-surface air temperatures by up to 2°C across much of the planet.
And those are just the headline outcomes. From one single adjustment.
The sector that is best positioned to solve this problem is not the environmental movement or the government. The primary trigger is economic.
Note: for a deeper dive into the numbers behind this strategy, refer to “How to Save the Planet with Food: A data-driven roadmap to global ecological restoration.”
Why food?
Human food production generates 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions, uses nearly half of all habitable land on the planet, accounts for 70% of all freshwater withdrawals, and drives 90% of tropical deforestation. It is the single biggest driver of ecological collapse and biological extinction throughout the world. But it’s a tractable problem. There is a clear pathway to fixing it.
The issue isn’t necessarily the quantity of calories that humanity consumes. It’s the inefficient way that those calories are produced. This problem represents a golden opportunity for planetary-scale impact in a relatively short period of time.
The macro goal is to grow just as much calories and protein using far less land and for the quality of those calories to be just as high (if not higher). Although there are many small adjustments that can be made in this direction, there is one single adjustment that solves the vast majority of the problem. That’s what we need to focus on.
Food trumps carbon credits, tree-planting, and geoengineering
Carbon credits and tree-planting schemes are a form of downstream problem-solving. They’re doomed to fail (on their own) because they ignore the fundamental driver of human land use, which is agriculture. This is the main reason why the global environmental movement is losing. It’s like bailing water out of a sinking boat without plugging the hole. Ecological conservation and restoration will forever be a losing battle as long as human demand for land exceeds the supply. When push comes to shove, people will always choose food over conservation or carbon.
The biosphere — and, in turn, human prosperity — is suffocating under the weight of global food production. If humanity can reduce the area of land required to meet its dietary needs, it will trigger the abandonment of unnecessary agricultural land on a worldwide scale. The vast majority of this land will naturally revert to forests, grasslands, and wetlands through the process known as ecological succession. Humans planting trees are — in many cases — not necessary.
We know this from personal experience in Ecuador. The cost-efficiency numbers from our project align with global findings from 138 low- and middle-income countries, where natural regeneration costs less than 4% of plantation-style reforestation. It also typically delivers greater carbon storage, biodiversity benefits, and ecosystem services.
The bottom line is this: the vast majority of the world’s pastureland is a net resource drain that can instead be converted into an immense carbon sink, water factory, temperature regulator, and biodiversity bank. The sheer scope of this transition is hard to overstate. Billions of hectares are potentially in play. All of the above can be accomplished without compromising local and global food security.
Lowest barrier to entry with the highest ROI
On average, plant-based food uses about 65 times less land and 7 times less water than animal-based food. But not all animal-based food is created equal. In terms of resource efficiency, the elephant in the room is actually a cow. Roughly half of the world’s agricultural land is used for beef production, yet beef accounts for only 2% of the global calorie supply and less than 5% of the global protein supply. About a quarter of all habitable land on our planet is devoted to feeding cows.
Most of the calories that cows and other ruminants (like sheep) consume are used for bodily functions rather than meat production. You can get the same amount of protein from eggs, chickens, farmed fish, nuts, peas, or grain using less than 7% of the land required to produce beef or sheep meat.
Dairy is marginally less efficient than other animal-based food but far more efficient than beef. Cattle raised specifically for beef production is the real problem.
Long story short: for every 100 hectares of land that are currently used to produce beef, you can produce the same amount of protein and calories on about 10–20 hectares of land. Now imagine liberating over 80–90 hectares for other uses. Then extrapolate this across much of the planet.
Therein lies the solution to tropical deforestation, global water shortages, mass extinctions, and a quarter of the CO2 in our atmosphere.
The single most important lever to pull
Replacing all animal-based food with plant-based food is not realistic. It’s also not necessary. The main thing is replacing ruminant meat (especially beef) with any other alternative. Plant-based foods would be ideal, but other animal-based foods will also work. Prioritizing this in the tropics will speed up results and magnify the impact.
That is the single most efficient pathway to restoring the biosphere in the shortest period of time.
Quantifying the impact
Various teams of researchers have put this to the test. For a closer comparison of their studies and data, check out “How to Save the Planet with Food: A data-driven roadmap to global ecological restoration.” Here is a brief summary of their findings:
- Replacing beef and sheep meat (i.e., lamb and mutton) with plant-based alternatives — even while maintaining consumption levels of all other animal-based food — would allow 1.9 billion hectares of land to be repurposed for ecological restoration. This is equivalent to the size of the entire United States and China combined.
- Replacing beef alone would achieve the vast majority of this land-use reduction — upwards of 1.5 billion hectares. This is roughly the size of Canada, India, and Argentina combined.
- Replacing beef, sheep meat, and dairy with plant-based alternatives could free up over 3 billion hectares — which is about 30% of all habitable land on Earth. This is comparable to the size of the entire continent of Africa.
- Replacing only half of animal-based foods with plant-based foods would liberate 2 billion hectares of land and offset the greenhouse gas emissions of every single train, plane, automobile, and boat on the planet. This would do more to decarbonize the planet than shifting the entire global electrical grid to renewable energy. It would also stabilize biodiversity loss by 2050.
Global cooling, fire and flood mitigation, and other knock-on effects
The amount of land that would be reclaimed by nature in any of the above dietary scenarios would set off a chain reaction of ancillary ecological benefits throughout the world — extending far beyond the carbon cycle. Forests cool the climate by drawing water from the soil and releasing it into the atmosphere, which lowers near-surface air temperatures through evapotranspiration. Large-scale reforestation of this order would lower near-surface air temperatures by 0.48°C to 2°C in reforested areas even in an otherwise warming planet.
Cooler and wetter landscapes created by forest recovery reduce the frequency and intensity of droughts and wildfires. Wetland restoration helps protect both homes and farmland from storms and severe flooding. Coastal rewilding provides a buffer against sea level rise and hurricanes.
Bypassing the choke points
All of the above can be achieved by collectively eating less beef — and not because it’s the right thing to do, but because other alternatives are the most appealing options on the market.
This underscores a fundamental fact about consumer preferences that must be heeded. Only a minority of consumers are willing and able to make dietary sacrifices for ethical reasons. For everyone else, the key to success is to drive down costs for plant-based alternatives and improve their taste and nutritional profile.
Another important point is that this transition doesn’t require any new laws or bureaucracy. The one thing governments can do is either eliminate subsidies or, at most, redirect them. But the lion’s share of this process can be driven by the laws of supply and demand. This is how we can use economics as a tool rather than an obstacle, bypass the politicians, and avoid the culture wars — all of which are key choke points.
Biotechnology also has an important role to play.
How to do it
When I say “plant-based foods,” I’m referring to two different categories: 1) whole plant foods that people directly eat and 2) manufactured plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy. From a health and nutrition perspective, the former is preferable. But the latter will also play an important role in filling in the gaps. Both are far superior to beef in terms of resource use.
Plant-based protein alternatives currently cost roughly 34% more than beef on average, the taste is still hit or miss, and the nutritional credentials are still a work in progress. But the price differential is dropping every year, and so is the gap in flavor and nutrition. In categories like milk, many people actually prefer plant-based alternatives.
One way governments can help is by making a relatively simple adjustment in economic policy. Subsidies and tax breaks are strongly skewed in favor of animal agriculture, which artificially lowers their price and distorts the market. A study by Stanford University found that for every $1 of public money spent on plant-based or cultivated proteins, $800 was directed toward traditional animal agriculture in the U.S. In the EU, the differential was even more pronounced — $1,200 to $1 in favor of animal agriculture.
The quickest and most direct way to fix this imbalance is by shifting subsidies and tax breaks from low-efficiency animal agriculture to high-efficiency plant-based agriculture. Or, at the very least, leveling the playing field.
We can move the needle on the demand side by targeting consumer awareness in nations where beef consumption is high. But the supply side of the market economy will ultimately drive this transition.
Once plant-based food becomes cheaper than ruminant-based food, and the taste and nutrition are at least comparable, consumer preferences will gradually shift in their favor across most demographics. Ruminant-based foods will continue to be enjoyed as a delicacy, but they will eventually be priced out of everyday consumption. That will mark a phase shift in global resource use.
Final Answer
Our best chance at restoring the health and stability of the biosphere in a relatively short time is replacing beef with any other alternative as much as possible — especially in the tropics. This is the single most effective lever we can pull to trigger large-scale ecological restoration. It is also a key buffer against civilization collapse and a prerequisite for increasing human prosperity.
The best way to trigger this transition on the supply side is through repurposing subsidies and tax breaks combined with aggressive innovation in the food sector. Social impact investors, large-scale philanthropists, and DOE-like governmental agencies can supercharge innovation with equity investments, moonshot prizes, and low-interest loans.
On the demand side, an aggressive publicity blitz should specifically target beef (rather than all animal-based food) as the thing to replace. A movement like this will be most effective if it’s nonpartisan.
Ultimately, this game will be won or lost in the economic arena. The heroes in this story include venture capitalists, farmers, agribusinesses, nutrition scientists, food producers, bioengineers, content creators, chefs, restaurants, and supermarket managers and executives. They can drive this planet-wide transformation by developing and promoting foods that beat cow-based products on price, flavor, and nutrition. Once that happens, an enormous amount of land will progressively be freed from agriculture. That is the first step.
The next task is to guide the transition of that land toward natural regeneration on a massive scale with minimal social friction. Most of this side of the equation will occur automatically through the laws of supply and demand and the process of ecological succession.
This is how we save the biosphere. The bulk of this work can be done in two or three decades.
That is my final answer.
If you’re listening, Bill Ackman, I’d like a second chance.
Take a deeper dive
For a more detailed analysis, including all of the data sources and a real-life case study, check out:
Jerry Toth co-founded a rainforest conservation organization in 2007 and then a regenerative chocolate company in 2013. Both organizations are working together to use food as a mechanism for large-scale forest restoration with local farmers. Their area of operations is the Pacific Forest of Ecuador — the heart of a global biodiversity hotspot and the ancient cradle of cacao. Learn more at Third Millennium Alliance (TMA) and To’ak Chocolate.
