Emissions vs. Food Supply

This graphic was part of a recent OXFAM report “Growing a Better Future: Food justice in a resource-constrained world”

I checked on of the links listed as a reference: http://faostat.fao.org/site/368/DesktopDefault.aspx On this page you can select a country and get detailed data about the amounts of various crops produced by it.  At the top of the data is the row “Grand Total” and if you look to the right you will see the column heading “Food supply (kcal/capita/day)”.

I think this is the amount of calories of food produced or otherwise available in the selected country per person per day.  Those who are familiar with calorie restriction diets or just calorie counting may recognize these values.  Usually a person needs somewhere in the vicinity of 2100 calories/day plus or minus depending on age, weight, and activity level.  But it stands to reason that the available amount of calories per day should be higher than what is actually required by the body.  Therefore even if a country’s count of available calories per person per day seems to still be above what would required for daily maintenance, it may in fact be low.

One startling things about the graphic is that, while the USA only produces 194 kcal/person/day per 1 ton of total greenhouse gas emissions, Brazil manages to produce 1556 kcal/person/day producing the same ton of greenhouse gas emissions, over 8 times as much.