Barley vs Beef: carbon footprint
Barley1.18kg CO₂e / kg
vs
Beef99.48kg CO₂e / kg
Barley or Beef? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Barley runs about 1.18 kg CO₂e a kilo. Beef runs 99.48.
Beef is the heavier choice, about 84× Barley.
Swap Beef for Barley and you cut about 98.3 kg a kilo, near 99% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 575 km drive in a diesel car.
Barley: Modest. Fertiliser, the field itself, and a bit of milling.
Beef: Cows and sheep burp methane and need a lot of land and feed, which is why red meat towers over everything else here.
Per-kilo numbers skip portion size and how the food was farmed, so take them as the shape of things, not the last word.
More match-ups
Figures from OWID / Poore & Nemecek 2018, licensed CC-BY 4.0.
How we get these numbers: Methodology.