How much energy does it take to make one hamburger? The answer hard to believe

We’ve all heard it before — to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb fossil fuel dependency, we should consider reducing the energy and resources we use to make meat and animal products.

The entire lifecycle of raising animals for beef production — from planting and harvesting feed crops to transportation, processing, and refrigeration — consumes a very substantial amount of energy, mostly coming from fossil fuels.

From a baby calf to one single hamburger

Raising a cow from calf to hamburger really puts a strain on our planet’s resources. For starters, producing a single quarter-pound hamburger can use up to 1,600 gallons of water.

This water goes into growing the feed the cow eats, irrigating crops, and managing waste. Plus, producing beef from animals is very energy-intensive, requiring around 2 to 3 kilowatt-hours of energy for each burger — and that energy comes from fossil fuels.

On top of that, each cow needs about 4.5 acres of land for grazing and feed production — that’s 4.5 acres for every cow in the world that is being raised to ultimately become hamburger. That’s an incredible amount of land, to say the least.

Next, beef farming is a major source of greenhouse gases, releasing roughly 44 to 55 pounds of CO₂ equivalent per hamburger. Think about how many hamburgers are eaten around the world every day, and you’ll start to get the idea.

But the impact doesn’t stop there. Cattle farming often leads to deforestation and habitat loss, especially in sensitive areas like the Amazon rainforest, which harms biodiversity and disrupts ecosystems while adding to carbon emissions.

Cows are also not very efficient at turning feed into meat, needing about 15 pounds of feed to produce just 5 pounds of beef. To make beef production more sustainable, we can adopt several strategies.

Raising animals takes lots of energy

A new study recently attempted to put a quantifiable number on this entire process, proving that it’s not just about reducing greenhouse emissions.

Scientists from Norway, Austria, and Switzerland, based at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology‘s (NTNU) Industrial Ecology Programme, have put a microscope to the energy requirements of our global food system.

The study reveals that our consumption of animal products has a more significant impact than we might have imagined.

Crunching the numbers from 2015-2019, they found that a whopping 60% of the energy footprint of agriculture worldwide is attributed to animal-based products.

“That energy is predominately from fossil fuels,” said Edgar Hertwich, a professor at NTNU’s Industrial Ecology Programme and the senior author of the paper.

As we have seen, societies are increasingly looking at electricity as a cleaner energy option. However, this does not readily apply to agriculture.

Eating animals: An energy hungry industry

One of the key challenges highlighted in the study is the inefficiency of animal husbandry.

In simple terms, we grow food to feed animals, and then we consume the animals — but the energy return on this “investment” is disappointingly low.

The research found that whilst livestock accounted for the majority of agriculture’s energy footprint during the study period, it only provided a minor 18% of the calories consumed worldwide.

Led by Kajwan Rasul, the team sought to calculate the energy return on the energy investment, essentially benchmarking the efficiency of our food system.

It’s a simple equation. If the figure is less than 1, it signifies that it takes more energy to produce the food than we get back from consuming it.

Mapping out the energy footprint

To conduct this study, Rasul employed two models, EXIOBASE and FABIO, that respectively allowed him to estimate energy use across various sectors and track the production, trade, and consumption of food.

Integrating these two models using innovative methodologies enabled the team to examine the energy footprint of our food system on a much deeper level than previously possible.

Their study covered ten food categories, broken down from 123 different commodities, across a global spread of 20 regions.

They also investigated the food system’s energy footprint over two, five-year phases, namely 1995-1999 and 2015-2019, which enabled them to identify trends.

The bright side: Positive trends over time

There is some good news to share.

Rasul and the team of scientists found a noticeable improvement in the energy efficiency of global food systems over the two decades.

The energy return on energy investment shifted from 0.68 in 1995 to 0.91 in 2019. Yet, this still meant that, in 2019, it cost 10% more energy to produce every calorie provided to society than was returned in consumption.

Regions with less industrialized food systems, like parts of Africa and Asia, consistently had energy returns on investments higher than one.

This is encouraging as these regions are home to 68% of the world’s population.

Rasul noticed that this trend was also reflected in four of the world’s five high-income regions. However, he expressed caution over whether this trend was genuinely due to efficiency improvements.

Food security and the fossil fuel energy equation

The findings of this study raise broader implications beyond greenhouse gas emissions.

If energy for food production was boundless and environmentally neutral, we wouldn’t need to worry about inefficiencies in agriculture. But that’s not our reality.

Food security is a significant concern. If our agriculture continues to depend heavily on fossil fuels, we may face a significant crisis.

This isn’t just a theoretical proposition: historical incidents, like the 1970s energy crisis or the more recent ripple effects from conflicts, highlight the potential risk.

As the authors of the study succinctly put it, agricultural systems heavily reliant on fossil fuels “turn the question of food security into a question of energy security.”

It’s time for us all to take note and reconsider what’s on our dinner plate.

The full study was published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

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