For the past year I’ve been working at AdAstra, calculating the climate change impact of food.
Today, we’re releasing most of that work into the world for free.
Cocoa production, for example, generates over 20 times as much carbon dioxide as it does cocoa powder – mainly because forests are being cut down for cocoa plantations in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.
We’ve been tracking exactly how much CO2 it takes to produce cocoa and 10 other crops, across dozens of countries, broken down to the municipality level.
Because not every chocolate bar is equal. Some food companies (but not all!) try to minimize their emissions. They refuse to buy crops crown on deforested land, and they work with farmers to reduce their greenhouse gas impact.
So their products could have a climate impact as much as 90% lower, compared to those from companies which just don’t care.
Our data has been helping them get there, making it possible to avoid buying crops from deforested land, and so remove the financial pressure to destroy ecosystems.
We’ve been selling for many thousands of dollars. Now we’re giving it away as open data, because we want it to be a public baseline for everybody to see and use.
And with our clients we’re going further, mapping out individual farms, looking at biodiversity and water usage.
Create a free account and take a look.
And if any journalists or researchers want a hand making sense of the data – get in touch, I’d be happy to help.