Data
Greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of food
Greenhouse gas emissions from producing a kilogram of each of about 40 foods, from land-use change and the farm to the shop, in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent: global means from Poore and Nemecek (2018), as published by Our World in Data.
Latest value
99.5kg CO₂e/kg
World (global mean of the studies reviewed), 2010. Version Science 360, 987–992 (2018); OWID grapher series updated 2019-10-08.
Greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of food (kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of food)
Show as a table
| Period | Food product | Value (kg CO₂e/kg) | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Apples | 0.4 | final |
| 2010 | Bananas | 0.9 | final |
| 2010 | Barley | 1.2 | final |
| 2010 | Beef (beef herd) | 99.5 | final |
| 2010 | Beef (dairy herd) | 33.3 | final |
| 2010 | Beet Sugar | 1.8 | final |
| 2010 | Berries & Grapes | 1.5 | final |
| 2010 | Brassicas | 0.5 | final |
| 2010 | Cane Sugar | 3.2 | final |
| 2010 | Cassava | 1.3 | final |
| 2010 | Cheese | 23.9 | final |
| 2010 | Citrus Fruit | 0.4 | final |
| 2010 | Coffee | 28.5 | final |
| 2010 | Dark Chocolate | 46.7 | final |
| 2010 | Eggs | 4.7 | final |
| 2010 | Fish (farmed) | 13.6 | final |
| 2010 | Groundnuts | 3.2 | final |
| 2010 | Lamb & Mutton | 39.7 | final |
| 2010 | Maize | 1.7 | final |
| 2010 | Milk | 3.2 | final |
| 2010 | Nuts | 0.4 | final |
| 2010 | Oatmeal | 2.5 | final |
| 2010 | Onions & Leeks | 0.5 | final |
| 2010 | Other Fruit | 1.1 | final |
| 2010 | Other Pulses | 1.8 | final |
| 2010 | Other Vegetables | 0.5 | final |
| 2010 | Peas | 1.0 | final |
| 2010 | Pig Meat | 12.3 | final |
| 2010 | Potatoes | 0.5 | final |
| 2010 | Poultry Meat | 9.9 | final |
| 2010 | Prawns (farmed) | 26.9 | final |
| 2010 | Rice | 4.5 | final |
| 2010 | Root Vegetables | 0.4 | final |
| 2010 | Soy milk | 1.0 | final |
| 2010 | Tofu | 3.2 | final |
| 2010 | Tomatoes | 2.1 | final |
| 2010 | Wheat & Rye | 1.6 | final |
| 2010 | Wine | 1.8 | final |
Where it comes from
- Producer
- Joseph Poore (University of Oxford) and Thomas Nemecek (Agroscope); published in Science; series processed by Our World in Data · Environmental footprints of food products (Poore & Nemecek 2018)
- Version
- Science 360, 987–992 (2018); OWID grapher series updated 2019-10-08
- File
- https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-kg-poore.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=true
- Fetched
- 2026-10-04 (automatically), 844 bytes
- Fingerprint
- sha256 aa9425a00b37eb1e8d716596e67b3e072864d9c14b67b519aec618d69296e36a · Last-Modified Mon, 05 Oct 2026 01:11:20 GMT
- Copies
- No Wayback copy recorded yet.
- Cite the producer
- Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987–992. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0216 (erratum: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw9908). Poore and Nemecek (2018) – processed by Our World in Data.
What was done to it
Read OWID's grapher CSV of Poore and Nemecek (2018) greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of food product (column ghg_emissions_per_kilogram__poore__and__nemecek__2018): 38 food products, all for the year 2010. Values are published as printed, with no conversion; the food names are OWID's.
Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/food/poore_nemecek_2018.py · code sha256 357d2dccb0239ece… · inputs aa9425a00b37…
What it covers
- Geography
- World (global mean of the studies reviewed)
- Basis
- Global mean of the life-cycle studies in Poore and Nemecek's meta-analysis (about 570 studies, 38,700 farms, 119 countries, median reference year 2010), from land-use change and farm to retail, including packaging and losses. Greenhouse gases weighted by their warming over 100 years (GWP100); the IPCC report the factors come from is not stated in the files used. Impacts vary widely between producers of the same food.
- Unit
- kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of food (kg CO₂e/kg)