Why Drink Plant Milk?

Why Drink Plant Milk?

Milk Variety: 

Humans are a truly weird species, we are the only creatures in the world that drink milk from another species and drink milk past infancy so it would only make sense that we have a variety of different milks right ? 

Diary:

The production of diary and diary products is a gold mine for anyone who can get into it but with growing concerns about the climate people are seeking alternatives to diary but still wan milk and that is where plant milk comes into the picture. The main reason behind the shift to plant milks for a lot of people is for the added health benefits plant milks have compared to milk, but a more compelling reason to drink plant milk is because of the methane produced by cows. Methane as a greenhouse gas is 23 times for potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat even though it has a shorter life span and is easily converted to carbon dioxide in the presence of Hydroxide radical as Saunois stated in his study. Saunois study confirmed that global atmospheric methane concentrations have risen with the main contributor to this being agricultural production with ruminating animals a larger contributor as Mosier points out in his study. 

This then begs the question of how environmentally friendly are plant milks actually compared to normal cows milk? The most common non-diary milk products are almond milk, rice milk and soy milk. Now if one is trying to save the environment by substituting rice milk then your not really doing anyone any favors as rice fields are closely behind cows in their methane emissions, while also being a staple for over 3 billion people.  

Almond Milk:

So then what about almond milk ? The farming of almonds in the USA is concentrated in California were 16 000 acres of wetland where converted to almond farms and as we know wetlands are natural methane sinks and sources. The farming of Almond to produce milk is also a very water intensive practice with approximately 15 gallons of water needed to produce 16 Almonds and it takes 92 almonds to make one Litre of almond milk which equates to 384 litres of water usage, this value is however down from the 1016 litres it takes to produce one litre of cows milk. So in terms of water usage Almond milk beats cows milk but there are added environmental bonuses as almonds grow on trees which we all know take up carbon dioxide to produce oxygen. But just like any agricultural product the industrialization of the practise means that almonds also have a relatively high carbon but it seems like the farming of almonds does not produce methane or any other greenhouse gas if you do not include the use of fertilizer and pesticides.

Soy Milk:

Now for Soy Milk.The biggest issue with Soy milk is the fact that the amazon rain forest is being destroyed to convert the land into soy farms, which is also very similar to them doing it for cows. The actual farming is very similar to that of almonds as the plant itself does not produce any greenhouse gas, however the farming practices of soybeans means that they do have a negative environmental impact. When compared to almond milk soy milk requires less water to produce a litre of soy milk making it a better option than almond or cow milk but a study conducted by David Pimentel showed that 200ml of soy milk produced 0.195kg of carbon dioxide emissions.

So plant milk is better than cows milk when you look at the overall environmental impact of its farming, however the processing of the plants to create the milk means that they do in fact contribute to the emissions of greenhouse gases which are not necessarily methane. However, the really is no reason why we should be drinking milk either from plants or from cows as they are not human mothers milk and therefore could pose health risks and the habit of drinking milk past infancy is actually just a really bad habit which needs to be done away with.     

Reference list:

 Mosier, A.R., Duxbury, J.M., Freney, J.R., Heinemeyer, O., Minami, K. and Johnson, D.E., 1998. Mitigating agricultural emissions of methane. Climatic Change, 40(1), pp.39-80.

 Saunois, M., Jackson, R.B., Bousquet, P., Poulter, B. and Canadell, J.G., 2016. The growing role of methane in anthropogenic climate change. Environmental Research Letters, 11(12), p.120207.