You're listening to The Inquiry with me, Helena Merriman.

One of the perks of this job is that every week you get to read a lot of interesting stuff.

Sometimes, though, the stuff you read isn't just interesting,

but it changes the way you think about something. Take this

sentence from a UN report about climate change. Agriculture, including forestry, fisheries and

livestock production, generate a fifth of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. All right, it may not sound hugely dramatic, but here's another way to think about it.

The food we eat and the farming system behind it produces the same amount of greenhouse emissions

as all the world's cars, planes, boats and trains put together.

And that got us thinking.

If so much of the world's greenhouse gas emissions

comes from the food we eat,

can we eat our way out of climate change?

Part 1. The Big Belch I remember hearing about the significant impact that agriculture and livestock production has for climate change.

And like many people, I remember initially, I found it really quite hard to believe.

Meet Sue Bibb. She's been an environmentalist for over 30 years.

And like most environmentalists, she started out on what's long

been seen as the bad boy of climate change. Transport. Mommy? My teacher says we need to think about

the way we travel. Because it's hurting the world. But gradually, Sue did became aware of another problem, one that was just as big, but few

people seemed to know about.

Agriculture.

An industry which is devastating the environment.

There's a number of different gases and different ways in which agriculture contributes

...