Cow Farming and Its Impact on the Climate
There is another world and economy out there which we do not see or hear much from other than when we talk politics and then we wonder why views may be different than ours.
Michael Smith has been adding an agricultural dimension to the Bear which I think we need to understand. Years back, I did a post which I caught some grief on because some thought I was in support of certain beliefs. In reality, there was a larger picture to what I wrote back then and it failed to be seen because of my using an example of how some will react to their beliefs. The problem still exists for small beef and pork farmers being crowded out
This particular post is by “Brandi Buzzard Frobose,” who authors an agriculture blog called “Buzzard’s Beat, Chronicles of a Kansas cowgirl.” I am going to let you follow the link and get a bit more on her background. Commenter, farmer, and sometime Agriculture Economics’ writer Michael Smith recommended I take a look at Brandi Buzzard – Frobose’s blog Buzzard’s Beat to get another view on farming.
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A Burger Won’t Negate an Airplane , Brandi Buzzard, Buzzard’s Beat
It appears there are many other bad habits the population has which has a greater environmental impact.
Over the past decade, my bovine friends have started to receive a bad rap for releasing their bodily fumes into the air (apparently they are the only animals on the planet that belch – shame!). Many people have even gone so far as to blame our planet’s changing climate on cows, in an attempt to create a scapegoat for their own drastically impactful behavior.
So, indulge me for a moment while we talk about climate change, population growth and cows. Over the last 100+ years, the global temperature has increased by ~0.74°C. Global sea level has risen by 17 cm during the 20th century, in part because of the melting of snow and ice from many mountains and in the polar regions.* Clearly, the planet is getting a wee bit warmer and our climate is changing. Now let’s think about what has happened in the past 100 years:
1920
- U.S. population – 107 million
- World population – 1.8 billion
- Cars on American roads – ~7 million
- Number of flights in the U.S.– First commercial flight wasn’t until 1926 and air travel wasn’t common until 1950s but we’ll use 5,000 for 1920 as a benchmark even though that is vastly overshooting it.
- Number of cows in the U.S. – 12.5 million
2020
- U.S. population – 331 million – 209% increase
- World population – 7.75 billion – 330% increase
- Cars on American roads – 269 million – 3,742% increase
- Number of flights in the U.S. – 16.1+ million – 321,000% INCREASE
- Number of cows in the U.S. – 41.1 million – 228% increase
Look at the increase in the number of cars in the U.S over past 100 years. Look at the number of planes now in commission. The average coast-to-coast round-trip flight from New York to San Fran produces 2-3 tons of carbon dioxide per person. PER PERSON. With about 300 seats on a coast-to-coast flight, that’s roughly 600-900 tons of CO2 from one round-trip flight. Mind-blowing, honestly. If you combine all 16 million U.S. flights’ GHG emissions with the GHG emissions from 269 million cars, you’d have accounted for 29% of all U.S. GHG emissions.
Do you know what percentage of GHG cows are responsible for? Two percent.
That’s right, a measly 2% of all GHG emissions are attributed to cattle and all of agriculture (the sector that feeds 331 million people) is only 9%.** How cool is that . . . that our food production process is so efficient that we feed 331 million people with that low of a climate impact?!
In regards to food production, let’s keep our wits about us and remember that ALL FOOD HAS AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT. Bread, green beans, beef, ice cream, carrots, the Impossible Burger – all of these things have an environmental impact, and some deliver a more powerful caloric punch than others.
For example: plain old iceberg lettuce – you know the kind that is mostly water and has no caloric value? That lettuce takes a tremendous amount of water to grow and can only be grown in certain regions of the U.S., it then has to be transported across the nation where it is largely thrown in the trash*** or used as a delivery vessel for bacon, ranch, croutons, carrots and cheese.
Conversely, cattle take human non-edible foods (stuff that we are too picky to eat, like bruised apples or potato tops) and turn it into high-quality protein. Cattle are raised for beef in all 50 states, so it doesn’t have be transported from one side of the country to the other. Additionally, beef is one of the least wasted foods and delivers a much more nutrition-packed meal than lettuce. It’s a good or excellent source of 10 different nutrients such as protein, zinc, iron and B-vitamins. It’s not really fair to compare iceberg lettuce to beef. If you’re interested in acquiring a reliable weighing scale, go to https://certifiedscale.com/contacts to get in touch with reputable sellers.
Here’s the real story: do not sit on your soapbox and tell me that cows are responsible for climate change. I will not hear it. Do not attempt to tell me that eating less meat will somehow miraculously offset the miles driven by cars, flights across the U.S., electronic use and consumerism. That’s bull hockey.
* www.eea.europa.eu/themes/climate/faq/how-is-climate-changing-and-how-has-it-changed-in-the-past
*** To my lettuce-growing friends, I apologize. I mean you no harm, I’m just speaking facts.
This work reflects my private, personal opinions and does not represent the views of my employer.
Brandi Buzzard – Buzzads’ Beat
I would venture to say that the 9% figure might be a little lower now. I’ll put it on the list to research.
This is deeply silly. The environmental impact of beef isn’t limited to methane production. Compared to bison, cattle are more destructive to the environment. And red meat production is more destructive than fish or poultry. And in the end, less meat and more plant diet is better for the environment.
Joel:
Bigger fish to fry than chasing small farms and farmers.
@run,
Yes. Like coal mining jobs.
Joel,
I can tell you this is absolutely false. We are 100% vegetable and poultry. My neighbor next to me is 100% beef. He runs his equipment 1/3 less than I do. He rarely runs a tractor to mow, doesn’t cultivate, hill, or any of the other multitude of things I have to do to grow pickles. We both use ruminants to pepper our fields with fresh organic matter, and the restraints are the same on average 1,000 pounds of rumen per acre. My poultry cannot be fed solely from the hay and bugs that grow here, so I have to adjust for a carbon tax for supplemental silage that comes in plastic bags from the co-op. He only has to assume a carbon tax if he has inadequate hay stores for winter and might only have to supplement silage in the late fall through early spring. I am silage all week every week. We also try not to use heavy chemicals for weeds and pest controls by using 5-12 mil woven polyethylene that can be reused, and 5 mil unwoven that cannot be reused. All made by oil. We both have to use vehicles to take our product to market. The farmers market I meet with a multitude of people all driving cars to get to the market. The processor adds a bit of carbon between running their facilities and moving product to retailers. I also have to pay another farmer for seed, and he has a carbon footprint as well.
All in, I am way more carbon intensive per acre than he could ever be.
As far as methane, there are conflicting stories here. Beef grazed on pasture has different outputs from corn and soybean based silage I am sure. The beef farmer has more methane output than I do, but I overwhelmingly blow him out of the water running equipment, buying poly sheeting for both weed control and frost control (also my green house is almost 100% plastic) on the carbon side providing eggplant parm to the masses.
I have to add, that while my experience is 100% anecdotal and not everyone does it one way, the point of the post from Brandi was that going after 9% of total GHG emissions that feed the masses is looking in the wrong direction when planes and vehicles are overwhelmingly a bigger issue.
MS;
Brandi’s point of using fewer cattle to feed the population plays out in less methane release. Half life for methane is 10 years as opposed to CO2 which is ten times that once in the atmosphere. If there is no growth in the herd, methane decreases. Wetlans supply about 40% of the methane, the melting of the north and south poles releases large quantities of methane. Drilling for oil and fracking also plays a larger part than cattle.
But why attack the small farmer? They are already under a lot of stress in competition with large manufacturing cattle growers with 2000 or more acres of land. Brandi’s point is correct, small farmers are not the issue but they are being driven out-of-business because their costs are consistently higher. Large retail such as WalMart and the groceries command the pricing necessary. Everyone takes a cut from the stock yards, feedlots, etc, till little is left for a small farmer,. Some reading:
– https://agreenerworld.org/a-greener-world/a-convenient-untruth/?gclid=CjwKCAjw3riIBhAwEiwAzD3TiTD1304ZRhermlEf0ABGBLTUa3WcQ0lZOmkJtS4gotdVNvpDN2tZihoCd0sQAvD_BwE
– https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable
@MS
“I can tell you this is absolutely false.”
That doesn’t square what what I’ve read about commercial beef production.
“my experience is 100% anecdotal and not everyone does it one way”
Exactly. Ergo, my post isn’t absolutely false, it just isn’t always and everywhere true. Can you spot the difference?
Yes, most greenhouse gas production is from heating, cooling and transportation. As you can see from my post, I don’t dispute that. Greenhouse gas production from bovine flatulence is a minor part of the environmental impact of a red meat diet.
Not disagreeing with you at all. As a career financial analyst the data sets coming out of these studies are questionable. The majority of our produce is coming from Mexico, California, and central and South America. That is literal thousands if not millions of tons of fuel just to get it here. Silage for beef production is only 30% or so of total carbon tax due cattle ranch. These studies that pile on CO2 emissions from cattle breathing, the numbers don’t make any sense. I will see if I can break it down in the future and put together a comprehensive analysis. Those studies might be right, or wrong, but that’s what I am to get some evidence on. If you come up with anything in your knowledge journey please shoot it over I’d love to see.
MS:
This is a pretty good article on small farmer’s plight in 2017. One way to win over rural America is to start to pay attention to small farmer plight rather than some Iowa Senator’s need for subsidy. Small American Farmer’s Debt Crisis
MS:
Last time I looked, we import almost 50% of our veggies from Mexico.
before the white men arrived on this continent, the land was already carrying its capacity of mammalian methane emitters, such as deer and buffalo….replacing those animals with cows hasn’t really made that much of a difference in the continent’s GHG emissions over time…
there’s a big difference between naturally occurring GHG emissions, which are part of the natural carbon cycle, and those GHG emissions that result from extracting millions of years of stored carbon and putting it all back into the atmosphere over a relatively short period of time…
blaming cows is just part of the fossil fuel industry strategy to deflect their guilt..
@rjs,
“the land was already carrying its capacity of mammalian methane emitters, such as deer and buffalo….replacing those animals with cows hasn’t really made that much of a difference in the continent’s GHG emissions over time…”
Hmm.
https://mrdrscienceteacher.wordpress.com/2019/09/21/bison-vs-cow-greenhouse-gas-emissions/
Joel, your link has a table showing beef and dairy cows emit 66 tons of methane a year; a few year back, we had a gas well blowout here in Ohio that released 120 tons of methane per hour, and it took them over 20 days to cap it…i believe you’ll find similar emissions from the hundreds of abandoned wells in the San Juan basin of New Mexico…
understand, i’m not defending big Ag here, just pointing out that when it comes to the climate, they’re small potatoes…
link on the Ohio blowout: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/52/26376
“Here we report the detection of large methane emissions from a gas well blowout in Ohio during February to March 2018 in the total column methane measurements from the spaceborne Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI). From these data, we derive a methane emission rate of 120 ± 32 metric tons per hour.”
before you catch it Joel, i see i’ve made a mistake reading your graph…it refers to millions of tons of methane a year….there’s no way for me to back out of that error gracefully…
Feedback loops can be real killers. We make more babies and grow more food to feed them so they can make more babies. Unfortunately we are also reducing infant mortality around the globe, so there is no escaping that one.
Then increasing methane melts permafrost frozen tundra which releases more methane to melt more permafrost frozen tundra. Eventually there will be no more permafrost. So, if we dodge that bullet then it will be because the gun jammed.
Sea levels rise as glacial ice melts away. What happens when the sea level can rise no more because all the ice caps and mountain glaciers have melted? Maybe we get some fresh snow pack each winter because the bigger sea surface under warmer skies will feed the atmosphere a great deal of evaporated water. But in any case the cold melting water that sinks into the seas will be greatly diminished as will the ocean currents that are driven by the ice melt. What would be the climate impact of diminished ocean currents on the densely populated regions of Earth between the tropical and polar circles? We might want to consider that the Earth has been experiencing increasing ice melt and ocean currents since the Little Ice Age (1303- 1860 A.D.) and to a much lesser extent ever since the end of the Younger Dryas.
“…The auld anes think it best,
With the brown cow to clear their een,
Snuff, crack, and take their rest…”
– from Allan Ramsay’s play The Gentle Shepherd (1725)
[These are not the cows that you’re looking for. They emit CO2 instead of methane. However, there would be few of either kind of cow, if not for so many humans, but there would be far more trees.]