A farmer speaks

Debunking the meat/climate change myth 92

7 Aug 2009 9:21 AM
by Eliot Coleman
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Posted in
- Climate & Energy,
- Food
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- climate change,
- meat

Editor’s note: Eliot Coleman is one of the most revered and influential small-scale farmers in the United States, famous for growing delicious vegetables through the Maine winter with little use of fossil fuel. Eliot sent me the following letter as a response to my recent piece on the greenhouse-gas foorprint of industrial meat. At question is a 2007 report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization called “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” which claimed that 18 percent of global human-induced greenhouse gas emissions stem from meat production.
—Tom Philpott

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cow pasture The problem is CAFOs, not cows.I am dismayed that so many people have been so easily fooled on the meat eating and climate change issue following the UN report. The culprit is not meat eating but rather the excesses of corporate/industrial agriculture. The UN report shows either great ignorance or possibly the influence of the fossil fuel lobby with the intent of confusing the public. It is obviously to someone’s benefit to make meat eating and livestock raising an easily attacked straw man (with the enthusiastic help of vegetarian groups) in order to cover up the singular contribution of the only new sources of carbon—burning the stored carbon in fossil fuels and to a small extent making cement (both of which release carbon from long term storage)—as the reason for increased greenhouse gasses in the modern era. (Just for ridiculous comparison, human beings, each exhaling about 1kg of CO2 per day, are responsible for 33% more CO2 per year than fossil fuel transportation. Maybe we should get rid of us.)

If I butcher a steer for my food, and that steer has been raised on grass on my farm, I am not responsible for any increased CO2. The pasture-raised animal eating grass in my field is not producing CO2, merely recycling it (short term carbon cycle) as grazing animals (and human beings) have since they evolved. It is not meat eating that is responsible for increased greenhouse gasses; it is the corn/ soybean/ chemical fertilizer/ feedlot/ transportation system under which industrial animals are raised. When I think about the challenge of feeding northern New England, where I live, from our own resources, I cannot imagine being able to do that successfully without ruminant livestock able to convert the pasture grasses into food. It would not be either easy or wise to grow arable crops on the stony and/or hilly land that has served us for so long as productive pasture. By comparison with my grass fed steer, the soybeans cultivated for a vegetarian’s dinner, if done with motorized equipment, are responsible for increased CO2.

But, what about the methane in all that cattle flatulence? Excess flatulence is also a function of an unnatural diet. If cattle flatulence on a natural grazing diet were a problem, heat would have been trapped a 1000 years ago when, for example, there were 70 million buffalo in North America not to mention innumerable deer, antelope, moose, elk, caribou, and so on all eating vegetation and in turn being eaten by native Americans, wolves, mountain lions, etc. Did the methane from their digestion and the nitrous oxide from their manure cause temperatures to rise then? Or could there be other contributing factors today resulting from industrial agriculture, factors that change natural processes, which are not being taken into account? It has long been known that when grasslands are chemically fertilized their productivity is increased but their plant diversity is diminished. A recent study in the journal Rangelands (Vol. 31, #1, pp. 45 - 49) documents how that the diminished diversity from sowing only two or three grasses and legumes in modern pastures results in diminished availability of numerous secondary nutritional compounds, for example tannins from the minor pasture forbs, which are known to greatly reduce methane emissions. Could not the artificial fertilization of pastures greatly increase the NO2 from manure? Might not the increased phosphorus, nowhere near as abundant in natural systems, have modified digestibility? I am sure that future research will document other contributing factors of industrial agricultural practices on animal emissions. The fact is clear. It is not the livestock; it is the way they are raised. But what about clearing the Brazilian rain forest? Well, the bulk of that is for soybeans and if we stopped feeding grain to cattle much of the acreage presently growing grain in the Midwest could become pasture again and we wouldn’t need Brazilian land. (US livestock presently consume 5 times as much grain as the US population does directly.) And long term pasture, like the Great Plains once was, stores an enormous amount of carbon in the soil.

My interest in this subject comes not just because I am a farmer and a meat eater, but also because something seems not to make sense here as if the data from the research has failed to take some other human mediated influence into account. But even more significantly, if we humans were not burning fossil fuels and thus not releasing long-term carbon from storage and if we were not using some 90 megatons of nitrogen fertilizer per year, would we even be discussing this issue?

If those people concerned about rising levels of greenhouse gasses, instead of condemning meat eating, were condemning the enormous output of greenhouse gasses due to fossil fuel and fertilizer use by a greedy and biologically irresponsible agriculture, I would cheer that as a truthful statement even if they weren’t perceptive enough to continue on and mention that the only “new” carbon, the carbon that is responsible for rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere, is not biogenic from livestock but rather anthropogenic from our releasing the carbon in long term storage (coal, oil, natural gas.) Targeting livestock as a smoke screen in the climate change controversy is a very mistaken path to take since it results in hiding our inability to deal with the real causes. When people are fooled into ignorantly condemning the straw man of meat eating, who I suspect has been set up for them by the fossil fuel industry, I am appalled by how easily human beings allow themselves to be deluded by their corporate masters.

Comments

Eliot Coleman has over 30 years experience in all aspects of organic farming, including field vegetables, greenhouse vegetables, rotational grazing of cattle and sheep, and range poultry. He is the author of The New Organic Grower, Four Season Harvest, and most recently The Winter Harvest Handbook. He has contributed chapters to three scientific books on organic agriculture and has written extensively on the subject since 1975. Eliot and his wife Barbara Damrosch presently operate a commercial year-round market garden, in addition to horticultural research projects, at Four Season Farm in Harborside, Maine.

jayohara Posted 10:29 am
07 Aug 2009
Hurray! So glad that Eliot is getting front page action at Grist. Hurray!
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adfasfdasfd Posted 12:23 pm
07 Aug 2009
There are still problems of resource inefficiency and overconsumption with meat, so it's still smart to moderate your consumption. Just eat organic if possible.In any event, extending the carbon cap to cover agriculture would largely take care of this matter, assuming we can construct the proper metrics to estimate emissions of a given facility.
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1. jedibabe Posted 8:13 am
  11 Aug 2009
  Eating organic meat is NOT the answer! Organic meat bought at your local Whole Foods typically was trucked in from Central California and raised in a near conventional confinement operation, quite similar in all aspects except diet to a conventional Zacky farms chicken. If you want sustainable chicken, buy local! Find someone near you who grows pastured poultry. It's healthier for you (lower in fat and higher in Omega 3's), better for the earth and for the chicken. It even tastes better! Don't believe me? Try it, just once and you'll be a fan. Many local farmers can't afford organic certification but are dedicated to sustainable practices. Talk to the grower, ask questions about your food, shop the farmers market. To find local producers near you, go to:
  http://www.localharvest.org.
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  1. jeanmarietodd Posted 12:47 pm
    17 Aug 2009
    Jedibabe, It's not "organic" meat at issue, it's grassfed beef on pasture that conserves carbon in the soil. And by all means, buy it locally, not from California (but for many of us that is local).
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veritone Posted 12:42 pm
07 Aug 2009
I don't think your argument scales well world-wide. George Monbiot, looking at this from a planet-wide perspective observed that "we can either feed ourselves or our livestock, not both." The reason I no longer eat meat is because of that conclusion which I believe to be true. Also, I'm enjoying tremendous health benefits from not eating meat. I still think there is a case to be made for becoming vegan. I do agree that current agribiz practices are the culprit and applaud you for making that point. Nonetheless, the claim the Monbiot makes is true, I think and I'm wondering if you'd propose to debunk him with information I'm unaware of.
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1. halli620 Posted 6:46 am
  11 Aug 2009
  Veritone, I don't know what part of the world/country you're in, but in some areas, in order to eat truly locally and sustainably, a diet with some meat and dairy products is more sustainable than one without. For example, in a number of areas in the northeast, there is a significant amount of land that is not fit for growing food fit for human consumption that can, instead, sustain grasses that can feed cattle. Studies at Cornell University have shown that in such areas, a wholly local vegetarian diet would not be sustainable, and would require food to be transported in from elsewhere (leading to emissions from transport, etc.), while feeding livestock on the land that can sustain grasses but not foodcrops creates a smaller ecological footprint. Note, also, that meat produced from grass-fed livestock in a sustainable fashion like this is not only much healthier than corn-fed beef, but I believe has been shown in some studies to even be healther than meat-free diets (though I admit I don't have time to look for these studies right now).I agree that with sustainable methods, meat production would be cut, and that with increased prices, people would eat less meat; I don't see this as a bad thing. I hope that laws forbidding "preventative" antibiotic use that are in the works are quickly and efficiently adopted and implemented, because in addition to addressing the problem of antibiotic resistence, this will lead to the closing of unsanitary CAFOs and to the decline of unnatural diets of corn that "require" antibiotics to keep the animals alive. While I certainly agree that CAFOs are not sustainable, safe, or acceptable, and that there are areas where food crops can sustain the local population, meat and dairy products should not automatically be seen as the enemy.
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  1. BrianS Posted 8:35 am
    11 Aug 2009
    "Studies at Cornell"
    If you have a citation (or better yet, links) please let us know. CLWeber below has provided a number of cites suggesting otherwise.
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veritone Posted 12:46 pm
07 Aug 2009
I don't think eating meat scales well as a world-wide solution. George Monbiot, looking at this from a planet-wide perspective observed that "we can either feed ourselves or our livestock, not both." The reason I no longer eat meat is because of his conclusion which I believe to be true. Also, I'm enjoying tremendous health benefits from not eating meat. I still think there is a case to be made for becoming vegan.I applaud the points you make about Agribiz, but I wonder if you think Monbiot is wrong. Perhaps you have some means of debunking his claim that I'm unaware of.
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BrianS Posted 1:23 pm
07 Aug 2009
While I appreciate Coleman's argument about CO2 for the relatively rare case of exclusively grass-fed beef, he hasn't settled the issue of methane. In that case, he asks several open-ended questions about potential ways that might reduce cattle methane, and then says " The fact is clear. It is not the livestock; it is the way they are raised."No, it's not clear at all, especially since noone can reasonably claim to eliminate cattle methane emissions. My understanding is that it's not even clear whether grain fed cattle produce more or less methane, and that it might be the latter.Here's the real question for enviros: would switching consumption from best case grass-raised cattle to best case vegetarian food have the overall effect of reducing GHG emissions? I think the switch would increase CO2 emissions while eliminating methane. The net effect on balance isn't clear to me at all.
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1. Tasermons Partner Posted 2:15 pm
  07 Aug 2009
  Methane is almost 20 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. In other words, 20 lbs of CO2 are needed to have the same effect as 1 lb of methane.Therefore, unless CO2 increased 20 fold as a result, the reduction in methane would still lead to an overall net reduction in GHG effect.
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  1. surf4less Posted 2:12 pm
    10 Aug 2009
    While those absolute numbers may be true, that argument doesn't account for relative concentrations and output rates of each.
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Hans Eberle Posted 2:50 pm
07 Aug 2009
Eliot Coleman's article certainly helps with better understanding the root causes of GHG emissions by the agricultural complex. Still, it seems fair to me to ask for the reduction of meat production/consumption in order to reduce GHG emissions if "production" methods are not changed. And if we ask for a change, in particular, for raising animals on grass, and more specifically "raising locally on grass", we'd need to carefully examine whether locally grass-fed meat can be "produced" at a "production level" that meets current and future consumption levels.

David Pimentel, a Cornell ecologist, studied this topic decades ago. In 1980, he published an article in the Science magazine entitled "The Potential for Grass-Fed Livestock: Resource Constraints". And here is the abstract:

"Using pasture and grazed forest-range for a system of producing live-stock by feeding grass alone reduces the inputs of energy about 60 percent and land resources about 8 percent, but also reduces by about half the production of animal protein in the United States. Under a system in which only grass was fed, livestock would be restricted to beef, milk, and lamb production. The amount of grain fed to U.S. livestock is about 135 million tons (metric) or about ten times the amount consumed by the U.S. population."

I'd also like to add that "meat production" has a broader scope including fish, chicken, pigs, cows, etc.
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lasmog Posted 3:11 pm
07 Aug 2009
Unfortunately, almost all meat available to Americans is CAFO produced and grain fed. Until that changes a vegetarian diet seems like a sensible way to reduce GHG emissions.
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1. kimsikes Posted 11:03 am
  10 Aug 2009
  If you wait for the powers-that-be to change this for us it will never happen ... this industry is a huge money-maker. There are sources of real food everywhere you just need to find them, whether it's meat or veggies. We need to be proactive and vote with our fork. Be the change that you want to see in this world, right?
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cheapsk8_steve Posted 5:13 pm
07 Aug 2009
With all due respect to Mr Coleman, perhaps he should read the UN report in question...Obviously the problem with meat eating and climate change is all about the "greedy and biologically irresponsible" methods used to produce 99% of the meat required to meet the demand from greedy and biologically irresponsible meat eaters! I absolutely agree with all of Mr Coleman's criticisms of industrial agriculture, but the only way to realistically change this industry is to eat less meat.
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Royal Enfield Posted 6:46 pm
07 Aug 2009
Thank you Eliot, insightful and well articulated. Do you recommend any relevant reports for the skeptical veggies in the room? Have there been any peer reviewed studies on this? If not, could you point some researchers in the right direction? This is a hard pill for the enviros to swallow. Much animal suffering at the hands of an industry turned sadistic in the past 50 years combined with a prevailing equation that meat = heat has produced a situation where it is difficult to compartmentalize ethically and environmentally responsible practices such as yours from the industry as a whole. If the data do in fact support your argument, then this is truly an important message - and we enviros would do well to hop on board in the name of intellectual honesty and for the future of the planet. And besides, burgers are dee-licious!
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1. kimsikes Posted 10:05 am
  10 Aug 2009
  These are the two best articles I've read to support our pastured cows: http://www.siteground217.com/~westonap/farm-a-ranch/1639-an-inconvenient-cow and http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/blog/articles/splendor-from-the-grass.
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Delay And Deny Posted 8:35 pm
07 Aug 2009
Did you say "debunk" ? That's right...yet another "Super Storm" that peters out into a fa-drizzle.http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gVWjsPEiqe1tEu2mhBIRaxxGi8owD99U42P80 Hurricane Felicia weakens to a Category 2 storm(AP) – 12 hours agoMIAMI — Hurricane Felicia has weakened to a Category 2 storm far out in the Pacific.The National Hurricane Center said Felicia's maximum sustained winds decreased Friday morning to near 100 mph.
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mm510 Posted 9:51 pm
07 Aug 2009
It is undeniable that much of the currently assigned climate change
impact can be put at the feet of industrial agriculture and our
nation-spanning food system. Production of soy and corn using chemical
fertilizer (emission of N2O), transporting feed and animals long
distances (emission of CO2), use of machines (CO2), and so on,
contribute a significant amount to the carbon footprint of meat. And
so, if you take most of that stuff away and shift to grass-fed, locally
produced meat, the overall impact of meat would decrease greatly, and
the subject would probably almost disappear from the conversation.But it's a great leap of faith to say that non-industrial meat is completely climate neutral.

"If
I butcher a steer for my food, and that steer has been raised on grass
on my farm, I am not responsible for any increased CO2. The
pasture-raised animal eating grass in my field is not producing CO2,
merely recycling it (short term carbon cycle) as grazing animals (and
human beings) have since they evolved."

In terms of CO2, this
statement might be true, but when you consider methane and nitrous
oxide, I doubt that it is. Steers and other ruminents emit methane as
part of their normal digestion -- even when eating grass (see this
article in New Scientist, for example) -- and, as commenter Tasermons Partner pointed out above, methane is far a more potent warming agent than CO2
(25 times more than CO2, according to the Fourth IPCC report). And
thus, when a cow converts a carbon atom from a plant into a methane
molecule instead of a CO2 molecule or a part of their body, the climate
impact of that carbon atom is increased by 25-fold. If, of course,
there is serious science that shows that the net GHG of grass-fed steer
is zero or less than zero, then please share it with us.

It is
conceivable to me that a steer that eats only grass from naturally
fertilized pasture could have a negative carbon footprint. Root
structures of grasses can be quite large, and soil can become a carbon
sink, so the pasture could possibly sequester enough carbon to make up
for the methane emitted by a steer during digestion. I'm also open to
the idea that manure decomposes differently on pasture than at the
feedlot. But someone needs to demonstrate it with some actual
measurements and some real science. (I'm sure that there are people
working on this.)

As several commenters wrote above, the vast
majority of meat produced in the U.S. is from industrial facilities
that rely on soy and corn as feed, and so when people target livestock
in the climate change discussion, they are in one sense targeting the
current industrial livestock that has the carbon burden of corn, soy
and long-distance transportation. As more is learned about the carbon
footprint of grass-fed beef, the distinction might start to be made
between climate-neutral beef and climate-damaging beef.
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1. Avelhingst Posted 9:15 am
  17 Aug 2009
  A brief primer on (bovine) poop:When a beef or a milch cow spatters dung onto an even mildly active pasture, a couple of things happen: first, a thin crust of dried (if it is sunny) or fibrous (if it isn't sunny) matter forms on top of the cowpat. This crust retains much of the moisture and nitrogenous compounds in the cowpat. Secondly, a horde of organisms decend upon the sumptuous banquet - depending on the time of year, in all but the depths of the coldest winter, this array of beasties changes (an in the depths of winter, the cowpats are frozen). The matter of the poop is carted away by a staggering diversity of beetles, transformed into the larvae of the mustard-yellow, fuzzy cowpat fly (whose larvae, I might add, are gung-ho about eating the larvae of other, more odious species such as the common housefly and the stable fly), or just eaten by worms, or consumed by fungus, or what-have-you. The cowpat exists as a micro-ecosystem for maximizing the sequestration of nutrients, whether nitrogen, phosphorous, carbon, et cetera.The improper spreading (or any spreading, for that matter, to lesser degrees) of manure maximizes all the downsides of manure cycling. Unfortunately, improper spreading is the norm in many places as margins erode. Improper spreading can suffocate the organisms most suited to the immediate colonization of a living dung-conversion factory, pulse nutrients into the soil at improper times, lead to run-off, and, importantly in our context here, respire ammonia and nitrogenous compounds.
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Dana Seilhan Posted 6:04 am
08 Aug 2009
Not only does mechanized farming increase CO2 because of the fuel used in farming machines, but agriculture in general increases CO2 directly because felling trees, ripping up plant ground cover and then tilling the soil all release CO2 as well. Agriculture is also directly responsible for much of the world's desertification that wasn't already occurring naturally. Just ask Iraq. You know the cedars of Lebanon? They used to grow in Iraq too. The forest was so thick in places that sunlight never reached the forest floor. Then came the Agricultural Revolution in the Fertile Crescent, which of course was in present-day Iraq. Was. The land's pretty useless now.Paper companies get a lot of grief for deforestation, probably deserved. But then nobody ever takes that logical next step to wonder how all those agricultural fields got there.To say nothing of all the animal slaughter required in plant farming--insects are animals too, not to mention all the rats, mice, voles, raccoons, possums, gophers, moles, woodchucks, etc.I try to explain all these things to the average veg*n (short for vegetarian/vegan) and I get blank stares, name-calling, and a complete dismissal of what I've said. And these are the ones "doing it for environmental reasons."I have found that for myself I cannot tolerate a vegetarian diet. Type 2 diabetes runs in my family, and carbohydrate excess is one of the factors strongly implicated in the development of the disease. If you're ovo-lacto and not obtaining your eggs and milk from a local supplier then you're buying into industrial CAFO even if the carton says "free-range." (And what is it with the vegetarian hens? Chickens are omnivores.) If you're vegan you must obtain at least some of your fats from tropical sources if you want a proper fatty-acid balance, and that's not eco-friendly either because carbon is spent to fly all that avocado, palm, and coconut oil to you. Not to mention the complete lack of vitamins A and natural B12 in a vegan diet. Not that many people are getting enough A from other sources either, because we were duped into believing beta carotene is the same thing. I can't convert beta carotene, at least not well enough. I caused myself health problems for three years before I figured that out and as soon as I got A from fish oil my symptoms disappeared.Look--it comes down to human health, ultimately. People who are poorly nourished do not have their own best interests or anyone else's at heart. If you're going around with deranged blood sugar metabolism from too much grain then half the time you're not rational. If you're low on B vitamins then you have a propensity for impulsive behavior and even violence. The list goes on and on. Until we get our own nutritional house in order we're not going to get to a point where the majority of people give enough of a darn to do something about climate change. If we even can in the first place, and I have a feeling that if we were all to go back to Paleolithic lifestyles it still wouldn't make much of a difference. We could have tipped the scales a hundred years ago maybe, but not now. There are too many of us and everybody wants to go their own way.
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amazingdrx Posted 6:08 am
08 Aug 2009
Vegetable protein versus animal protien: it is undeniable that vegetable protein production emits a fraction of the nitrous oxide (emitted by chemical fertilizer, 300x worse GHG than CO2), methane (emitted by fertilizer interacting with stored soil and wetland biomass), and CO2 (emitted by fossil fuel related inputs and burning biomass to clear land to grow crops), compared to the equivalent animal protien produced with commercial ag. Put 30 units of veggie protein into a cow and you get one unit of animal protein in the form of meat. Milk and eggs take less veggie protein.Over 50% of human produced GHG is due to chemical agriculture. Go organic with biodigested waste biomass and organic fertilizer, rotational grazing, and robotic organic agriculture, powered with solar/wind electriciuty, and that GHG nearly dissapears. Whether vegetable or animal food is the final product. And the biogas produced can back up a renwabley powered smart grid that charges electric vehicles, powers electric mass transit, and powers ground source heating/cooling as a substitute for fossil fueled heating/cooling. That eliminates most of the rest of human produced GHG.By reviving soil sequestration of carbon with organic agriculture, climate change can even be reversed. If we support farmers like Coleman with local organic community agriculture maybe the changes necessary to halt climate disaster will happen in time. If we keep on eating agri-chem meat it won't.So pay 8 bucks a pound for local organic meat, instead of 2 bucks a pound for chem meat, then eat 1/4 the meat you usualy eat. Your budget comes out even, your health is boosted inestimably, and your conscience clears. Substitute for the protein lost with organic eggs and dairy products, but once again eat less of them to compensate for price difference. Fill in the rest of your dietary protein with veggie protein like beans, corn, and so forth.Oh yeah, and cook your food yourself instead of paying for food cooked by disgruntled minimum wage workers at fast food restaraunts. Another big plus, far less bodily secretions in your food! hehehey.
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1. mtvyfan Posted 4:43 pm
  10 Aug 2009
  HAHAHAHAHAHA! You are so right Dr. X. Love the "no bodily secretions" part. That is why I cook for myself. EWWW!
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2. GeminiJim Posted 9:34 pm
  12 Aug 2009
  amazingdrx said:"Put 30 units of veggie protein into a cow and you get one unit of animal protein in the form of meat."Curious, where do you get that number? Also does that take into account that ruminants (or rather the microbes they carry in their stomachs) can synthesize amino acids from organic acids and inorganic nitrogen (ammonia, nitrate, etc.)? In fact the same thing happens with grassfed poultry and eggs. Not in the birds, but in the invertebrates they eat.
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  1. amazingdrx Posted 8:22 am
    13 Aug 2009
    The figure I found was around 5.4 % veggie to meat protein conversion for grass fed beef. That's around 19 to 1, 19 parts veggie protein to 1 part meat protein output. Efficiency is around 30% for eggs. Milk is the most efficient.Of course almost all egg and milk protien output is eaten by humans, with beef the percentage consumed by humans is lower. We like the better cuts of meat, hot dogs are not as popular. A lot of the beef protein goes for dog food. Some is even fed back to cows!? These factors kind of wreck the raw 5.4% efficiency figure and put the ratio around 30 to 1 or more.Good point on invertabates though, insects, worms, and so forth. The compost to worm to chicken to egg pathway is very efficient and great on GHG sequestration. Free range chickens also convert grass and insects.Go organic grass fed and eat less meat, more eggs and milk, and more veggie protein. That's a recipe for carbon sequestration in the soil and protein efficiency. The health benefits of shunning antibiotic, hormone, and herbicide/pesticide laden meat, dairy, and poultry products are priceless.
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  2. GeminiJim Posted 3:35 pm
    13 Aug 2009
    AMAZINGDRX, couldn't you find anything newer than 1948? Seriously though, since it is literature review there's little information on research design and methods. What kind of feed did they use for the trials? Maybe protein was in such excess for what cattle need to ingest and can utilize that much of it was wasted. How do they define the edible portions? Traditional hunter-gatherers and pastoralists would use "everything but the moo," as the saying goes. How would their numbers compare to the USA in the 1940's?
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anil Posted 7:12 pm
08 Aug 2009
I think what Eliot is pointing to makes sense. Eating or not eating meat in themselves are not the moot point--at the core is what we eat, and how it gets produced. Yes, there is limit to how much you can eat meat. But there is limit to everything--there is limit to how man cars you can produce; there is limit to how big house becomes available to people on earth; there is a limit to how many air flights you can take; there is a limit to how many rolls of paper towels we use each day. True, but bringing that global picture to argue whether meat eating is good or bad does not make sense because there are some environments in which it is more efficient to recycle the existing nonedible energy into meat through pasture. With all my due respect to vegans and vegetarians, I suggest we explore whether meat eating is sustainable or not in the very specific local contexts including, let's not forget, in the context of our own palette. There cannot be a global argument. Afterall, all the global talks about carbon capping, comes down to very specific local practices such as redesigning a factory, acquiring a new everyday habits.
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JMG3Y Posted 9:42 am
09 Aug 2009
IMO this question must be approached from a systems perspective that incorporates all the c major components of the alternate pathways of the complete biogeochemical cycles of the elements involved across time. For example, one overlooked aspect is that although methane has a higher GHG effect than carbon dioxide, its atmospheric half-life is at least an order of magnitude less. Another is overlooking the entirety of the alternate pathways for the breakdown of the biomass in the forage ecosystems that ruminant animals may be a part of. Once formed, plant biomass of the type eaten by ruminants is inevitably degraded by either aerobic or anaerobic pathways involving herbiovores of differing scale and location somewhere, whether fungi, protozoa, bacteria or animal. These herbiovres are often in symbotic relationships, such as the ruminant and the protozoa and bacteria in their rumens or the fungi and bacteria in the soi matrix. These cycles have alternate pathways with intermediate steps in which the output from one stage is the input to the next. For example, if an animal herbivore eats the aerial biomass as the first step of the pathway, their manure is the input to the next stage occurring at the soil interface but if the aerial biomass had died and fallen on that soil, that soil stage would have begun earlier in the degredation pathway with a different, "higher quality" input. As a consequence of the differing inputs, the soil stage produces differing outputs. Ignoring this complexity, which we don't understand very well, likely falsely attributes environmental balances and consequences. IMO, we can't consider only inputs and outputs of single components while failing to consider the whole and expect to reach valid conclusions upon which to base our choices.
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anil Posted 9:53 am
09 Aug 2009
Well, I forgot to add to my comment: those who know about bio-gas know this very well. Methane is problem if it is not utilized (meaning, if it is not burned as a fuel). With ingeneous biogas design, much of the methane from animal and human excreta can be utilized for cooking and also lighting. I got one installed in my farm back in 1991 in the plains of Nepal, and it still is running--and it will run for, hopefully, for a few decades to come. Plus, the output is clear of methane (as methane goes to our kitchen) and contains much more nutrient (through bacterial actions, of which I do not know 'scientific' explanations) than would have been possible without the bio-gas. We have our 'toilet' attached to the biogas plant and therefore, the problem of recyling human extreta is also solved. I am not sure how much people do this in North America, and sadly, this is on the decline in China, once renown for its non-nonsense innovative excreta-recycling technologies. Again, like Tom Philpot has been reminding us, sustainable systems might require more people going to farming (perhaps with much more fun than drudgery). I am not in Nepal these days, but I know it still is running very well.
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1. amazingdrx Posted 8:18 am
  10 Aug 2009
  There was an article on grist about a biodigestor to produce cooking gas and organic fertilizer installed on a farm in costa rica Anil. Very nice system, it used a big plastic bag in a trench with a pipe to the stove. I think if all our biomass waste stream were turned into biogas and organic fertilizer/soil ammendment the carbon sequestration in revived living soil ecosystems would actually start to turn GHG climate disaster around. There is a simple invention that uses suction to remove waste from the home, either human or kitchen waste, it keeps the biodigestion outside, simultaneously providing the inside flushing (waterless) toilet people insist on here. Farm waste is the really big biomass source for biodigestion though. A side note: it would be really great if the mega-wealthy individuals/groups who littered the high mountain glaciers in your region with human waste and trash made an effort to install biodigesting toilets for their expeditions and haul all that trash away to be recycled. Maybe they could even use solar/wind power and biogas to power their radios and cooking and oxygen generators to prevent the buildup of old batteries and oxygen cylinders? This is something they owe mother earth and the mountains.
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  1. anil Posted 8:45 am
    10 Aug 2009
    Thank you AmazingDRX. I will certainly read that article on bio-digester. I think I will never cease to get amazed by how seemingly simple technology has the potential of addressing, at least part of, the major problem of our time.
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2. amazingdrx Posted 9:01 pm
  10 Aug 2009
  Yep Anil, it is strange how simple most of this stuff is and also how difficult it is to get it mass produced. Electric cars, fuel cells, solar cells, wind machines, biodigestors, electric trains, batteries, all invented anywhere from 100 to thousands of years ago. Given a benevolent dictatorship it would be child's play to reconstruct the energy and agricultural economy into a renewable organic form that not only canceled human GHG but actually reversed climate disaster with carbon sequestration in soil, wetlands, forests, and prairies. Everything needed to get it going already exists, except the will.Now where's that ring of power, hehehey.
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Chris Pratt Posted 11:26 am
09 Aug 2009
Change in this country and the world is difficult enough, I can't imagine getting a lot of people to become vegetarians for environmental reasons. It will be a lot easier to get them to make the choice to eat grass fed beef rather than no beef at all. The theoretical science of GHG's is complex as many commentors have pointed out. I have fields that would be healthier and more productive if cattle grazed on them rather then me brush hogging them with a tractor. Can the cows keep the grass down at a lower environmental cost then I can with a tractor? I keep the fields open as a insurance policy against agricultural collapse. Different locations provide different solutions to the GHG problem.
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scarls5 Posted 3:59 pm
09 Aug 2009
As someone who has analyzed climate change impacts professionally, I agree with Mr. Coleman that the CO2 climate impact comes from burning fossil fuel. However, his overall discussion strikes me as as ideologically-based and non-scientifically substantiated as those of my vegan friends. Both sides lead me in circles. I agree with this poster:"Do you recommend any relevant reports for the skeptical veggies in the room? Have there been any peer reviewed studies on this? If not, could you point some researchers in the right direction? "

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Start Loving Posted 5:28 pm
09 Aug 2009
Wonderful article. Thank you. Brava.
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Des Emery Posted 7:55 pm
09 Aug 2009
Human beings are neither carnivores nor vegetarians, but omnivores. We get all our nutrition from both sources, animals and plants (and some from mineral sources, too). Factory farms produce both products in the most cost efficient ways (for the consumer), using the most cost-efficient (for the producers) methods. The urban population will never accept much higher prices for food just to help the environment, and the factory farms (Big Ag) will never accept lower profits for the general benefit of the environment. Neither side is ready to accept the fact that everything is connected to every other thing in this world, and those connections are just beginning to be analyzed and understood by science.
The fact that 20 posters here have that many opinions about food production and consumption bodes well for the future. But will consensus come in time to save the world by re-working the balance between what we want and how we get it?
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Schrmin Posted 1:49 am
10 Aug 2009
This argument appears to me just another attempt to rationalize and justify meat-eating when it's clearly one of the most environmentally destructive practices humans engage in. Moral animal welfare issues aside (and the issue of violently slaughtering billions of animals not out of necessity but just because we like the taste is itself a strong argument against meat eating for any compassionate individual), what the article fails to mention are the numerous additional eco-damaging side effects of livestock rearing that go far beyond the contribution to climate change including:* in the US alone, 100's of millions of acres of (mostly public-owned) rangeland degraded due to grazing (erosion, soil compaction, reduced water infiltration, denuding of vegetation and replacement with invasives, etc - btw, cattle and bison grazing differ tremendously including vegetation preferred, distances traveled, time spent grazing, elevations and slopes grazed, efficiency of forage use, grass height remaining above soil, etc., and so the two cannot be equated in any realistic sense),* the deleterious effects on native wildlife (grazing is said to be one of the single largest contributers to biodiversity loss due to habitat destruction, reduction of food, water, and cover - not to mention the purposeful eradication of wildlife considered to be "pests") -- the UNFAO report states "in 306 of the 825 terrestrial eco-regions identified by the Worldwide Fund for Nature, livestock are identified as 'a current threat', while 23 of Conservation International's 35 'global hotspots for biodiversity' - characterized by serious levels of habitat loss - are affected by livestock production," * destruction and pollution of streams and associated riparian areas - cattle trample stream edges and alter stream shape, destroy riparian vegetation, pollute the water, stir up sediments, etc., all of which negatively affects the aquatic life and the organisms that rely on it,* deforestation, which, contrary to the authors suggestion, would undoubtedly continue since most is the result of grazing and not feed production. The UNFAO report itself states "expansion of grazing land for livestock is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America: some 70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon is used as pasture, and feed crops cover a large part of the reminder. About 70 percent of all grazing land in dry areas is considered degraded, mostly because of overgrazing, compaction, and erosion attributable to livestock activity."* etc,The UNFAO report states that the livestock sector is one of the most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems at EVERY scale from local to global. The findings of the report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of (not only) climate change, (but also) land degradation, air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.So for the sake of the planet, not to mention for health and for the animals, be veg...it's simple.
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1. kimsikes Posted 9:46 am
  10 Aug 2009
  Mr. Coleman is talking about pastured livestock. The data you're referencing is about industrial livestock and/or poorly managed farmland.
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askantik Posted 10:28 am
10 Aug 2009
Sorry, no matter how you look at it, taking grains and crops to feed to animals that humans could be eating directly is inefficient. And there isn't enough grass in America for the amount of cows we want to eat to all be grass-fed. Period.
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margie46 Posted 10:41 am
10 Aug 2009
Good points about HOW the livestock is raised. However, we still make optimal use of diminishing farmland by raising grain and veggies for human, not animal, consumption. And for those who lament the tortured lives of CAFO-raised animals, we can do them the greatest service by not eating them, therefore not adding to the demand side of the supply and demand equation.
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clweber Posted 10:56 am
10 Aug 2009
I am somewhat saddened that my beloved grist, home to some of the best climate politics coverage on the web would give such prominence to such an ill-informed and ideological argument that contains several logical fallacies and few peer-reviewed references. As a scientist who has studied this issues closely I can report that the consensus of the peer-reviewed science at this point (and it is difficult to overstate the uncertainties in doing such calculations, but nevertheless. . . ) is the exact opposite of this. It is indeed the meat itself, when it comes to ruminant meat production at least (chicken and fish are a different story) and not the production patterns that matter. The pastured beef vs. grain-fed beef question has been studied by several life cycle analysts and every article I have seen has said the same: grain-fed beef produces less greenhouse gases than grass-fed beef. It is counter-intuitive and a bit shocking, but this is the consensus at this point. Although grass fed animals do not reuqire the CO2 and nitrous oxide (NOT NO2 as the author seems to believe) to produce and move the grain that is fed to the grain-fed animamls in the fattening stage, this benefit is more than offset by increased digestion-related methane from a grass fed diet and more importantly, the longer life burping methane that the grass-fed animals need to get to market.There are certainly plenty of other sustainability questions related to CAFO-produced meat, including water and air pollution, loss of farming jobs and culture, and many others. but there are no climate benefits to eating grass fed vs. grain fed beef. They are both bad for climate change, and equally so, within the uncertainties necessary to do the calculation. This doesn't mean that everyone needs to go vegetarian--chicken and many forms of fish produce 10 times less greenhouse gases than either type of beef. (I myself, for full disclosure, am not vegetarian)if you're interested in reading more on this interesting issue see some of the citations below. Avery, A. and D. Avery. 2008. Beef Production and Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Environ Health Perspectives 116(9): A374-A375.Casey, J. W. and N. M. Holden. 2006. Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Conventional, Agri-environmental Scheme, and Organic Irish Suckler-beef Units. J Environ Qual. 35: 231-239.Steinfeld, H., P. Gerber, T. Wassenaar, V. Castel, M. Rosales, and C. de Haan. 2006. Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. Rome: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Weber, C. L. and H. S. Matthews. 2008. Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States. Environ. Sci. Technol 42(10): 3508-3513.
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1. atreyger Posted 11:35 am
  10 Aug 2009
  CLWeber,In North America, I think that much of the current ruminant animals have replaced prior ruminants that have been eliminated by bison hunters/eliminators. Supposing a difference of 10-20x increase in ruminants in the present compared to historic numbers (hard numbers are difficult to come by, but I believe that is the range), and a reduction of methane and CO2 production with grain-fed beef, the climate impact of cows is exaggerated. I believe that a halving of the North American herd would bring the ruminant emissions to a range encountered in the past.Furthermore, while I am admittedly not familiar (and too busy to become so) with the ruminant life-cycle literature, I suspect that the soil C storage was not accounted for in the above studies. Please inform the crowd here, as to whether this is true or not.ATreyger
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2. BrianS Posted 11:47 am
  10 Aug 2009
  CL - thanks for the links. The FAO one is online, I haven't checked the others yet: http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM Unfortunately, it doesn't answer the question of comparing emissions from a similar amount of calories from grass-fed cattle and a reasonably low-carbon vegetarian alternative to see which is better. However, Table 3.7 and text on p. 97 implies there's little difference in methane emissions between pastured and mixed-industrial-raised cattle (two-thirds of cattle are mixed raised, two thirds of methane emissions come from them). Page 120 has some interesting mitigation info, and says that adding grain might help reduce emissions from cattle on a high cellulose diet.
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RossBleakney Posted 12:06 pm
10 Aug 2009
Well said C. L. Weber. This article builds up straw man arguments and then defeats them. It is the cow burping that is the problem and this article doesn't even address that (it is insightful to see just how ignorant or misleading this article
is when it does not mention the biggest problem with raising cattle).Brian S is also correct in his summary. It is possible that a much smaller number of grass eating cattle (along with the elimination of grain fed cattle) might end up benefiting the environment more than it hurts it (the increased storage might offset the emissions). Unfortunately, as C L Weber points out, the science to this point suggests otherwise.In general, I'm afraid this is another article by someone who probably believes he is doing right for the environment, but is wrong. There are lots and lots of folks like that. I sympathise with them. Unfortunately, this article will convince many of the naive environmentalists (who don't read the scientific literature) to conclude that eating meat is OK, because it is local, organically raised beef. I'm sorry, but just because factory beef is worse, doesn't mean that eating locally raised organic beef is benign. Smoking American Spirit cigarettes is probably better than smoking Camel straights, but it doesn't mean that is OK.
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Onno Posted 12:09 pm
10 Aug 2009
It does seem more than a little odd to be singling out "big veggie" as a culprit in the discourse about climate change. Does Mr. Coleman really believe that vegetarians and big oil have teamed up to confuse the public? This kind of conspiracy mongering smacks of intellectual dishonesty to me. Sure vegetarians have other agendas, like ending suffering to animals, and many have ethical objections even to killing free-range cattle and chickens. But they (or rather, we), like many other folks, understand that factory-farming is the central problem in terms of meat and climate change, and in terms of meat and animal suffering. How many vegetarians do you see protesting small organic, free-range, farms? As a vegetarian myself, I'm not going to start eating meat because there is now the possibility of purchasing meat that is not the product of factory farms, but I don't see folks like Mr. Coleman as evil. Factory farming is THE problem. Mr. Coleman's brand of farming is, if you are going to eat meat, much better on many fronts. I'm glad he's giving people that choice. But because nearly all the meat people eat is factory-produced, tellling people generally to eat a lot less meat still makes sense. And I doubt that meat production of the kind that Coleman supports could actually feed the whole nation in the quantities to which it has become accustomed.
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1. GeminiJim Posted 10:39 pm
  10 Aug 2009
  To the extent that vegetarian activists are unwitting spokespersons for the corn and soy industries, it is certainly reasonable to suppose that behind their arguments are powerful industrial interests. And to the extent that the interests of big oil, big corn, and big soy are in line (which is quite an extent), there is reason to talk of such a "conspiracy." In many ways big ag has it easy. Their lobbying efforts are heavily supplemented by government and private organizations that believe they are promoting health by advocating for a diet high in grain and fiber, and low in saturated fat, when the benefits of such a diet are hardly confirmed by scientific research.
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Professional enviro Posted 2:48 pm
10 Aug 2009
Coleman suggests that:- CO2 from human breath should be counted in GHG inventories. He omits to mention that livestock exhale CO2 too, and while human breath is required for human life, most livestock aren't. - Livestock and pasture form a virtuous GHG cycle. This assumes that pasture can be set aside only for livestock -- and not to regenerate forest, which is in fact possible in most areas, and which would stop climate change fast. - Issues with livestock would be solved if only they were all produced through extensified practices. He fails to consider that a limited amount of suitable land makes it impossible for most of today's livestock to be raised extensively. - Industrial livestock are fed an "unnatural diet," which must be responsible for extra methane -- 'proven' by the fact that there was no global warming when humans ate only extensively produced livestock. But extensively produced livestock were a small fraction of the number today. It's the number that causes the warming.
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1. GeminiJim Posted 11:08 pm
  10 Aug 2009
  If you read some of Joel Salatin's writings (and Michael Pollan give a pretty good overview in "Omnivore's Dilemma") you'll see that well-managed pasture can rival forest in production and biomass sequestration, and it doesn't take decades to do so. The key is to mimic nature by keeping the animals tightly herded and on the move so the pasture is neither over- or under-grazed. Whether there is enough suitable land is an open question. Speaking as a suburbanite, I see countless acres of good land consumed by lawns, and if there were a way to manage that land for pasture and small-scale crop production, it would probably go a long way.
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clweber Posted 6:41 am
11 Aug 2009
To answer some questions on the soil carbon issue that have been brought up, a quick answer. Most studies of the life cycle emissions from different food options have not included EITHER the net soil C impacts (net uptake or net emission) OR indirect land use change induced by meat production (which drastically increases the GHG responsibility for meat production, as the Steinfeld FAO report shows) for the following reasons:

1) while it is true that hyper-efficient rotational grazing can have net soil C uptake for some number of years (until saturation occurs), particularly on degraded lands, this is not the industry standard practice for pastured meat as of yet, and most studies take average cases. In truth, to be fair one would have to compare this best case pastured meat with the best case grain fed meat and best case chicken/vegetable protein, and the grain fed and chicken best cases would include methane capture with energy recovery from manure management. This would reduce the impacts from all systems, and again the same results come out with non-ruminant meat and vegetable protein sources winning handily.

2) all net soil C and land use change emissions are reversible. If practices change, any C that has been sucked into soils can be re-emitted as CO2 in very short time spans

3) both are incredibly hard to measure and allocate over relevant time periods--one must make a choice of how many years of uptake or how many years of production over which to allocate the impacts of one-time emissions like deforestation, and assume non-reversibility.
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1. atreyger Posted 8:49 am
  11 Aug 2009
  CLWeber,I disagree with you:1) I don't think that a carbon saturation point has been shown, particularly with recalcitrant carbon forms, e.g. humus. Furthermore, as a result of very slow lignin decomposition, any build-up of carbon in the humic layer is slowly leached down the soil horizons, thus C stays in soil nearly indefinitely, barring severe topsoil disturbances. The difference between best-case pasture and best-case grain-fed scenarios is also a bit murky, since nearly all pasturing is similar, with similar rates of C storage, whereas I have yet to see a non-pilot dairy farm in NYS that has methane capture. It's a good farm that has a permanent functioning manure lagoon... And nearly all farms spread the shit come late winter on top of the snowpack (which then immediately melts, creating 'interesting' water issues for us to study and create BMPs for).2) Agreed, but every cornfield is losing C, or at best keeping neutral, whereas pastures are retaining some. Maybe not as much as forests, but still3) That's true, but that is how ANY measurement works.
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anil Posted 7:25 am
11 Aug 2009
A time-bomb of methane is waiting under the arctic icesheets/permafrosts--and I am surprised that noone raised this issue in the discussions. What the reality seem to be pointing to does not look palatable to all those who cannot give up their car; who cannot work collectively to build public system of transportation; who cannot re-envision a ways of desiging living communities in which the distance between our work and home is not covered by gas, but by our walking and bikes. I am surprised how fragmented our discussions have become and I am afraid to report, this is very typical of a section of North American environmental activism. To zoom in on meat is fine, but severely limiting.
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anil Posted 7:30 am
11 Aug 2009
A time-bomb of methane is waiting under the arctic icesheets/permafrosts--and I am surprised that noone raised this issue in the discussions. What the reality seem to be pointing to does not look palatable to all those who cannot give up their car; who cannot work collectively to build public system of transportation; who cannot re-envision a ways of desiging living communities in which the distance between our work and home is not covered by gas, but by our walking and bikes. I am surprised how fragmented our discussions have become and I am afraid to report, this is very typical of a section of North American environmental activism. To zoom in on meat is fine, but severely limiting.
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jchang Posted 9:31 am
11 Aug 2009
Eliot Coleman's way of farming can not be sustainable if the world continue to consume meat at the current level. The only way to feed meat to the world at it's current consumption level is through factory farming. If Coleman is serious about getting rid of factory farms he would encourage the majority of the people to stop eating meat. That is the only way that humans can be fed meat from grass fed beef without destroying the planet. We simply do not have enough pasture to allow billions of cattle to graze unless we turned every piece of arable land into grazing pasture.

Coleman does have a good point about human over population. Yes, there are too many of us on this planet this is why we must tread lightly. And the most effective way to lessen our impact on the planet is by significantly reducing our consumption of a grossly inefficient food like meat, dairy and eggs.
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1. GeminiJim Posted 10:15 am
  11 Aug 2009
  Actually grassfed is more efficient in the long run. Factory farming is cost-effective in the short run only because of cheap fossil fuel. When fossil fuel becomes too expensive, or we choose to put limits on consumption, then we will have to make hard choices. Also, dairy and eggs are more efficient than meat. Many traditional cultures are built around dairy, with meat consumption being an incidental part of managing a dairy herd, through culling and thinning. Thus less meat is consumed, but a little goes a long way.Also conventionally grown grains and soy are inefficient crops in terms of soil depletion and fossil fuel dependence, especially when considering their nutritional value relative to animal products. for more on the nutrition side, and an alternative POV to the veggie dogma, check out .
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margie46 Posted 10:53 am
11 Aug 2009
This is certainly generating a lot of comments. As for "veggie dogma" - just read The China Study, by T Colin Campbell, PhD, of Cornell University. His 21 year longitudinal study had no pre-determined bias. Rather, he and Cornell, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine simply found much less disease/better health among those populations having the lowest meat & dairy consumption. Much less cancer, much less heart disease, much less diabetes, and so on. There are differing viewpoints, but this is "the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted."
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1. GeminiJim Posted 11:06 am
  11 Aug 2009
  Here is a rebuttal of the the China Study:http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/China-Study.html Sorry, my last link didn't come through. It is: http://www.westonaprice.org
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edharris Posted 11:15 am
11 Aug 2009
Coleman's argument is, essentially, that this isn't just about eating meat or not eating meat, but about what model of meat production we choose. He argues the case for alternative modes of production to the industrial, intensive model.

clweber's comment is particularly interesting (10 Aug 1056). clweber states that the scientific consensus is that "grain-fed beef produces less greenhouse gases than grass-fed beef. It is counter-intuitive and a bit shocking, but this is the consensus at this point."

S/he then details four citations for further information (which is great - I wish more commenters would point us in the direction of the evidence from which they formed their opinions). The Casey and Holden paper (2006) is worth a read. It is a comparative study of conventional, agri-ecological and organic suckler-beef production in Ireland. It demonstrates -- as I understand it contradicting clweber -- that overall GHG emissions are lowest in the organic model, both per unit and per area. GHG emissions are measured in CO2 equivalent, including methane. The figures demonstrate that although enteric methane emissions are higher on the grass-fed diet, this is comfortably offset by the reduced emissions achieved by cutting out external feed and the associated fertilizers. See the table in the 'results and discussion section' for the comparative figures.

Have I interpreted this correctly? Does a similar study exist comparing beef raised under different production models in the US?

More on this topic here.
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clweber Posted 11:49 am
11 Aug 2009
From Casey and Holden (2006):
Scenario 1 (standard grass fed practice in Ireland): mean ~11.2 kg CO2eq/kg-yr (9.6-14)

Scenario 3 feedlot operation model, specifically modeled on US production patterns: mean ~ 10.8 kg CO2eq/kg-yr (9.7-13)

Scenario 4: standard grass fed practice but with dairy bred animals (this lowers GHGs because you allocate total GHGs to milk and meat rather than just meat at end of life): ~9 kg CO2eq/kg-yr (7.6-12.5)

Scenario 6: feedlot operation, but with dairy bred animals: ~7.4 kg CO2eq/kg-yr (6.6-9.7)

Scenarios 2 and 5 are similar to 1 and 3 but the animals are slaughtered earlier in life, which limits GHGs due to shorter life but also limits profitability due to less finished weight per cow, so seems unlikely to be adopted on a wide scale. Numbers are similar to feedlot operations, at 10.4 and 7.2 kg CO2eq/kg-yr (8.9-13.2) and (5.8-9.4).

Basically, standard practice pastured produces more GHG than feedlot operation in Ireland; at smaller lifetimes the grass fed can compete in terms of GHGs. However, note the ranges--there is a lot of uncertainty in the numbers and the ranges pretty much mean the situtation is similar in grass fed and grain fed. The differences here are in the noise compared to the difference between beef and chicken/fish/eggs or vegetable protein.
Subak, S., 1999. Global environmental costs of beef production. Ecological Economics 30, 79–91. also found similar numbers, around 7.4 kg CO2eq/kg-yr for feedlot operations in US.
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1. edharris Posted 12:25 pm
  11 Aug 2009
  As I said before, I'm not an expert, but that doesn't match with
  what Casey and Holden's article states. clweber wrote "standard
  practice pastured produces more GHG than feedlot operation in Ireland".But Casey and Holden write in their article:"On average, the organic units had significantly lower GHG emissions than the conventional and REPS units, and the REPS units had significantly lower emissions than the conventional units. These results suggest that, in general, extensifying beef production will result in lower GHG emissions per unit produced and per unit area."and again in their conclusion that:"This type of study had not been previously performed for suckler-beef units and the results indicate that moving from conventional suckler-beef production to an AES production system would reduce GHG emissions in terms of both product and area. An even greater reduction in emissions could be achieved by organic suckler-beef production but at the cost of a large drop in LW production per hectare. A shift toward more extensive beef production is occurring in Europe in line with European agricultural policy, and therefore a reduction in GHG emissions from the sector should follow."Surely
  this demonstrates that their study in Ireland came out in against
  feed-based models of production, both in terms of GHG emissions per
  unit and per area.And although the Subak article (1999) you
  mention might help support emissions figures for US feedlots, it
  doesn't seem to be a helpful comparison, since the pastoral model it
  compares US feedlots with is Sahelian subsistance/pastoral. This is
  unlikely to be equivalent to Eliot Coleman's operation in ME.
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GeminiJim Posted 12:19 pm
11 Aug 2009
While it might seem peripheral to the discussion, I think the nutrition/health aspect is integral to understanding different points of view on this topic. If you feel, like many vegans do, that animal products are poison and the cause of much of our disease, then sustainable meat production is moot. Might as well talk about sustainable nerve gas! If you feel that plant and animal products are nutritionally interchangeable, then you might seek the most efficient option, which would vary geographically. If you feel that animal products are the best way to obtain certain nutrients, then you will seek to integrate them into sustainable agricultural practice.
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clweber Posted 1:33 pm
11 Aug 2009
Ah, EDHARRIS, I see now that you're pointing to a different Casey/Holden piece that formed the basis for the article I'm referring to:J Environ Qual 35:231-239 (2006) compared different types of suckler beef production, while Casey, J. W. and N. M. Holden. 2006. Quantification of GHG Emissions from Sucker-beef Production in Ireland. Agricultural Systems 90: 79-98 was the article I was referring to (my mistake above!). The JEQ article does indeed show (slightly) lower GHG emissions from organic production, at 11.2 kg CO2eq/kg-yr vs. 12.2-13 kg CO2eq/kg-yr for the conventional production schemes, which is still higher than the 10.8 kg CO2/kg-yr mean value calclulated in the Agricultural Systems piece. My apologies for the mis-citation (copy and paste error!)However, again, my point is not that grass-fed is substantially worse than grain-fed but that they're pretty much in the same ball-park GHG-wise, and that the difference between them is in the noise when compared to the difference between beef and chicken (1.4 kg CO2e/kg in the US, according to Pelletier, N. 2008. Environmental performance in the US broiler poultry sector: Life cycle energy use and greenhouse gas, ozone depleting, acidifying and eutrophying emissions. Agricultural Systems 98(2): 67-73.)Obviously pastured beef can have much better impacts on many other things, like water and air quality, than CAFO beef, but a substantial GHG advantage can't be had without assuming large amounts of C sequestration and no land use impacts despite the large amounts of land needed.
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halli620 Posted 6:03 am
12 Aug 2009
BrianS: First off, my post stated that in some areas of the country, diets with some meat raised on land fit for growing grasses but not food crops are more sustainable in a local economy than those with no meat. CLWeber's post deals with CAFOs vs. grass fed. On that, I note, as other posters have, that CLWeber's numbers do not appear to take into consideration the amounts of CO2 emitted in the transport of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers to the grain farmers, or in the transport of the grain to the CAFOs, which, as other comments explain, will generally overtake any alleged decrease in CO2 production. There are also the additional problems of nutrients in waste from CAFOs, which in self-contained farms are returned to the soil, but in CAFOs are collected in huge, putrid pools; and of antibiotic resistence, an entirely different but intricately connected issue.For an article on the study showing that small amounts of meat and dairy raised on grassland not fit for growing human food crops is more efficient and can feed more people than a purely vegetarian diet in areas such as New York: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct07/diets.ag.footprint.sl.html
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halli620 Posted 6:04 am
12 Aug 2009
BrianS: First off, my post stated that in some areas of the country, diets with some meat raised on land fit for growing grasses but not food crops are more sustainable in a local economy than those with no meat. CLWeber's post deals with CAFOs vs. grass fed. On that, I note, as other posters have, that CLWeber's numbers do not appear to take into consideration the amounts of CO2 emitted in the transport of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers to the grain farmers, or in the transport of the grain to the CAFOs, which, as other comments explain, will generally overtake any alleged decrease in CO2 production. There are also the additional problems of nutrients in waste from CAFOs, which in self-contained farms are returned to the soil, but in CAFOs are collected in huge, putrid pools; and of antibiotic resistence, an entirely different but intricately connected issue.For an article on the study showing that small amounts of meat and dairy raised on grassland not fit for growing human food crops is more efficient and can feed more people than a purely vegetarian diet in areas such as New York: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct07/diets.ag.footprint.sl.html
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1. BrianS Posted 12:30 pm
  12 Aug 2009
  Thanks for the link, but it's not directly on point, I think. The press release never defines "efficiency" but I'm guessing it refers to economic efficiency - what's the least amount of money needed to get enough land to supply an adequate diet. It's still not a comparison of gas emissions. CLWeber's last post above does do a comparison of beef to poultry, and it's not good (yes, some factors are left out, but there's a huge gap to overcome). I'd guess poultry is probably three times worse for gas emissions than eating vegetarian.
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  1. GeminiJim Posted 1:55 pm
    12 Aug 2009
    It explicitly is about the number of people that can be supported by a given acreage. In this case, it also looks at the value of land that cannot grow crops efficiently, but can be good pasture.GHG emission is hardly the only measure of agricultural sustainability, which begs the question: is it even the best measure?
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arjen Posted 8:10 am
13 Aug 2009
I am all in favor of discussing our personal choices, but I honestly can't see why the heading of this piece has "debunking" in the title, since the piece is based more on opinion than science. A few interesting considerations:1) Humans are a tropical (or at least sub tropical) species. If you doubt that, strip an Inuit naked and see how long he or she will survive in the artic winter. We are a very adaptable species, but that adaptation is mostly physiological and not genetic, since we have been so efficient in cancelling out natural selection ever since we moved away from our original habitat. Again, the Inuit can be a good example for this: they did not grow a big fur coat, because they killed animals and were wearing their fur, effectively cancelling out genetic adaptation. So we are supposed to dwell in areas where plant life flourishes. Also, as a wildlife biologist, I have not been able to think of any other mammal that eats vertebrate meat without large extended canines, like humans do, which makes me think that humans are not supposed to eat it as well. Which of course doesn't mean that we can't do it; it might just not make the most sense considering our biological make up. The ratio of the length of our intestines compared to the content of the stomach also gives a strong indication that humans do not fall into the vertebrate meat eating category. I distinctly write about vertebrate meat, because the killing and consuming of vertebrates requires very specific adaptations that humans lack. We are adpated to eat invertebrate meat, like insects, grubs and critters like clams if we were so lucky to evolve on the coast, which makes the distinction into carnivores, omnivores and herbivores so utterly useless. Even cows eat meat in a pasture, since they will consume invertebrates with every bite they take, especially if it is a natural pasture with lots of biodiversity. So the only logical distinction to make is "vertebrate meat eaters" and "non-vertebrate meat eaters" and humans clearly fall in the last category.2) One of the first things you learn in biology is that on average with every level you go up in the food pyramid, there is only about 10 % of the production in the previous level available for consumption, which means that you can feed a lot more vegetarians (or non-vertebrate meat eaters) than meat eaters (or vertebrate meat eaters).
3) The efficiency of raising grubs (especially maggots) and insects is probably in the order of hundreds as times as efficient as razing cattle, especially if you look at protein production per surface area.
4) I really wonder if there were more methane belching and farting animals in prehistoric times than there are now, with humans razing cattle and sheep in every possible and impossible place on the planet. Yes, there were lots of buffalo in the past, but those were mostly restricted to a very confined habitat, while now we have domesticated animals virtually everywhere. I am just curious to see the real figures in this comparison.
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1. GeminiJim Posted 10:53 am
  13 Aug 2009
  Our adaptations, cultural and physical, go hand-in-hand with an increase in vertebrate animal consumption, and thus a greater flexibility in the types of climates and resources we could exploit."Supposed to dwell where plants flourish" isn't a very useful concept. We can't all go back to the tropics.Large extended canines do not correlate well with meat-eating. They are an ancestal feature of mammals, found in insectivores, carnivores, and omnivores alike. Monkeys and apes use them as tools, for defense, and for dominance display. Where they are lost or reduced it is because of adaptive pressure such as for grazing in ungulates and gnawing in rodents. In the unique case of humans, the whole dentition seems to be adapted to speech, and with our tool use a reduced demand on teeth to do the hard work in food acquisition and processing.The ratio of the length
  of our intestines compared to the content of the stomach indicates that we are not specialized carnivores, or herbivores, but omnivores."I distinctly write about vertebrate meat, because the
  killing and consuming of vertebrates requires very specific adaptations
  that humans lack"--except for the behavioral and cultural adaptations that let us do it. Why should they be treated differently?"2) One of the first things you learn in biology is that
  on average with every level you go up in the food pyramid, there is
  only about 10 % of the production in the previous level available for
  consumption, which means that you can feed a lot more vegetarians (or
  non-vertebrate meat eaters) than meat eaters (or vertebrate meat
  eaters)."Yes, the old trophic level argument. Very logical and very simple, dare I say simplistic. If you're simply talking about calories, then maybe it's true, but there is also food value, bio-availability, etc. If trophic level is so important, then ruminants should be more efficient than poultry, since birds are generally higher on the food chain. And in terms of protein, ruminants are in part primary producers.
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  1. arjen Posted 3:53 pm
    13 Aug 2009
    "Our adaptations, cultural and physical, go hand-in-hand with an
    increase in vertebrate animal consumption, and thus a greater
    flexibility in the types of climates and resources we could exploit."Sure, that's a given. The question is if we are genetically adapted to it. Just because we can survive somewhere does not mean it's ideal. ""Supposed to dwell where plants flourish" isn't a very useful concept. We can't all go back to the tropics."Of course we can't, but that is not the issue. It's obvious that we have had virtually no restrictions in population growth and that there are way too many people on the planet. What I am talking about is what would be ideal circumstances for our biological make-up."Large extended canines do not correlate well with meat-eating. They are
    an ancestal feature of mammals, found in insectivores, carnivores, and
    omnivores alike. Monkeys and apes use them as tools, for defense, and
    for dominance display. Where they are lost or reduced it is because of
    adaptive pressure such as for grazing in ungulates and gnawing in
    rodents. In the unique case of humans, the whole dentition seems to be
    adapted to speech, and with our tool use a reduced demand on teeth to
    do the hard work in food acquisition and processing."Large extended canines correlate perfectly with vertebrate meat eating in the sense that no other vertebrate meat eater has a lack of large extended canines. Animals can also have large extended canines for other reasons, but that does not take away the fact that every vertebrate meat eater has large extended canines (a cow is an animal, but that doesn't make every animal a cow).""I distinctly write about vertebrate meat, because the
    killing and consuming of vertebrates requires very specific adaptations
    that humans lack"--except for the behavioral and cultural adaptations that let us do it. Why should they be treated differently?"Because I am talking about natural selection and it is doubtful that behavioral and cultural adaptation are as sensitive to natural selection pressures as physiological adaptations. Just because we are capable of using a tool to kill an animal, doesn't mean that we are suddenly genetically adapted to dealing with that new food item. Humans have been very good in canceling out normal natural selection processes (see the example of the naked Inuit). "Yes, the old trophic level argument. Very logical and very simple, dare
    I say simplistic. If you're simply talking about calories, then maybe
    it's true, but there is also food value, bio-availability, etc. If
    trophic level is so important, then ruminants should be more efficient
    than poultry, since birds are generally higher on the food chain. And
    in terms of protein, ruminants are in part primary producers."
    It's somewhat simplistic, which is why I wrote "on average". It still gives a eally good indication that it is much more efficient to eat low on the food chain. I do not see why food value and bio-availability would compensate for a 90% loss in availability. And especially when we talk about the kinds of meats that I am promoting, like grubs and insects, the quality and efficiency is many times greater than with any domestic farm animal.
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  2. GeminiJim Posted 8:01 pm
    13 Aug 2009
    ""Our adaptations [..] go hand-in-hand with an
    increase in vertebrate animal consumption, [...]"""Sure,
    that's a given. The question is if we are genetically adapted to it.
    Just because we can survive somewhere does not mean it's ideal."Nothing is ideal. How do you determine if we're genetically adapted to something? Our last ancestors to live without using tools and eating meat were very different creatures from us. With our current anatomy could we survive in the savannah without resorting to our tool-making abilities and fire?"Large extended canines correlate perfectly with vertebrate meat eating
    in the sense that no other vertebrate meat eater has a lack of large
    extended canines. Animals can also have large extended canines for
    other reasons, but that does not take away the fact that every vertebrate meat eater has large extended canines."Years ago I had a debate with someone who claimed our canines were proof that we were meant to be carnivores. I admit your's makes a lot more sense, but my answer is still the same. Our teeth tell us little about our diet except that we can't eat certain things without preparation.Every other vertebrate meat eater lacks tools and speech. Why would an animal eat more meat, and yet have smaller canines, than its ancestors if there weren't other unique factors at play?"Because I am talking about natural selection and it is doubtful that
    behavioral and cultural adaptation are as sensitive to natural
    selection pressures as physiological adaptations. Just because we are
    capable of using a tool to kill an animal, doesn't mean that we are
    suddenly genetically adapted to dealing with that new food item. Humans
    have been very good in canceling out normal natural selection processes
    (see the example of the naked Inuit)."I would counter that behavior and culture have been powerful selective pressures in and of themselves. It seems the physiological adaptation to eating more meat is pretty trivial for an omnivore. The challenge is catching the meat and breaking it down so we can assimilate it. Anatomically adapted carnivores have claws and teeth. We have tools.In all mammals, adaptation at the cellular biochemical level is mediated by anatomy. A cow's liver or kidney or heart is not that different from ours; its digestive system, especially from its teeth through its stomach, is radically different. The materials that enter the bloodstream, and how the organs and cells deal with them are, again, not that different. Cows eating grass actually convert much of the carbs from the breakdown of cellulose into fat and protein before it reaches the bloodstream.
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  3. GeminiJim Posted 7:43 am
    14 Aug 2009
    "Large extended canines correlate perfectly with vertebrate meat eating
    in the sense that no other vertebrate meat eater has a lack of large
    extended canines. Animals can also have large extended canines for
    other reasons, but that does not take away the fact that every vertebrate meat eater has large extended canines."More to the point, why would natural selection lead to large canines if we never used or needed them for hunting or eating meat? If we always hunted and ate meat by other means, natural selection would act on those and not on our teeth.
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2. arjen Posted 8:17 am
  14 Aug 2009
  I am not sure if this is going to be posted in the right place, but it is a reply to Geminijim. Thanks for keeping the discussion civil. My experience is that people generally feel so attacked in their personal choices that the discussion does not remain civil. """Our adaptations [..] go hand-in-hand with an
  increase in vertebrate animal consumption, [...]"""Sure,
  that's a given. The question is if we are genetically adapted to it.
  Just because we can survive somewhere does not mean it's ideal."Nothing
  is ideal. How do you determine if we're genetically adapted to
  something? Our last ancestors to live without using tools and eating
  meat were very different creatures from us. With our current anatomy
  could we survive in the savannah without resorting to our tool-making
  abilities and fire?" They were different creatures, but my question is how different they were. Humans have been extremely good in cancelling out the normal natural selection processes. When a lion moves out of the savannah into the forest, it will die, because it is not adapted to that environment. When a human makes the same move, they cut down the trees and make it a savannah. We move into temperate areas by creating our micro tropical environments (called houses). That is all marvelous adaptability of course, but it also prevents us from getting genetically adapted to the new environment. Generally speaking, changes in the environment determine if the lion survives, but humans just change the environment instead of changing ourselves!
  I think we actually can survive in the right environment without tools and fire. I actually know somebody in Israel who organizes trips for weeks on end when they don't bring any food or fire and they can thrive on what they find. Of course they pick the ideal time to go, but it shows that it's possible, especially if they would include invertebrate meat (which they do not). "Years
  ago I had a debate with someone who claimed our canines were proof that
  we were meant to be carnivores. I admit your's makes a lot more sense,
  but my answer is still the same. Our teeth tell us little about our
  diet except that we can't eat certain things without preparation." Without preperation is the key! That shows to me that we are not really supposed to be eating it. Of course, again, that does not mean that we can't survive and reproduce on it, but is it really ideal for our bodies. People can also live on McDonald's food, but that does not mean it is good for them. "Every
  other vertebrate meat eater lacks tools and speech. Why would an animal
  eat more meat, and yet have smaller canines, than its ancestors if
  there weren't other unique factors at play?" Very good point. That might indeed be the case. Thinking back about how speech might have evolved, I find it hard to imagine that that would be a stronger selection pressure than growing extended canines, but it is possible. "I
  would counter that behavior and culture have been powerful selective
  pressures in and of themselves. It seems the physiological adaptation
  to eating more meat is pretty trivial for an omnivore. The challenge is
  catching the meat and breaking it down so we can assimilate it.
  Anatomically adapted carnivores have claws and teeth. We have tools."And it is exactly the tools that have prevented us from becoming genetically adapted. Just like the Inuit has not grown fur because he is wearing another animal's fur. Behavior and culture are very strong influences in our development, but that is cultural selection, which is something totally different than natural selection, which works via the genes. "In
  all mammals, adaptation at the cellular biochemical level is mediated
  by anatomy. A cow's liver or kidney or heart is not that different from
  ours; its digestive system, especially from its teeth through its
  stomach, is radically different. The materials that enter the
  bloodstream, and how the organs and cells deal with them are, again,
  not that different. Cows eating grass actually convert much of the
  carbs from the breakdown of cellulose into fat and protein before it
  reaches the bloodstream."I actually once read that humans are not capable of breaking down toxic
  amounts of vitamin A in the liver, like all other vertebrate meat
  eaters are capable of, which would show that we are not so good in
  assimilating it. I have not been able to verify this though (and
  haven't really be looking for that as well). However we twist and turn it, fact remains that invertebrate meat is a really good source of protein for us and is much more efficient than eating vertebrate meat. Genetic adaptation to vertebrate meat is at least questionable and invertebrate meat also keeps us a lot lower on the food pyramid. Cultural evolution has unfortunately been very strong in this case for us westerners, so that we have come to thinking of that food source as a very gross thing to eat and in discussions like this it is usually completely ignored.
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  1. GeminiJim Posted 9:22 am
    14 Aug 2009
    Re keeping the discussion civil:Thanks and likewise! I don't know what constructive purpose would be served otherwise. And I've always felt it was better to understand someone's point of view than to be in agreement with them. Re Vitamin A:The westonaprice (find link above) site has some good info on Vitamin A. Sorry I don't have time to hunt down specifics; I'm out the door for the weekend. Basically, synthetic Vit A as found in supplements is toxic in large amounts. This appears not to be the case for natural Vit A found in animal fats.
    And good luck marketing the bugs!
    Regards,Jim
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Alida Antonia Cornelius Posted 5:38 am
14 Aug 2009
This article is so true.�They closed the stock yards in Louisville, KY some years ago. If you want to sell your feeder calves, the only thing to do is to take them to an area auction, where buyers for large corporate farming operations buy large numbers of cattle. The semi-trucks are waiting and they are loaded up and hauled all the way out to the west where they are fattened up more and then sent to large slaughter houses.Smaller area processors are disappearing...and that's the problem with wanting to start selling your cattle to local markets.�The same is happening in the dairy business. The smaller companies which would buy your milk are also disappearing.When only two buyers show up at the auction to buy most of the feeder calves, they can pretty much control how much money is paid for them.Small farmers are just getting out...they can hardly make any money with the prices they are getting for their feeder calves.What's amazing is that everyone says that when the price of fuel went up to $4.00 and also the price of corn went up (because of taking it for ethanol), that caused the large corporate farms to have higher costs and therefore prices paid for beef went down and caused hardship in the market for the small farmer, but when the price of fuel went up, so did gasoline to the consumer.But, the price for beef to the consumer never went up that much. The prices paid to the farmer for their feeder calves WENT down. And farmers are suffering.It's not just about the environment. It's about the �monopoly of large corporate cattle farms in the beef market. And the government isn't doing anything to protect the small producer from the corporate farming operations who get their feeder calves from all the small farmers..�
They need help.
What is needed are people going into the processing business in area markets instead of having to haul the cattle from all over the country to only a few large players.
What I don't understand is that all the large cattle organizations and farming organizations seem to be for the huge corporate farms. The stuff they write in trade news is all for the large corporations and never seems to be advocates for the small to medium producers.

The whole thing is one large mess.
Environmentally and financially for the smaller producer.

It's a terrible business model and it's ruining our country's backbone of small to medium farmers.
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jille Posted 6:41 am
14 Aug 2009
it's as if you're saying that drunk drivers don't kill people, it's the hard metal cars they drive that do the damage. come on man, if people stopped eating so many animals, then the unnatural diets they are fed would also disappear. meat is a huge problem. wake up.
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edharris Posted 7:06 am
14 Aug 2009
Alida Antonia Cornelius -- you're right, competition is a big concern in the agricultural sector, and the concentrated "buyer power" is one of the concerns that the Dept of Justice and USDA are seeking to explore with a series of workshops to ask whether antitrust laws could be applied to the ag sector. Read more here -- I hope you don't mind me using your comment above as an example!
And Jille, I completely agree that if people stopped eating meat, many of the associated problems with meat production would likely disappear also. But I'm not sure it's fair to suggest that Coleman (and others) don't understand that -- they are working on the assumption that people aren't just going to stop eating meat, and that if that's the case, we need to focus on realistic and workable solutions which will deliver a more sustainable production system that allows people to eat meat (although in nowhere near the vast quantities many do at present).
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Alida Antonia Cornelius Posted 8:31 am
14 Aug 2009
P.S. to GeminiJim...You said humans have to prepare meat.I am sad that the e-coli problem has gotten so bad I can't eat raw hamburger in the Middle Eastern dish called "kibbie" anymore. It's Lebanese. I used to get it at a church picnic years ago and my Lebanese American friends would serve it at their homes. It's either ground beef with spices or a mixture of lamb and beef.�Because of the way our beef is massed produced, you can't count on your beef being free from e-coli anymore.And that is another reason we need more local beef processors who have a reputations for a clean operation. The more hands in the processing, the more chance for e-coli.Humans CAN eat raw meat. It's just not safe anymore.
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1. GeminiJim Posted 9:27 am
  14 Aug 2009
  Yes, it's true we can eat raw meat. In fact it is easier to digest than cooked. We still have to grind or finely slice it before we can put it in our mouths though.Look up grassfed meat in your area, and you can probably still find some that is suitable to eat raw.
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CyberBrook Posted 8:40 am
14 Aug 2009
Wow, these discussions are SO much better than the article (which was NOT a debunking, and there's no "myth" of livestock contributing substantially to global warming, but rather it is an in-denial, conflict-of-interest defense of his lifestyle).
The following link leads to a bunch of articles on "Meat Eating and Globval Warming": www.ivu.org/members/globalwarming.html
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CatSue Posted 10:37 am
14 Aug 2009
Met with Joel Salatin and his Intern Manager Matt Rales last week. Joel said that grass feds cows are very efficient processors (fermenters) of biomass, providing milk and meat as a byproduct. Here's the interesting part...that SAME amount of biomass, left to decompose in the field would produce FAR MORE METHANE than the cow does in digestion/fermentation.Matts' "An Inconvenient Cow" is a must read. Google it.
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stevendcal Posted 1:06 pm
14 Aug 2009
I agree with Cyberbrook: Coleman has not debunked the UN study. Coleman's argument is a cloud of self-serving amoke to try to justify his own murdering of other animals. This is like the old coverups of the tobacco industry, that kept lying to us for years about what smoke and nicotine did to your body. It reminds one of the health insurance lobby, trying to distract us from the fact that what drives them is not concern for our health, but their stock prices, which are determined by an insurer's effectiveness at doing everything s/he can to escape paying for your medical care, even if it results in a person's death. Coleman (unless I missed the mention) careens around the issue that you can't supply current or future market demands from family farms ... and worldwide use of factory farming is expected to double in coming years. It's dishonest of him to suggest that the world market for corpses (meat) could be supplied with some 'cute' little children's coloring-book version of organic family farms.Also, I can't imagine that the plant-to-animal energy or protein conversion ratios are improved by feeding your soon-to-be whacked cows, chckens and pigs in your backyard.Of course for those of us who think that meat is murder, the greenhouse gas connection gives us hope that people who thinks it's fine to murder animals for human (gustatory) pleasure, might stop when they hear that murdering animals is also murdering the planet. The problem with eating meat is not only the greenhouse connection, but of murdering other animals, who use symbolic communication (though rarely, words) and have a consciousness that's not that different from a human's (Buddhists call this consciousness "Buddha Nature.") And then there's the "side" issue that animal agriculture is largest cause of fresh water pollution in the U.S.
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Des Emery Posted 4:04 pm
14 Aug 2009
We are descended from simians. Our genetics were altered by our ancient discovery that fire (in addition to providing light and physical protection) could 'cook' our food, making it more digestible. The intensity of the prime directive of life - "eat, or be eaten" - became less imperative, allowing our ancestors to do other things beside ingest, digest, excrete. The ability to 'plan ahead' removed a great deal of 'chance' from our lives, and civilization developed through agriculture into mechanization. Those two determinants became the drivers of population growth. Their mutual feedback, building each on the other, have led us to a period of global warming.Whether we eat all vegetables, or grass-fed meat, or insects, will not secure our future. We have to discover the limits to growth and then the balancing act which will keep those limits in check.
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stevendcal Posted 9:14 pm
14 Aug 2009
Des,It doesn't take a course in evolutionary biology to see that we've got to get the population equation worked out. So of course: If you're trying to bring attention to that, you've got it.But the population we already have is destroying the planet, regardless whether it increases. With respect, I think it's irresponsible to be dismissive of the effort THE EXISTING NUMBERS need to take to slow down the planetary "death march" -- efforts like stopping the sensely killing of other animals for human (gustatory) pleasure. It's dishonest to suggest that say that human eating habits have no effect on the planet. ... One can take hope in the voices of people like the late "geologian" Thomas Berry and the animals-and-religion scholar Paul Waldau, who've envisioned our life on this planet as a "Communion of Subjects." It just so happens that at this point in our evolution, our own survival is dependent on ceasing to see the rest of the planet as objects that exist soley for our enjoyment, and survival.By all means, if you want to reduce human procreation by promoting sexual abstinence, feel free. But dont' undermine the efforts of others who promote abstaining from killking and eating other animals for human pleasure.
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1. Alida Antonia Cornelius Posted 9:30 pm
  14 Aug 2009
  If you want to live a vegan life, that is your choice...But, eating meat is also a way of survival, not just for pleasure.If you look in the river, you will see one fish eat another. And so forth.You will look in the jungle or the soil and see one species eat another.It is the way of the planet naturally.And for the time being, humans are at the top of the chain, next to viruses....So, eat and be merry, no matter what you have on hand.But, be responsible about your area food sources, no matter what they be.Namaste.Salaam, and good night.
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  1. stevendcal Posted 10:14 pm
    14 Aug 2009
    Alida, This argument, that "nature is red in tooch and claw" is vapid. Thirty years or so ago in ethnographic circles, humans were seen as killer apes. As if this killer insticnt was irrevocable. So you'd suggest we just accept murder. Female baboons kill the babies of other female baboons, theoretically to give their genes an advantage. Gerbils are cannibals. Please. From the opposite direction it hs been argued that evolution is based upon cooperation, e.g. atoms "negotiate" cooperatively other atoms to form molecules, molecules cooperate to form cells, cells to form higher life forms and so on. It's absurd to suggest that a more intelligent life form should base it's morality on a lower life form, including a lower stage of its own evolution.Every argument for killing and eating other animals is based solely on human selfishness and an absence of compassion and empathy for other beings. The next time you are loving up your dog or cat, consider how you feel about cutting up them up into sandwich meat. No difference with cows, pigs, chickens, fish, et al.
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2. anil Posted 9:48 pm
  14 Aug 2009
  To be honest, this population issue is so superficially presented in almost all the discussions here. We have no reference as to the differences--e.g., how do we then account for an average American who consumes hundreds of times more than a Nepalis in terms of her/his foot prints. This American example is only for illustration purpose. We have Nepalis in Kathmandu who aspire to consume like Americans. Mere references to population number is therefore overtly misleading at best, and downright trickery at worst. I do not mean that there is some conspiracy going on in the way population gets presented as the problem.
  The second issue is, the experiences around the world in the last several decades have shown that population is in fact a dependent variable, not an independent one. Human reproductive choices are not determined by individual choices in transcendental sense, but how those choices are contingent upon existing relations between sexes, the command over material resources, the nature of political organizations, and so on. I think it will be sterile to constantly harp on 'population' number as the focus of our discussion. Sometimes it gets downright racist too--by blaming those poor Bangladeshis or Nepalis who apparently do not see the virtue of having less number of kids. I think we should stop this victim blaming and put our mind, heart and hand into something more meaningful. Population number has become an all too easy explanations for the ills that are in reality the product of faulty politics in Washington, the market fundamentalism, militarism, to name a few.
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  1. stevendcal Posted 7:13 am
    15 Aug 2009
    Anil, I take your point on population "management," and think I understand you to mean that we should frame the issue in terms of Systems Theory, whether you would use the term or not. So how would you unpack the most influential variables, and modify them?
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3. Des Emery Posted 7:50 pm
  15 Aug 2009
  I didn't intend to reference 'population control' by emphasizing a 'balance' to be achieved in living. I was thinking more in terms of things we do for other reasons - like catching fish off Newfoundland, freezing it, sending it to China for processing, then back to Newfoundland for consumption. "A chicken in every pot" now translates to "two cars and an ATV in every garage." Building obsolescence into material goods (like the laptop I'm using) should be seen as a miscue by the manufacturers, not an advance in technology. That is where the limits of growth need to be applied to keep our life on this planet sustainable. Farming is only one facet out of many that we have to address. Grain-fed meat or grass-fed meat can be compared to find out which method is more efficient in the production of GHG, but converting everyone to vegetarianism would solve only a small part of the problem, as people can't eat grass but can consume milk and cheese and meat after cattle have converted the grass (or grain) into palatable food. And removing cattle, hogs, horses, dogs and cats (all foodstuff in different places) from the equation is not a reasonable response. We are omnivores now and destined to remain that way for millions of years before evolution finds a new (vegetarians only) niche for us to occupy.
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  1. stevendcal Posted 9:06 pm
    15 Aug 2009
    This posting is utterly incoherent. I discarded responses to your statements, as I realized that item after item of your posting had no logic to it. You might as well be declaring that there are rabbit colonies on the planet Pluto.
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  2. Des Emery Posted 5:01 pm
    16 Aug 2009
    Stevendcal - I don't kow if there are rabbit colonies on Pluto, though I suspect there are not. I do know about the fish from Newfoundland. I also know that humans are omnivores, not herbivores nor carnivores. Lions and tigers are carnivores, existing by exclusively eating meat, buffalo and deer, which are herbivores existing by ingesting grass and leaves. Solar energy passes in to grasses and leaves and then to buffalo and deer, subsequently to lions and tigers. "All flesh is grass."Like bears, simians (us) select from a varied menu, vegetable and meat, in order to obtain nutrients from as many sources as possible. We are not obliged to exist on one or the other exclusively. Along with your choice to be a vegetarian, I hope you also preach spaying and neutering pet animals and euthanasia to reduce their overabundance. Cats and dogs need meat in their diets which has to be supplied from farm sources, so the production of that meat requires either grass-fed or grain-fed animals to be slaughtered, too. Keeping cats and dogs alive and healthy by force-feeding them vegetation would truly be cruel.At any rate, Earth's climate is changing, and is being forced by the manner in which mankind chooses to live. Everything we do - or don't do - makes a smaller or larger difference so it really does matter if we feed cattle grain or grass, or transport them (or their by-products) in refrigerated trucks or build new highways for those trucks or grow uni-crops for them to eat.
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Salman Shaheen Posted 6:45 am
15 Aug 2009
Eliot Coleman is right to say that the fossil fuels lobby has created a straw man of farming's impact on the environment, but only insofar as small farmers are easier to attack than big oil. When it comes to the crunch, however - and with the icecaps and glaciers melting, Bangladesh flooding, Bolivia short of water, crops failing and millions being turned into environmental refugees, this really is the crunch - it does not make sense to stand in the playground pointing at the bigger boys crying ‘Miss, he did it too!' No one should be in any doubt that we, as a society, as a species, need to clean up our act, or that this has to start by ending our dependence on fossil fuels and with the implementation of green energy and transportation technology. But we cannot ignore the impact of agriculture, and particularly the over-production and consumption of meat, on global warming.Coleman's approach to the issue, whilst a valid assessment of the negligible impact of small-scale pasture reared cattle like his own, is unfortunately very insular. Global problems need to be examined on a global level. The problem, he argues, is not meat-eating itself, rather the grain used by large-scale industrial meat production. As we well know, due to all that energy lost by animals wandering around, keeping warm, farting, only a fraction of the energy they gain from their food finds its way into our stomachs. As such, it requires considerably more grain and vegetable matter to keep a single person on a meat-based diet than a vegetarian one. As David Pimentel, professor of ecology at Cornell University points out, "If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million."This is an inefficient and energy-intensive process which Coleman believes he is exempt from because his cattle are raised on grass. He is keen to lay the blame at the door of corporate/industrial agriculture. In a sense he is right, but only if John Donne was wrong and, unlike most men, Coleman is in fact an island. The trouble is, approaching this on the global level, it would be impossible to produce the amount of meat the world currently consumes based on the small-scale farming model Coleman advocates. It is not, after all, about supply, it is about demand. That's capitalism 101. As long as demand for meat remains at its current levels, there is no solution to be found in the corporate/industrial producers scaling back their operation, since supply will always fall short. As such, the carbon-sink rainforests will continue to be cleared for cattle rearing, grain will continue to be pumped into meat production rather than human consumption and, according to research conducted by ecological economist Susan Subak, 36 times more CO2 will be emitted producing a pound of beef than a pound of asparagus.Of course we should, as Coleman suggests, condemn the enormous output of greenhouse gasses due to fossil fuel and fertiliser use by a greedy and biologically irresponsible agriculture. But doing so would be an utterly fruitless task if we do not recognise that it is our own consumption patterns that necessitate these patterns of production. Paul McCartney's suggestion of Meat Free Mondays provides the perfect first step in addressing our unsustainable levels of consumption. There are many ethical reasons why one might choose a strictly vegetarian diet, but this is not the time for them. This is the time to provide solutions to a much bigger problem. One that threatens entire species and communities. Because no man is an island. And if we do not address the issue of over-consumption of meat and its impact on climate change, on melting icecaps and rising sea levels, there will be far fewer islands left.Salman Shaheenwww.thethirdestate.net
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Dave from Canada Posted 9:24 am
15 Aug 2009
Sure, "if" meat were raised without lots of fossil fuels, it's impact would be much lowerAnd automobiles aren't the problem because in theory they could be powered by human muscle.Let's be serious; the amount of meat raised without intensive fossil fuel use (and antibiotics etc) is trivial. Meat, as the overwhelming majority of it is raised today, is highly fossil-fuel intensive and has a very high impact.
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Joann S. Grohman Posted 6:59 am
17 Aug 2009
Elliot Coleman thinks clearly. Some readers may appreciate clarification on how ruminant digestion works. Ruminants have a digestive system evolved to process coarse plant material; in the case of cows this means grass. (Two other ruminants, goats and deer, prefer foliage.) Ruminants do not have a requirement for grain, thus the idea that they are in competition with humans for grain is false. This belief, entrenched in the minds of many, must be dismissed before rational discussion of the role of cattle can occur. Feeding grain to cattle is an economic choice. Its profitability is dependent upon continued agricultural subsidies. Coleman makes the important point that the buffalo (American bison) once roamed the US in numbers exceeding that of the entire current US cattle herd. Buffalo are ruminants. Like everything that breathes, they are part of the short term carbon cycle and neither add nor subtract from atmospheric balance. But in addition, by trampling in the prairie grass, they sequestered carbon, removing it from the short term carbon cycle and as a result, built what was perhaps the finest topsoil the world has ever known. Cattle at appropriate stocking rates do exactly the same thing. Joel Salatin puts it this way: America has traded 75 million buffalo, which required no tillage, petroleum or chemicals, for a mere 42 million head of cattle. Cattle are solar collectors. Rod Heitschmidt, USDA rangeland scientist states:“Biochemical constraints determine that herbivores function as ‘energy brokers’ between solar energy captured by plants in the photosynthetic process and its subsequent use by humans. The inability of humans to directly derive caloric value from the 19 billion metric tons of vegetation produced annually in tropical and temperate grasslands and savannas provides the ultimate justifications for evaluating grazing as an ecological process.” Being able to make meat and milk out of grass is magic. A human could no sooner do it than she could make honey out of clover. In other words, cattle are intrinsic to the conversion of solar derived plant material into human food. Specialized bacteria in the rumen break down cellulose, a function that can be accomplished only by bacteria, never by human digestion. Rumen bacteria then assemble the full spectrum of essential amino acids (also known as animal protein), a function also possible only to bacteria. This feeds the cow; she is not a vegetarian. She uses bacterially deconstructed and constructed products to make milk and meat. Methanogens, a class of bacteria, produce methane as a product of fermentation. Methane is also known as swamp gas or natural gas. If you cook or heat with gas you are using methane, which like CO2 from oil or coal, was locked in the earth and inert until mined and burned. Megatons are now being released from tundra by melting permafrost. Oceanographers now describe vast belches coming up in the Bering Sea and South China Sea. In some places the sea is foaming like a shaken soda, the methane is burping up so fast. The rumen is a fermentation vat and produces methane at a modulated rate. Methane contains energy, as you know if you cook with it. The amount the rumen produces varies according to a cow’s diet. The rumen is not designed to ferment grain. For this reason a diet of grain produces proportionately less methane compared to, for instance, straw. However, as Coleman notes, forbs (broad leafed plants) in pasture, assist with fermentation and increase its efficiency so that less energy is lost as methane (CH4) Like the buffalo before them, grazing cattle always belch up methane. Ruminants produce more methane than other species because their large rumens are actively breaking down more cellulose, much to our benefit. This does not unbalance the universe. It feeds us. Although confined cattle on diets high in grain produce proportionately less methane in the rumen than do cattle on grass or hay (much of the grain is passed along to the small intestine for digestion), the practice of collecting their manure as a slurry in vast lagoons, produces tons of it. (These lagoons are also the mode of collecting manure from swine CAFO’s). Methane production is anaerobic (without oxygen) and manure lagoons provide anaerobic conditions. Notably, manure dropped in the open air on pasture results in no methane production. Despite its undoubted role as a greenhouse gas, methane can be an important energy source. Also, methanogens (the bacteria that produce methane) have recently been shown to repair DNA damaged by UV light. David Pimentel has done much fine work but he is mistaken in stating that cows cannot be produced locally on grass in numbers adequate to meet consumer needs. Since it has not been attempted, nobody is justified in such a statement. As Coleman has repeatedly shown, production from a vegetable garden is by no means finite and can be impressively greater than most people think; the same is true with cows, no “pushing” required. Unfortunately, Pimentel’s armchair statistics, unchallenged, have formed the basis for assumptions about meat and milk production by virtually all environmental writers, precious few of whom have a cow in the back yard. I do. Coleman is probably correct in his suspicion that oil interests and corn/soy producers are feeding us disinformation about the role of animal production as a factor in climate change. It is plant crops that are responsible for displacing small farms in both the US and Africa and for deforestation of lands in South and Central America and in South Asia. Cattle are used as a quick cash crop before the land is dragged clear for corn, beans or palm oil. Statistics regarding the contribution of animal agriculture to greenhouse gas production are clearly being manipulated for somebody’s benefit. Here are US EPA figures from 2007, the most recent year for which information is available:US agriculture accounted for 6% of US greenhouse gas emissions. Out of this 6%, 24% was from enteric (rumen) fermentation by cattle (excluding manure management). So 6% x 0.24 = 1.44%. If all cattle were killed, then 100 - 1.44 = 98.6% of US agricultural greenhouse gas emissions remain. As Coleman observes, plant crops account for a vast amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Corn and soy generate a lot more profit than does animal production. Sustainable, local grassfed meat and dairy cattle, source of life giving food, are a big threat to somebody and it isn’t to us folks. Joann S. GrohmanAuthor of Keeping a Family Cow
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7 Aug 2009 9:21 AM
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