We don't want to know about your crap

Factory farms get the ultimate handout 5

Since the beginning of climate change legislation this session in Congress it has been clear that big agriculture would not be a part of a cap and trade program.  Yet, while the Waxman Markey bill has been making its way through Congress, the EPA has also been pushing forward its own agenda of climate related regulations, including the mandatory reporting of GHG emissions from factory farms.  Yet, yesterday the House Appropriations Committee undermined this progressive proposed regulation by passing the 2010 Interior and Environment spending bill. An amendment in the bill will prevent the EPA from requiring factory farms to report their GHG emissions—a move that represents a blatant handout to large factory farms.

While climate legislation stalls through Congress, the EPA proposed rule aims to establish at least the basis for regulating GHG emissions- knowing how many we produce and where they come from.  Two weeks ago the comment period ended for the Proposed Mandatory GHG Reporting Rule, which would require American industries to report their GHG emissions, over a threshold of 25,000 tons.  Among the highlights of the proposed rule was the requirement that manure management be considered a reporting category.  As such, large scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) more commonly known as factory farms, would be required to report their emissions if they reached the 25,000 ton threshold.  According to the EPA the number of CAFOs in the U.S. that reached this amount was only around 50 of the largest, most intensive facilities in the country.

There have been a lot of questions floating around as to why Americans should care about livestock poop, particularly in the context of climate change and GHG emissions.  While it is little discussed, it is actually quite a significant contributor to GHG emissions.  First and foremost- animal manure and livestock produce methane and nitrous oxide, which are about 23 and 300 times respectively stronger than carbon dioxide.  According to the EPA GHG Inventory, manure is the 5th largest source of methane and the 4th largest source of nitrous oxide in the U.S.  It results in more GHG emissions per year than all cement production and more than twice as many emissions as waste incineration and natural gas systems in the U.S.  It should also be mentioned that enteric fermentation-gases produced from livestock-is the number one source of methane emissions in the U.S.  Combined, manure and enteric fermentation produce about as many GHG emissions as the entire commercial sector’s burning of fossil fuel in the United   States.  The EPA did not require that enteric fermentation be considered a reporting category in their proposed rule.

The way in which CAFOs pool their manure together is a large part of the problem here.  When stored in pits and lagoons as is typical on factory farms, the manure breaks down anaerobically, in the absence of oxygen, which exacerbates methane emissions.  The EPA has acknowledged that when manures are distributed on pastures as would be typical in a grass-fed animal system, methane production is limited.  Thus, there are proven ways to reduce methane emissions in manure management.

But with the passage of the House Appropriations amendment last night, there may not even be the chance to attempt to reduce GHG emissions from factory farms.  Representative Dicks (D-WA) stated, “A facility of that magnitude and size can well afford to at least report in what the level of methane is,” Dicks said. “I think this is something we need to know. Methane is one of the most important gases that we have to deal with if we’re going to deal with this issue.” Well said.

By preventing the EPA from collecting data from manure systems, the House Appropriations committee is telling the American people that they aren’t serious about climate change or the health of rural communities and farmworkers, who must live with terrible odors and noxious gases associated with such facilities.  What is especially disheartening about the move is that it would prevent a much needed better understanding of livestock and manure emissions that would help foster scientific research and effective methods for reducing such emissions.  If Congress is serious about climate change then we need the data to understand our emissions, which will only happen for livestock and manure if the amendment is removed before the final version of the bill.

 

Meredith Niles is coordinator of the Cool Foods campaign at the Center for Food Safety. The Cool Foods Campaign is a national public advocacy, education and policy campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our food and agriculture systems. The Campaign is working with a variety of organizations, businesses, schools, restaurants, city councils and individuals to help reduce “foodprints”. The Campaign is also working on climate change and agriculture policies that will promote the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from industrial agriculture in our food system, and reward small-scale sustainable farmers for their positive contribution to climate change mitigation.

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  1. Clifford Wells's avatar

    Clifford Wells Posted 4:51 pm
    19 Jun 2009

    Um, how can I say this nicely ... if you know the number of heads of CAFO animals by type and feed, I can tell you the emissions much better than some cheating, conniving, lying private industry can.  If the CAFO operator doesn't provide an accurate head count, then we'd assume the maximum contained in the permit.  That's how the big boys and girls do it all the time.  You just send a letter (like from EPA) saying that "We calculated your greenhouse gas emissions, here they are, and thank you very much."  If the CAFO operator doesn't like the numbers, they can hire a contractor to do a better job, and document how they followed the appropriate protocol.One issue with a CAFO of any kind is of course animal waste, which more resembles a brown slurry than those nice brown slumps of manure you're used to at the horse farm or ranch.  More slurry is created during cleaning operations.  This stuff used to be stored in foul-smelling lagoons, which are definitely another source of GHGs.  So what many newer CAFOs did was to pump these wastes into the ground using high pressure pumps.  The risks of such a process are not fully known and we're talking millions of gallons of slurry at a time.  Are we switching one problem for another? Will all that pooh grease the rocks and cause earthquakes, foul water tables, and more pollution?  Nobody really knows.I worked with Texas A&M on some of these issues and while I realize the GHG gasses are a huge deal, what caught my attention most was something called "bio-aerosol."  This is caused by wind picking up soil laden with bacteria, or worse yet by dewatering systems that use large sprinklers to water fields.  That's a huge issue and there may be some inferences with the so-called "swine flue" pandemic.  You're literally spraying sub-micron bacteria into the air in a humid environment, not good.  The Midwest Institute also did some seminal research on this topic.But you're right, CAFOs are a huge deal.  Unfortunately, you don't have a stack to measure CO2 such as with a tuned and calibrated continuous emission monitoring system, a CEMS.  You can't put a snorlel on every farm animal to measure their fornt-end or back-end emissions, and piles of manure of lagoons of shite, same deal -- these are called "fugitive" area source emissions.  So all CAFOs are estimated manually by using emission factors that account for varying parameters.  And that's my main point.  If it was a utility, car, or something with a stack or tailpipe, I agree that all emission levels or rates should be etsimated using real-world data.  Not the CAFOs.  I wouldn't trust their numbers, anyway. 

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  2. mimi's avatar

    mimi Posted 7:55 pm
    19 Jun 2009

    not only do they poop, but they fart too. can we put kinetic plates on the farm so the rude farting cows atleast generate renewable energy? http://tinyurl.com/meggwe http://twitter.com/yomimi

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  3. wunder Posted 7:48 am
    20 Jun 2009

    i think this is something that is just not controllable this way... you put more pressure on them to track every head and they will make the civilian pay for it.. .and by that i mean NAIS... check out nais.org. The way to decrease thier emmisions is by keeping up the publicity about how bad they are .... i think we've gotten farther by educating the public than to deal directly with these corrupt swines.... We have so many regulations concerning animals and if we keep up with more of this legislation the big boys will find a way to make the little guy pay for it.... There is nothing we can do ... the lobbyists and power companies like cargill is more powerful than another piece of legislation... If it were up to me... current structure of 'corporation' should be lilegal, they should have laws limiting thier capabilities in government and should not be allowed to lobby.... Monsanto as a corporation should not be holding patents... nor should the patenting office be granting patents on food..... More legislation is just not going to get the job done... LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS and throwing support and money behind them... educate the public because most of them are still not able to concieve what is really going on... people are changing and i believe that in time we will see a significant change in the way people see food.

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  4. Clifford Wells's avatar

    Clifford Wells Posted 12:02 pm
    20 Jun 2009

    Good points, Wunder.  But with anything that is not a point source, such as a smokestack industry like a coal powered electric generation station, things become difficult to even measure, at best.  Cows are a perfect example - an anthropogenic source because we get the milk or eat them, yet biologic and no smokestack.  A field siting there with manure on it is a source of pollution, and a field sprayed with liquid urea or ammonia fertilizer can really generate some N2O, a minor but highly reactive greenhouse gas.  Any operations related to a CAFO or even aquaculture can have these non-point emissions.  Landfills have a similar problem, unless fitted with a methane capture system.Such non-traditional sources of air pollution continue to frustrate the pencil-pushers and bean counters.  For greenhouse gases, one must estimate biogenic and geogenic sources as best as one can.  Swamps are an example of a biogenic methane source.  Petroleum seeps are a source of geogenic methane.  And talk about trees, when healthy they take in CO2 and release oxygen, but when in a drought or stressed, they actually emit more CO2 than the amount of oxygen they create.  So there are international and EPA "cookbooks" about how to estimate such non-traditional emissions, although they could easily be off as much as plus or minus 40 to 50 percent for any specific application.Back about 10 or 12 years ago I was on an EPA team to work on non-traditional sources of fine particulate (PM-2.5) and precursors such as ammonia.  Some of the work done on CAFOs was considered pretty innovative and ground-breaking.  Some of the best work came from North Carolina's hog farms, since Research Triangle Park was close by for lots of instrumentation and measurement.  I don't have a feeling we have any degree of confidence in our emission rates for CO2, CH4, and N20, however, and non-traditional sources can be very large for these pollutants.  I don't have much confidence in any numbers people publish these days, nada.  Why should we require some hired gun at each CAFO to guess at the answer?

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  5. ridgerunner's avatar

    ridgerunner Posted 5:12 pm
    21 Jun 2009

    Instead of just talking about the problem, and writing (useless) letters to your congressperson, you can actually do something tangible about this three times every day.GO VEGAN!

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