"Other analysts suggest an even higher figure, attributing between 38 percent and 52 percent of GHGs to the livestock sector,"

Everyone forgets a HUGE source of GHG, namely nitrous oxide emitted by chemical fertilizer, it is equal to a staggering 2/3 of the CO2 uptake of the crop fertilized.

Now where does the carbon come from that is released from animal waste?  It comes from the crops they eat.  How much of a corn plant, for instance, is eaten by the animals?

Mainly the kernels, somtimes in the case of silage more of the plant is consumed, but a lot of the silage GHG is emitted in the silo, during fermentation.

So 2/3 of the GHG in the crop, the amount that nitrous oxide from the chemical fertilizer application, maybe doubles the GHG effect?

Surprisingly this is actually good news.  How could this be?  Because there is a way to eliminate these GHG sources, manure and chemical fertilizer, almost completely.

A way that produces clean efficient cogeneration distributed backup for a renewable smart grid.

And these new estimates of 38 to 52% indicate that manure and crop waste is a lot bigger energy source than previously aknowleged.

The method to eliminate over 50% of GHG?  Is it going vegan?  Nope, that isn't going to happen.

It is biodigestion of waste stream biomass and the production of organic fertilizer to replace chemical fertilizer.  The biogas produced runs at over 70% efficiency in fuel cell cogeneration and that makes it a perfect distributed backup power source for variable renewable sources like wind and solar.

And this interview finally verifies what I have suspected for awhile, composting manure or field spreading it yields nitrous oxide, but biodigesting manure, and "green" manure crop waste, traps the nitrous oxide sending it through the fuel cell and converts it from 296x the GHG effect top plain old CO2.

So even dedeicated organic gardeners ought to be putting their compost through a biodigestor in the first hot stage of composting, after that put it into a regular compost pile for the garden.

Now how do we encourage biodigestion of the waste stream in China?  We create market demand here for biodigestors, then chinese industry will mass produce them cheaper, to sell at Walmart and end up using them too.

Witness the Friedman observation on the chinese and american embassies in an Indian city.  The chinese enbassy had chinese made solar water heaters on the roof, the american embassy had antennaes.

Don't look now, but with chinese industry pulling afead in solar, wind, and plugin hybrids (that can't be imported here), our green job revolution is in danger of becoming an installation and sales revolution only, with manufacturing jobs restricted to China.

But you know the talking point, we can't go green because then China will beat us by sticking with cheap coal and gas guzzling.  Hehey, who are the geniuses that come up with these wing nut talking points?  They are called "think tanks".  Kind of ironic eyyh?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

That's true bio-d, limiting the land area devoted to livestock is a laudible goal.  I sure like the idea of natural herd animals though, like bison on restored natural prairie replacing beef.

A good compromise might be limited confinement and healthy supllemental feeding, featuring  rotational grazing with portable feeding/shelter/milking and manure collection stations on trailers.

A careful misture of natural and selectively grown pasture plants would make for rotational grazing right along with biodiversity.  Dairy farms here in the dairy state that went broke with traditional chemical ag are being brought back to life with organic rotational grazing.

I really like the idea of eating far less meat too, but that is going to be a tough sell to the emerging economies especially.  It's still worth it, green/health education ought to be a big priority.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

I don't think you can "fix CAFO's" just by setting up digesters to deal with the wastes, although that would certainly be a sensible step forward. Monocultures inevitably create disease problems, which in capitalistic enterprise "necessitates" the intensive use of antibiotics, which leave residues in the food products and usually the local water supply. It seems to be a healthier solution to mix a few animals with intensive gardening, and use the manure to provide the fertilizer. We won't be synthesizing it from natural gas much longer.

As long as the unregulated use of CAFO related chemical ag and all its health and GHG effects go forward under the banner of "free" market corporatism, simply digesting the manure won't be much of an improvement.  It will be used instead to greenwash the CAFO industrial chemical ag.

But here is how organic farm based biodigestion could beat CAFO chem ag:  subsidies per kwh for biogas and other renewable energy plus payment from utilities would boost farm income.  The organic fertilizer would cut the very high cost of organic feed.

Those positive financial effects could not only save organic farming, but actually impell it's expansion.  As the cost of organic food drops, consumers will embrace it, especially as the knowledge of the health effects of hormone, pesticide, herbicide, antibiotic, and anribiotic resistant disease laden chemical ag food products spreads through the public.

Every new poisoning incident or disease outbreak or contamination related cancer connection pounds the stake into the heart of agrichem bidness.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin