Meredith:

I was at the Summit, and have got to say the picture from a GHG inventory picture was pretty broad, down to including savings from encouraging pasturing, as well as reduced nitrogen volatilization savings from crop farming practices such as organic farming.

I'd be interested in your claim that organic fluid milk has 50% of the emissions. That seems very large and impressive to me. What study is that?

Tom Arnold Chief Environmental Officer TerraPass

Unfortunately despite the fact that the retailer and the processor make very good profit on organic dairy, the farmers are currently losing up to 60 cents a gallon because of the reluctance of processors to pay more.
The farmers reward for working with the environment not against it; conserving energy and being a good steward of the land is to lose money on a high quality product.
I'm not sure where the figure of 50% comes from for dairy but The Organic Center has done a study that shows that organic corn uses 30% less energy than conventional grown corn. Conventional dairy use a great deal of petroleum based fertilizers go the figure of 50% could come from there.

not buying cow's milk at all.

When will it dawn on us that the concept of "organic milk" from an oversized, methane-spewing, watershed-poisoning, energy-devouring, semi-domesticated, hoofed monstrosity is an absurdity?  

Just wonderin.

Absolutely, Meredith.  Whenever we see that miserably doubtful word, we should strongly suspect green-washing in progress.

It is actually rather conservative, smooth-bellied, hammock-loving and anti-revolutionary: Just a tweak here, a minor adjustment there, and we can all carry on with our mindless hedonist materialist lifestyles as before.

And for how many more decades is that supposed to last?  Is "sustainability" sustainable?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Guade00's rhetorical question is brilliant.

One might note that Meredith Niles wrote a nearly 50-line essay, in seven paragraphs, about milk production, without once (so far as I can see) using the word "cow."

No, not once.

Whatever could Meredith have been thinking?

Environmentalism is for the cows.  When we say (or believe) that we human beings come first, and the cows, etc., are a negligible afterthought, then how are we not as irrationally speciesist (selfishly cruel, really) as the anthropocentrist religionists whom many of us love to mock and dismiss?

In fact, it seems that dairy cows are perhaps the most numerous among our several extremely abused captive vertebrates, at this stage in human history.  Aside from the close confinement that most of them suffer, as well as the over-frequent abusive manipulation of their bodies, we should add that the forced separation of mothers from new-born calves counts as well as a serious ethical issue.

How in the world can the continued abuse of these fellow sentient creatures ever be "sustainable"?

It is troubling, even a bit frightening, that Meredith Niles can write a serious environmentalist article on the dairy industry, with reference solely to GHG emissions, and with no reference whatsoever to our close cousins, in chains, in pain, the cows.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Meredith:

I pulled the Wieske et al. article, and taking the data from Table 1, its pretty clear that organic dairies in his sample produce 8% more kg CO2e per kg of milk than conventional dairies. Disappointing, but true. I didn't dive into your other studies.

Now this wasn't the thrust of the article, and it was only a sample of 12 farms, not enough to discount the gains from organic practices.

Wieske's thrust of the paper is to quantify gains from managing manure, livestock efficiencies, and biogas production at both conventional and organic dairy farms.

The first and last were both central to analysis prepped and strategies explored at the DMI conference.

Tom Arnold Chief Environmental Officer TerraPass

In response to the comment by guade00:

 I feel that there are two types of environmentalists out there.  The ones that can help make this system (that believe it or not we are pretty much stuck with - so deal with it) better by advocating for solutions like organics, and there are those who are the naïve environmentalists.  And you, guade00 are a naïve environmentalist.  I am personally a vegetarian.  I choose to not to drink milk and I rarely eat other dairy products.  This is simply my choice and I couldn't be happier with it, but to think that everyone is suddenly going to give up drinking milk because cows are an "oversized, methane-spewing, watershed-poisoning, energy-devouring, semi-domesticated, hoofed monstrosity" is simply preposterous.  

This type of idea is what is holding people back from eating less meat, drinking less milk, driving their cars less and taking public transportation, choosing to limit their use AC and heat, walking more, biking more, growing their own food, eating organics, farmers choosing organic, etc.  If people see an all or nothing choice (like yours) they are more likely to be put off by it and choose the easier step, immediately, and thereby doing so they will be more likely to be put off by similar choices later on.  Let us remember one of the first rules of economics - people are self-interested.  

Thinking that people will stop buying milk is a great idea, but not a practical one.  Remember we don't want to push people out - we want to bring people in.  So let's bring the organic standard to the front line and let that be the baseboard for our new ideas and new standards.  Allowing people to choose organic milk as one way of reducing their footprint will open people's eyes to a whole new way of seeing the world, one where they have a choice and where that choice matters.