July 20, 2010
Cattle Burps and Climate Change: What About Bison? A Response to Joel Salatin
In a recent Mother Jones article, writer Kiera Butler asks the experts if eating responsibly raised meat can actually be good for the planet. One of the responses comes from Joel Salatin, star of Food, Inc., Fresh and a personal hero of mine. Joel makes some strong points that uphold the merits of an ethically- and environmentally-sound diet that includes animal products. However, one of his arguments struck me as unsound:
“…far more herbivores (bison) existed in the Americas 600 years ago than exist today: The notion that methane from burping herbivores causes climate change is both unscientific and ridiculous.”
With all due respect to Joel, here’s why I think he’s missing the mark.
“…far more herbivores (bison) existed in the Americas 600 years ago than exist today.”
True, there are fewer bison alive today, and I don’t have numbers on the total numbers of herbivores then and now. But if we’re talking about climate change, large ruminants – animals with multiple stomachs and a penchant for belching large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas – are the animals we’re concerned about.
The best historical estimates put the number of bison roaming the Great Plains at 30 million (1,2,3). In 2008, the USDA reported the U.S. cattle inventory at 96 million head (4). That’s three times as many large ruminants alive in the U.S. today (not accounting for moose and their ilk).
“The notion that methane from burping herbivores causes climate change is both unscientific and ridiculous.”
Not so. Burping ruminants have contributed to climate change throughout history, and the dominant large ruminants in the U.S. currently contribute roughly three times as much as they used to. The 30 million bison roaming the Great Plains are estimated to have released 46 Tg CO2e enteric methane emissions annually (3), compared to the 140 Tg CO2e methane released in 2008 by U.S. beef and dairy cattle (about 85% of which are grazing at any particular point in time, the rest are in feedlots) (5).
These are rough comparisons. They don’t account for other ruminants like deer, sheep and goats, though these smaller animals contribute far fewer methane emissions than cows and bison (6). Moose may be another story, though I suspect the number of cattle (wild and domestic) in the U.S. has far outweighed moose populations. The data are limited to enteric methane emissions (belching only) and exclude greenhouse gas emissions from manure and other sources. Further, no one knows exactly how many bison roamed the U.S. Still, the available data strongly suggest that our current livestock production model produces far more annual greenhouse gases than Great Plains bison ever did.
These finer points don’t detract from Joel’s other arguments, and I still hold that raising livestock under certain conditions can have numerous ecological benefits. Still, it’s important to set the record straight about red meat, dairy and climate change. To satiate the U.S. demand (and to a lesser degree, the international demand) for meat and dairy, we raise far more large ruminant animals than would otherwise naturally occur, and the effects on climate change are heavy.
- Brent Kim
References:
1. D. Flores (1991) Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy: The Southern Plains from 1800 to 1850. The Journal of American History 78 (2).
2. H. Epp and I. Dyck (2002) Healthy Human-Bison Population Interdependence in the Plains Ecosystem. Great Plains Research 12 (2002).
3. F. M. Kelliher and H. Clark (2009) Methane emissions from bison-An historic herd estimate for the North American Great Plains. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 150 (3), pp. 473-577.
5. US EPA (2010) 2010 U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report.
6. N.M. Swainson et al. (2008) Comparative methane emissions from cattle, red deer and sheep. Proceedings from the New Zealand Society of Animal Production 68.
Posted by Shepherd Ogden
See also the recent reports (e.g. from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/science/earth/14australia.html) about the different microbial processes in the gut of different ruminants, which also complicates the analysis…
Posted by Bert McDert
But let us not forget, either, that bison weren’t confined to the Great Plains. There were woodland bison all down the eastern seaboard, tho they are now confined to the northernmost end of their original range. Joel’s math may still be suspect, but either way it’s not primarily the fault of ruminants that we are fouling the air in myriad ways. Or even that they exist in such high numbers, or that their current form is optimized not for ecological function but rapid growth, or that they eat the wrong sorts of food for their metabolism, or that their raising is so petroleum-dependent and otherwise ecologically devastating. How we come to eat ruminants matters, as does the scale on which we do so. But there’s in all likelihood no way to feed this many people that wouldn’t also destroy the landbase. Taking our diet down a rung or two on the would certainly slow down the carnage, but the population that’s most significantly out of control is our own, hands down.
Posted by Bert McDert
on the … ? I was gonna say on the food chain, thereby mixing my metaphor. Instead I omitted a necessary noun clause. Oh well. My poor grammar is also not why the Earth is dying.
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Posted by Susan Gilchrist
Two points:
1) there are more things to consider than just methane.
a) Livestock are responsible for 65% of nitrous oxide, which is now the single greatest cause of expansion of the ozone, which in turn has also been linked to the expansion of sub-tropical zones, creating more arid, drought prone areas.
b) It is estimated that by 2030, 1/3 of all US counties will face water stress, and 1/3 of the world. We can feed far more people a vegan diet than a meat diet. According to Univ. of Calif-Davis, it takes 1238 gallons of water to grow one serving of beef in Califonia, 330 gallons to grow one serving of chicken, but only 98 gallons to grow one complete, nutritionally balanced diet of one grain, one protein (from legumes) and two veg in the state of california. We will not be able to feed the population if people keep eating animal products, only if we eat vegan.
2) Methane from livestock has caused cliamte change before. We had mega fauna (camels, mammoths, etc) 13,000 years ago as richly diverse as Africa here in the Americas, but within about 1000 years, humans hunted them to extinction. The rate of decrease of methane coorlating with this decline in mammals was enough to put the planet into a small ice age — the Younger Dryas Ice age. At that time methane levels were much lower than today. So today, if we decrease the methane from the livestock, hopefully we will cool enough to balance out the climate.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n6/full/ngeo877.html
Posted by Rick McCallion
First the hypothetical ideal: lowest impact is living from what is naturally produced in your local ecosystem with no intervention: hunting and gathering, building with what is available be it rock, wood, mud, or grass.
This will only happen in small tribes in undeveloped nations so move on.
Next, clearly, moving up the food chain for our sustenance increases the energy and land base needed to feed us. Assuming best practices (recycling nutrients and energy, using renewable energy, etc) for whichever form of agriculture, the same area of land needed to feed 100 people meat and vegetables, grains and legumes and fruit, will feed several hundred people if you simply drop the (even ethically raised, organic, free range) animals.
The only exception to this would be the hypothetical first choice – a population hunting and gathering in a natural forest ecosystem who then convert the forest to fields to grow plants and become vegan… even though this would support more people on the same land area the loss of carbon sink would probably result in a net increase in carbon footprint.
Furthermore it’s not even clear that organic free range meat production is less ghg producine than factory farming due to certain efficiencies in factory farming.
Regardless of which meat production method has lower ghg emissions than the other, it’s impossible for either to match the efficiency of plants in converting solar energy to human food. Herbivores live on plants. How can you have them walking around, heating themselves, mooing and doing their thing, without subtracting all of the energy needed for those activities and other costs of their lifetime from the final product on your plate once slaughtered?
Yes i know that the hooves breaking up soil allow some carbon capture from the air to the soil.
Plants do that better too.
I’m no expert, simply using what logical reasoning is at my disposal. Any corrections invited and welcomed.
thank you
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