EarthSky reported on a study by scientists at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, suggesting that newspapers are neglecting the impact of agriculture – especially livestock production – on climate change.
Cows causing climate to change? Apparently so. Global warming is being caused by an excess of certain kinds gases in Earth’s atmosphere. We think mostly of carbon dioxide (CO2) as the major greenhouse gas, but it isn’t the only one. Methane is even more potent than CO2 at causing Earth’s atmosphere to warm. Ruminating animals – such as cows and sheep – burp methane. I read that the average cow burps up between 300 and 500 liters of methane a day. I also read that there are more than a billion cows on Earth today.
By some estimates, agriculture contributes 30% of the gases that are causing Earth to warm.
Newspapers and other media are neglecting this aspect of the global warming story. That’s according to Roni Neff, who is Research Director of the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins.
Neff and her colleagues examined thousands of climate change stories published in the 16 largest U.S. newspapers over the past several years. Out of 4,582 climate change articles, she said, the group found that only 109 articles even mentioned food and agriculture contributions to climate change – only 2.4 percent. Only half a percent of articles even mentioned the contribution of meat production to climate change, despite the 18% of world greenhouse gas emissions resulting from people (like me) who enjoy eating meat.
This is the story of bovine digestion – cow belching – and I wont’ go into it here. I won’t because Neff told me in an email that it’s only one of several agricultural contributors to climate change. A tremendous amount of deforestation goes on in the name of producing meat – specifically to raise grain for feed and to clear land for pasture. Neff said most of this deforestation occurs in the Amazon, not in the U.S. Still, no matter where on Earth it occurs, the process of clearing land releases sequestered carbon. This carbon goes into the air and contributes to climate change.
She said there are other mechanisms by which agriculture is affecting climate. Think of the energy required to power livestock production, processing, and transportation; emissions from pesticides, fertilizers and other aspects of producing feed grain; and the methane emitted from manure.
All these activities add up to the 30% contribution of agriculture to climate change. Neff said she was surprised at the lack of coverage of agriculture’s contribution by newspapers. She said, “It’s like there’s a page missing from the manual. Everybody wants to do what they can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they’re just not hearing about the impacts of food.”
Not all of you who read this blog believe humans are causing climate change. But for those of you who do believe the best reckoning of Earth’s best scientists on this subject, Neff said eating less red meat will help lessen agriculture’s effect on our changing climate.
So there you have it. The wholly benign-seeming realm of agriculture – the very thing that feeds us – is contributing to climate change, and we didn’t know it. And as one might expect in a world where humans and nature are inextricably coupled, it goes the other way, too. Climate change will also affect agriculture profoundly in this century. Cynthia Rosenzweig and Daniel Hillel, for example, have studied the potential impacts of climate change on agriculture and food supply. We sometimes hear that, in some parts of the world, food production may benefit from a warmer climate. Scientists agree this is true. In some places, there might be benefits.
But there are many unknowns. Scientists have come to believe that climate change probably means just that: change. They anticipate a 21st century climate with wider swings toward droughts, floods and heat waves. Will these events challenge those who grow our food?
What’s more, the key to crop and livestock production is water. After all, water = life. And water on Earth is a key issue for the coming century, as our human population continues to grow and rainfall patterns shift – possibly from year to year or decade to decade – in the changing climate.
Cow image from JelleS’ photostream.
Roni Neff image used with permission.
Girl eating tiny hamburger from Fee865‘s photostream.
Thanks everybody!
If we got rid of all the cows, all the goats, all the sheep, all the camels; all ruminants, would we need to go after the wild ruminants? They include, bison, buffalo, antelope, giraffe,, deer and more. Also, keep in mind, the number one source of biological methane on this earth is the lowly termite.
I thinke we need to take a chill pill on the environement. This earth has been here a long time, and indications are, it will be here a while yet. Volcanoes produce more greenhouse gasses in one burp than man can in decades. Also, like it or not, mankind is part of nature, like the butterfly and the ant.
Agriculture has become more and more efficient over the years. In 1900, one farmer produced enough to feed less than three people, now that same farmer can feed over one hundred. If we can keep central (read that: government) controls out of agriculture, this trend will continue. We have taken many hundreds of thousands of acres out of production. Acres that now lie fallow, going back to nature as it were. Too many, in my estimation.
We live longer than ever, so I am more than skeptical when I hear how bad our environment is becoming. Life is good! enjoy it!
I think the relevant question is, do we want our children (and our children’s children, etc) to live on a hellish earth, devoid of resources because we didn’t care for them properly, when we were all out having a good time?
Jay, hellish might be a bit of an overstatement. Or maybe not. We don’t know what the Earth of the future will be like for humanity.
We only know that there are a lot of us – 6.7 billion of us – on Earth today. A certain set of problems comes with those large population numbers … just as a different set of problems will come when Earth’s population begins to decline again, as it’s expected to do in the second half of this century.
I have total faith in our human ability to confront the challenges. I don’t agree with Ben’s idea that we should just take a chill pill on some of the most important issues facing humanity today.
Deborah
First it’s our CARS, now it’s our MEAT, will our GUNS be the next climate change culpit? We may have to redefine what it means to be an American…. bikes, beans … and peace.
Whatever. So I stop eating meat. So everyone in my neighborhood stops eating meat. Let’s say I start a campaign and everyone in my city stops eating meat. I think enough people will still eat beef to still put methane into the air. I’m not saying climate change is not happening. I’m saying the reason we can’t stop it is that there are too many people in the world, and you can’t tell people what to eat or drive or buy. It’s going to be survival of the fittest all over again.
Candy, I have more hope than that. The human species is very adaptable!
I notice that everyone (especially politicians) is very careful to refrain from actually saying it:
ALL OF OUR PROBLEMS WOULD BE GREATLY DIMINSHED IF THERE WERE LESS OF US HUMANS ON THE EARTH!
Bovine overpopulation that is a plausible cause of global warming; but the cow population is directly proportional to the human population. Increased use of fossil fuel is causing global warming, but it is due to the increase in human population. I live in Utah, and I hate to knock anybody’s religion, but enough is enough! There is no longer a need to have 8 kids. You really don’t need to create your own baseball team. LETS MAKE FEWER BABIES AND MAKE SURE WE PROVIDE AN OPTIMAL QUALITY OF LIFE FOR THOSE WE MAKE. There are far too many poor, hungary, sick, huddled masses in the world–we should really get serious about human population control.
And while I am at it, let me say something about this GREEN campaign… What a crock–if something is made of real wood, it isn’t green. What if we buy well-built furniture, and keep it for generations like people used to (they called these things heirlooms, and passed them down)? I see all sorts of junk for sale everywhere, because we want to own lots of stuff now, but we can’t afford that much good stuff. So we buy junk. The junk goes off to the landfill 2 years from now (and the cost of the junk is still on our credit cards). So is it really green? Did it contribute to our economic crisis?
Why don’t we buy good stuff, pay lots of money for it (so craftsmen in this country can have a good job and afford health care), pass it down to our children (so they can buy other things), and keep the junk out of the landfills? What we do now is buy junk which permits factories in China to crank out junk without regard for the environment, the junk comes here and goes into our landfills where it leaches God-knows what into our water (because China has very lax manufacturing standards).
NOTHING IS GREEN UNLESS YOU LOOK AT THE BIG PICTURE AND IT IS STILL GREEN. Buy quality goods, reuse those goods and when they can no longer be used recycle them. Purchase items with the end result (recycle) in mind. I don’t buy shampoo in colored bottles–why? Because here in the intermountain west, we have to ship empty bottles to other states to have them remade into new bottles. Most manufacturers will not use recycled plastics that cannot be died to the perfect shade for their product. So, they don’t get my business. In my mind, they can put a colored label on it. I don’t need a purple or green shampoo bottle that cannot be recycled and must go to the landfill because nobody will re-use it. AND NEITHER DOES ANYBODY ELSE…
So there, you got me started. But if people would really think green with their pocket book, the world would get greener. If people would think safety and health with their pocket book the world would get safer and heathier. If people would think quality with their pocket book, the quality of the world would increase. But you have to think cradle to grave. We don’t–we want it now and who cares about where it goes or what it does to the environment or the economy once we toss it out.
Arrita, yes, our large human population has created certain kinds of problems. But the rate of population growth is falling. By that I mean that – while population numbers are still increasing in absolute terms – the numbers aren’t increasing as fast as they were over the past several decades. Experts expect Earth’s human population to peak around the middle of this century and then begin to drop again. Why? For one thing, more and more women have access to birth control. Also, women are entering the workforce in greater numbers all over the world, and when that happens they have fewer children. When women have greater freedom and more control over their own lives and bodies, they tend to have fewer children. All of these things are contributing to the slow-down in population growth.
Agree with you totally about things that are, supposedly, green.
Deborah
I’ve just discovered this blog. Nice job! Food systems and food choices are directly linked to many problems. Although I write primarily about gourmet food, I try to regularly cover issues of sustainable food choices and recently wrote about the low carbon diet. I’m in the midst of editing my annual sustainable seafood blog event, so I’m thinking about these issues quite a lot. The Sacramento Bee had a story recently about a man who is advocating a day or two a month of making food choices more like those the rest of the world make and using the day to reflect. Quite thought-provoking and he’s not selling something.
I’m so tired of people selling us green items. They’ve forgotten the first R of the mantra, is Reduce. Most green thing you can buy is nothing.
Eating less ruminants, (pigs are both tasty and not methane producing) eating locally, eating from small farms not CAFOs, these things are generally healthier for us and healthier for the planet, too.
Jacqueline Church
The Leather District Gourmet
Hi Jacqueline, thanks for stopping by. Agree about green items. Interesting about the pigs. I checked your blog – beautiful! You might want to check out the water issue as well. A big part of the water challenges for the coming century center around the fact that so much water is used to grow our food.
Deborah
I’d like to know the effect on greenhouse gases of newer methods of agriculture, such as minimum tillage. It often requires herbicides but chemicals per se aren’t the issue here.
Fish-farming is new in the US. How does it compare with cattle farming? Taking all factors into consideration I’d like to see a table comparing protein sources from grains and beans on up. And a graph showing gas production by proportion of edible flesh, which is probably highest for fish, but I don’t know.
Yes, we still have to eat. And we know that if we eat a lot of beans, we burb (and fart). Same thing with cows, just much worse. It is not natural for cattle to eat soy beans. That is just to make them grow faster. They much prefer hay and clover and stuff that grows on the ground.
It is humans that decided to feed cattle with processed soy protein, most of it from Genetically Engineered soy with genes from E coli bacteria all patented by Monsanto, that has never been properly tested as safe. And you still think meat tastes good?
Thanks for bringing this important topic up!
Thank you for commenting Martin. I think we humans have some figuring out to do! But I also think we’ll figure things out better as this century progresses.
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