From burping cows to grazing sheep, when it comes to
global warming the finger of blame is invariably pointed at
the livestock farming industry these days.
Animal
agriculture is causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to
raise, say critics, and if we’re serious about tackling
climate change then we need to cut red meat from our diets
and switch from cow’s milk to alternatives such as soy or
oat milk for our tea or coffee.
It’s an argument
that’s gained a significant amount of traction, with more
and more people adopting vegan diets in response to repeated
reports that livestock are a major contributor to the
world’s environmental problems.
But while animal
agriculture is by no means blameless in the global warming
debate, it seems the industry’s impact on the environment
is not as significant as critics suggest.
The
government has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas
emissions from agriculture as part of its overall effort to
reduce New Zealand’s emissions by 50 percent by
2030.
What kind of madness is this? With all of the
economic issues affecting our country, why is the government
putting in place policies and IPCC-driven mandates that will
seriously affect the food producing sector that provides
food security for us and is also our primary income
earner?
The worst part about this is that we now know
that all of our government’s agricultural policies are
based on science that is wrong as proven by the UNFCCC
declaration in November 2022 which stated that their
predictions around climate change were in fact wrong and
that they were reducing their predicted climate warming
numbers by 50%.
“The United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has announced that it
now accepts research showing climate change is expected to
reach just 2.5°C – only half as much as the mainstream
media has long assumed.
In a formal statement, the
UNFCCC said the world is “on track for around 2.5 degrees
Celsius of warming by the end of the century”.
Our
Prime Minister at the time (December 2020), Jacinda Ardern,
declared a climate emergency and since that time the Labour
government has been making decisions, based on the UN’s
Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2014 fifth
assessment report.
These decisions around lowering our
greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sectors have
been based on facts that we now find were actually wrong.
The UN has now stated that the figures need to be cut in
half.
As a result of this change to the science, there
should be an urgent rethinking of methane to acknowledge the
true impact of livestock production on the
planet.
Livestock’s impact has been hugely
overstated, while the major culprit — the use of fossil
fuels, particularly for transportation — has largely been
allowed to slip under the radar.
But perhaps more
significant, however, is the lack of understanding about the
methane famously emitted in cows’ burps, and how it acts
in the environment.
While methane has been said to be
28-times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide, the UNFCCC
declaration in November 2022 also stated that this figure
was wrong.
The IPCC admitted the mistake in their
Sixth Assessment Report, explaining
at page 1016 of Chapter 7, “…expressing methane
emissions as CO2 equivalent of 28,
overstates the effect on global surface
temperature by a factor of
3-4”.
After ten years,
methane is broken down in a process called hydroxyl
oxidation into CO2, entering a biogenic carbon cycle which
sees the gas absorbed by plants, converted into cellulose,
and eaten by livestock.
To put that into context, each
year 558m tons of methane is produced globally, with 188m
tons coming from agriculture. Almost that entire quantity
— 548m tons — is broken down through oxidation and
absorbed by plants and soils.
That means that provided
no new animals are added to the system, then the same amount
of carbon dioxide produced by livestock is actually used by
plants during photosynthesis.
That’s not to say
livestock has no impact on climate, but we are not adding
additional warming.
Declining stock numbers
In
fact, with stock numbers decreasing thanks to increased
production efficiencies and improved genetics we are
reducing our emissions.
The Dairy herd has shrunk from
Peak Dairy cows @ 6.7 million stock units in 2014 down to
6,140,000 stock units in the 2023/24 season;
Beef
stock units have reduced from a peak of 6.3million in 1975
to 3.9 million.
There were 25.14 million sheep in New
Zealand as of June 2022 down from a high in the 1980’s of
approximately 70 million sheep
We have got smaller
flocks and herds today, but we are producing the same amount
of meat as we did when we had larger numbers.
There
are many who claim that agricultural land used to raise
livestock should be converted to arable land, but the
problem with that argument is that two thirds of the
world’s agricultural land is marginal, which means it
cannot be used to grow crops because the soil is not
sufficient or there’s not enough water.
We have to
use that land for livestock farming, because it’s the only
way to use it.
Those who say stop animal agriculture
because it’s better for the environment and humankind are
effectively saying let’s get rid of two thirds of all
agricultural land.
When they the government says we
need to reduce the national herd by 20% to meet our climate
commitments haven’t we done that already?
Aside from
just the reduction in the total stock units in NZ there is
also the fact that the science used to calculate the
emissions from livestock farming does not take into account
the carbon sequestration from the grass pasture land
itself.
If all forms of carbon sequestration on farms
was taken into account when calculating our GHG emissions it
would be seen that farming is in fact reducing our emissions
overall.
With our open pasture methods of livestock
farming we are acknowledged as one of the world’s most
environmentally sound producers of agricultural
products.
Why aren’t our negotiators pointing this
out to the climate commissioners and our
markets?
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