Methane in the Atmosphere Is Due to Beef and Livestock
Within the Academy of California, Davis, a Holstein cow has its head and neck sealed airtight within a large, articulate-plastic sleeping room that resembles an incubator for newborns. While giant tubes higher up the chamber pump air in and push air out, the cow calmly stands and eats her feed. Equipment within a nearby trailer spits out data.
This is how Frank Mitloehner measures gases that come from cows' stomachs and ultimately contribute to global warming. Quantifying these emissions is key to mitigating them, and Mitloehner is one of several UC Davis researchers investigating economical means to brand livestock production more environmentally sustainable effectually the earth.
READ MORE:Unfold, the official UC Davis podcast, examines the bad rap cattle receive every bit an unfriendly producer of climate-changing greenhouse gas.
Cattle are the No. ane agronomical source of greenhouse gases worldwide. Each year, a single cow will belch virtually 220 pounds of methane. Methane from cattle is shorter lived than carbon dioxide only 28 times more stiff in warming the atmosphere, said Mitloehner, a professor and air quality specialist in the Section of Animal Science.
With the escalating effects of climate change, that fact has advocates urging the public to swallow less beefiness. They contend information technology'due south an unsustainable diet in a world with a population expected to reach well-nigh 10 billion by 2050.
Mitloehner has openly challenged this view, writing in a recent commentary for The Conversationthat "forgoing meat is not the environmental panacea many would have us believe."
Cows and other ruminants account for just 4 percentage of all greenhouse gases produced in the Us, he said, and beef cattle just 2 percentage of directly emissions.
Better breeding, genetics and diet take increased the efficiency of livestock product in the U.S. In the 1970s, 140 one thousand thousand head of cattle were needed to meet demand. Now, but xc one thousand thousand caput are required. At the same time, those xc million cattle are producing more than meat.
"We're at present feeding more people with fewer cattle," Mitloehner said.
The global problem
Shrinking livestock's carbon hoofprint worldwide is a large challenge. Livestock are responsible for 14.v percent of global greenhouse gases.
India, for example, has the world's largest cattle population, just the lowest beef consumption of whatever country. As a result, cows live longer and emit more methane over their lifetime. In addition, cows in tropical regions produce less milk and meat, so it takes them longer to get to market.
"If yous accept hundreds of millions of cattle to achieve a dismal corporeality of production, and then that comes with a high ecology footprint," Mitloehner said.
Researchers at UC Davis have projects in Vietnam, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso to boost livestock productivity through better nutrition. That may be critical going forward as demand for meat is rising in developing countries.
"We expect by 2050 in that location is going to be a 300 per centum increase in beefiness demand in Asia," said Ermias Kebreab, a professor of fauna science and managing director of the UC Davis World Food Center.
A new diet
Kebreab, Mitloehner and other UC Davis scientists are looking for ways to make cows more sustainable and less gassy. I style to do that is to make their high-cobweb diet easier to digest, so scientists often plow to feed supplements for this purpose. Information technology sounds simple, but finding an affordable and nutritious condiment has proved hard.
Withal, Kebreab has succeeded in finding such a supplement past feeding dairy cattle a plant way off the trough card: seaweed.
"We've washed one trial and showed that at that place is up to a 60 per centum reduction in methyl hydride emissionsby using 1 percentage of seaweed in the diet," Kebreab said. "This is a very surprising and promising development."
In improver to reducing methane output, the seaweed doesn't make the cows' milk sense of taste bad. He's now testing the diet on beef cattle. It could be a relatively inexpensive solution for reducing emissions.
This type of cerise seaweed, calledAsparagopsis taxiformis, has i big drawback: a wild harvest is unlikely to provide enough of a supply for broad adoption. Other scientists are looking for ways to grow it to scale, and Kebreab remains hopeful that feed additives hold the nearly hope.
"I believe that nosotros will have a solution, two or three good candidates, that would reduce emissions quite substantially," Kebreab said. "I tin can come across that happening in the next few years."
Cows as office of the climate change solution
Besides emitting greenhouse gases, some other mutual criticism of beef production is that cows accept up about half the country in the United States. Overgrazing those lands can degrade soil wellness and biodiversity. Yet researchers argue that, managed correctly, cows aid restore salubrious soils, conserve sensitive species and heighten overall ecological function. Proper cattle grazing management can even help mitigate climate change.
On the Van Vleck Ranch due east of Sacramento near Rancho Murieta, Jerry Spencer manages about 2,500 cattle. A practiced winter's rain this year has left them a feast of greenish pastures. Spencer pays close attention to the grasses, making sure the animals take enough to eat just don't overgraze. He maintains a diverseness of native grasses to go on the cows healthy and rotates herds between pastures to requite the plants a rest from grazing and opportunity to recover.
"Y'all want to leave equally much equally grass as possible to let h2o infiltration and healthy root systems," Spencer said.
(Inquiry at UC Davis indicates just a touch of the ocean algae in cattle feed could dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions from California'due south 1.eight million dairy cows.)
Maintaining healthy root systems isn't only good for the plants. The longer and denser the roots, the more they tin can hold atmospheric carbon in the soil.
"One of the all-time and virtually simple things nosotros can do on rangelands to assistance mitigate climate change is to conserve rangeland ecosystems and keep the carbon that's already stored in rangeland soils safely stored there," said Ken Tate, a UC Davis rangeland watershed management extension specialist. California is at particular risk of rangelands being converted to housing and other developments, he said.
Ranchers really have little financial incentive to allow their herds overgraze or let their herd'due south hooves compact and dethrone soils. Spencer said if the state degrades, then the cattle'southward wellness tin can suffer likewise.
"Sustainability is keeping everything feasible both economically and biologically," said Spencer. "Ranchers don't continue to exist if either one of those are really out of balance."
While sustainable grazing practices won't eliminate methane produced by the cows, they can beginning information technology. Co-ordinate to Projection Drawdown, this solution could sequester 16 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2050.
"Proper grazing sustains working landscapes that back up communities, nutrient product and a healthy environment," Tate said.
Meat-free movement
Environmental considerations may factor into people'southward nutrient choices, but those decisions are also based on religious and cultural beliefs and traditions, as well as personal tastes. In low-income countries, there may not be any option. Information technology'south why Tate and Mitloehner believe the meat-gratis move can go only so far.
"There volition never be a situation where some major part of our nutrition volition exist ruled out," Mitloehner said. "My job is not to estimate people for their eating habits. My job is to await at how nosotros can produce livestock and minimize those environmental impacts that do be."
Media contact: Amy Quinton, UC Davis News and Media Relations, 530-752-9843, amquinton@ucdavis.edu
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Source: https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable
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