A Contrarian Take on Meat and Climate Change
- Posted by: Andrew Price
- on August 13, 2009 at 2:55 pm
In Grist today, Farmer Eliot Coleman argues against the conventional wisdom that eating meat itself is a climate change problem:
If I butcher a steer for my food, and that steer has been raised on grass on my farm, I am not responsible for any increased CO2. The pasture-raised animal eating grass in my field is not producing CO2, merely recycling it (short term carbon cycle) as grazing animals (and human beings) have since they evolved. It is not meat eating that is responsible for increased greenhouse gasses; it is the corn/ soybean/ chemical fertilizer/ feedlot/ transportation system under which industrial animals are raised.
This distinction between processes that are a natural part of the short-term carbon cycle and those that release carbon from long-term storage is really significant and it doesn’t get discussed much. Of course, there are other arguments against meat that have to do with the efficient use of land.
DISCUSSION: 2 Comments
“Of course, there are other arguments against meat that have to do with the efficient use of land” Exactly. That’s my problem with the global warming threat: it has taken over all other environmental problems. Everybody is talking about carbon, but to be honest, I care more about all the other toxic crap our factories, power plants, cars, etc. are spewing out! Whatever happened to trying to diminish those? Carbon has just gone to the forefront and it’s out of control. Yes, global warming is a threat, but the thing is, the same things that cause global warming cause all other sorts of environmental problems, from acid rain to polluted water to lack of biodiversity to humans becoming increasingly disconnected from the environment we evolved in an to which we are intimately connected. Eating meat has a tremendous impact on the land in ways other than the production of greenhouse gases like being a horribly inefficient use of land (amount of energy required to get x calories of food) which is causing massive deforestation the world over, or to the destruction of biodiversity it causes be removing almost all other wildlife for the sake of a single species. In addition, there is the health issue that we just eat way too much meat, much more than our ancient ancestors evolved to eat, and this is causing massive health problems (compounded by the fact that we use motorized transport everywhere and sit on our butts most of the day in front of the computer or TV).However, that being said, the author is correct in stating that the large industrial agriculture farms where the cattle are grain fed and loaded with antibiotics and hormones are much worse than the small farms that are grass-feeding their livestock and otherwise trying to have a smaller environmental footprint. But in the end, with large-scale livestock as we have known it for the past several centuries, you are still destroying an ecosystem to bias it towards one species, and if there’s anything we should know by now, it’s that life requires diversity and the complicated interactions between many species. Every time we try to mess with this natural process thinking we know what we are doing, we are worse off in the long-term.
There is a lot of misinformation being spread about our food supply. Our food supply would be much smaller, if we quite raising beef, sheep, & goats. There are thousands of acres in the world that can only raise grass, either because of lack of moisture, poor soil types, too large of slopes, or too short of a growing season. . If other crops were attempted to be grown on some of these acres there would be a large increase in soil erosion. Livestock can utilize the roughage from these acres to produce food. I have some problems with the statement that “large industrial agriculture farms where the cattle are grain fed and loaded with antibiotics and hormones are much worse than the small farms that are grass-feeding their livestock and otherwise trying to have a smaller environmental footprint.” This statement is repeated over & over with out looking at the facts. Cattle are not loaded with antibiotics. They are used in cases of sickness for recovery. I will grant that some people use hormones in finishing their cattle, but not everyone.. Cattle are raised on grass & milk until they weigh 600 lbs or more. When the cattle are fed corn, they are still receiving human inedible forages & byproducts, such as distillers grain(25% protein high fiber byproduct from ethanol production). The statement makes one think they are raised on grain from birth. In reality a 1000 lb steer finished in a high corn type ration, consumes mainly forage until it is weaned & about 50% forage once it goes into a feedlot. This is where most Prime beef comes from. . A lot of cattle are finished with a lot less grain & more forage. I could expand on this more, but I have fences to fix so the cattle can graze the corn stalks & until then I need to give them some hay..