Meat and methane

[Curiouso]

I'm curious about the argument that meat eating is bad for the environment. I've been reading a bit about it and still a bit lost.
Is it industrial farming that causes the problem?
I read about the meat industry causing the amazon rain forest to be destroyed. But what about local butchers who sell meat from local farms which keep their animals outdoors? Is that bad for the environment?

How does meat production compare with artificial vegan food? They seem to be ultra processed food, which by all accounts is not good for us to eat, is heavily packaged, and I imagine that also has a big environmental impact.
What about people keeping horses? Is it only eating the animals that is a problem, or is it their existence that is impacting climate change?
The arguments about the ethics of being non-vegan aside ( so only about the environmental impact) are we attempting to rid the planet of animals or just stop eating them?
The way I understand it, we need manure to fertilise the land to maintain decent topsoil, so is it even possible to constantly grow food crops in areas traditionally used for grazing?
And what about the areas where crops can't be grown that are traditionally used for grazing animals?
Basically is meat always bad for the environment or is it the way it is produced in vast quantities the problem?

"It takes 12 bathtubs full of water to make one hamburger patty" that's how my scientist friend explained it to me when I asked her if eating local meat would be better for the environment.

@ShitRunAway

"It takes 12 bathtubs full of water to make one hamburger patty" that's how my scientist friend explained it to me when I asked her if eating local meat would be better for the environment.

Doesn't it take quite a lot of water to grow an avocado too? Just thinking out loud, I'm not arguing. And I think arable crops in arid areas need irrigation causing problems in local rivers. I'm not entirely convinced by all the all meat is bad arguments, but I still want to do the right thing.

Be very careful when you are reading the various studies related to how damaging, or not, meat production is. When you read a study, look also at who funded it and what the affiliations are of the institution that produced it. Meat and dairy, on a global scale, are without a doubt a significant driver of climate change, but there are some very powerful and loud groups who aren’t necessarily putting across a very accurate or nuanced picture.

To answer some of your questions:

• Manure vs fertiliser. There are estimates that suggest that we have around 100 harvests left in our soil globally. This is because fertiliser does not add organic matter to the soil whereas manure does. Leaving aside climate change for a minute, the best method of production for ensuring soil health is good old mixed, rotational farming. Intensive arable farming (crops only) is incredibly damaging to soil health and we lose more and more topsoil every year because of it. Obviously you can’t actually leave aside climate change, but to consider that in isolation would create us a whole other set of problems.

• Whilst methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, it does not last anything like as long in the atmosphere as carbon. Carbon will be there for centuries, methane lasts about 12 years, so the methane produced by ruminants is effectively only replacing the methane produced by earlier generations of ruminants. Reduction of methane is a very quick win, and a reduction in the number of ruminants globally would have fast impact in a way that reduction of carbon emissions won’t but that doesn’t mean that we should allow big carbon producers off the hook by taking aim at the livestock industry, who are a very easy target.

I am a livestock farmer so I very much have a dog in this particular fight, but I am not about to deny climate change or the impact of livestock production upon it. I am however deeply worried that by focusing on livestock production, we are allowing big carbon emitters a free pass to carry on with what they are doing. The issues of soil health and biodiversity loss are also of deep concern to me, and I know what my farm would look like if it were turned over to exclusively plant production. All the wildlife which is supported by our old permanent pastures would be lost. The birds, the insects and the fauna. The soil would very quickly become depleted and progressively less and less productive. It’s not as simple as let’s all stop eating meat. I don’t know what the answer is but I do know that the direction of travel isn’t yet the right one.

I recommend you read Henry Dimbleby’s National Food Strategy. Also two books - one called Grass Fed Nation and the other called The Farmer, the Plough and the Devil. I read a lot from every side of the argument to try and understand it. I still don’t, but I know that it’s not as simple as many people make out.

Thank you @Lolalovesmarmite for your comments from 'the other side' so to speak. I really appreciate you saying that you don't know what the answer is either.
My goodness this is hard!

Excellent post by Lola, I just want to add that some species produce more methane than others. Cows produce the most, they belch when they chew cud, and their fermenting waste also creaes methane. So does pig manure, and I think they are the two worst culprits.

But at least here in the UK, much of the methane can be harvested using low tech methods. For example, if you cover tanks of fermenting manure with a pyramid shaped lid, the methane rises to the top and can be fed through a pipe, then bottled to be used for cooking or heating, or to generate electricity.
Farmers can also put similar pyramid structures in the roof of buildings where pigs or cattle are housed. They can be made of recycled plastic.

A single avocado requires 140-272 litres of water. The same amount of beef requires 2,315 litres of water, pork 900 litres, chicken 650 litres, butter 833 litres.

Avocados are transported by sea, not air, which has a relatively low carbon footprint (amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced in the process).

The average carbon footprint of one avocado is around 0.19 kilograms of CO2 equivalents. The same amount of beef produces 4 kilograms, lamb 3.4 kilograms, cheese 3.15 kilograms and pork 1 kilogram.
In any scenario, avocados use less resources and produce less greenhouse gases than animal products.

Don't worry OP Boris and Carrie Johnson are on a mission to get rid of British farming. All of our food will be produced abroad

@ShitRunAway A cow will drink up to 200l a day and produce enough milk to make 1kg of butter. 1 avocado weighs 170g so an avocado of butter requires 34l of water. I think the other numbers are similarly out.

Thanks OP for asking this as I had many of the same questions myself. And thanks to everyone else for their informative and measured replies

[quote Daftasabroom]@ShitRunAway A cow will drink up to 200l a day and produce enough milk to make 1kg of butter. 1 avocado weighs 170g so an avocado of butter requires 34l of water. I think the other numbers are similarly out.[/quote]
That's just the water the cow drinks - you need to allow for the water that is used to grow the fodder she eats.

A single avocado requires 140-272 litres of water. The same amount of beef requires 2,315 litres of water, pork 900 litres, chicken 650 litres, butter 833 litres. We have plenty of water here in the West of Scotland

@ShitRunAway so I got hold of a waterfootprint report that highlights how 93% of the water in UK beef is actually rain that falls on the fields of pasture and feed crops. It's very different in other countries. So actually your are in a sense correct but it's disenigenuose to compare the rainwater falling on a field of grazing cattle in the UK to the water piped or diverted to an avocado tree in California where they have huge water shortages.

[quote Daftasabroom]@ShitRunAway so I got hold of a waterfootprint report that highlights how 93% of the water in UK beef is actually rain that falls on the fields of pasture and feed crops. It's very different in other countries. So actually your are in a sense correct but it's disenigenuose to compare the rainwater falling on a field of grazing cattle in the UK to the water piped or diverted to an avocado tree in California where they have huge water shortages.[/quote]
Precisely

[quote Daftasabroom]@ShitRunAway so I got hold of a waterfootprint report that highlights how 93% of the water in UK beef is actually rain that falls on the fields of pasture and feed crops. It's very different in other countries. So actually your are in a sense correct but it's disenigenuose to compare the rainwater falling on a field of grazing cattle in the UK to the water piped or diverted to an avocado tree in California where they have huge water shortages.[/quote]
Yes, so this is the sort of thing that I find interesting. There are sensible sounding views coming from both sides of this debate. I agree with whoever said thst it's worth looking into who is funding which studies.
But this and derxa's contributions here make me think that perhaps all the science about meat production is based on areas which have less rainfall/natural resources and such.
I cannot get my head around it being better to import food from elsewhere than consuming locally produced natural food.
Water consumption is a mind boggler to me as on the face of it, it's a highly recyclable resource. It does not disappear, the way I understand it. Rather, it gets into the ground, or the atmosphere via sea, rainfall, filtered through kidneys, etc etc. I could be talking bollocks of course, but where does all this water actually go?

@Frymetothemoon

Thanks OP for asking this as I had many of the same questions myself. And thanks to everyone else for their informative and measured replies

I have contemplated starting such a thread for ages. I'm glad you are finding it interesting too! It seems to me based on replies to this and other climate change threads, that it is a real conundrum and there are no easy answers.

Oh, yay. Living on wheat, barley and oats. Just what a celiac needs to hear.

Water consumption is a mind boggler to me as on the face of it, it's a highly recyclable resource. It does not disappear, the way I understand it. Rather, it gets into the ground, or the atmosphere via sea, rainfall, filtered through kidneys, etc etc. I could be talking bollocks of course, but where does all this water actually go? It's the water cycle isn't it. The problem for agriculture around the world is the unequal rainfall levels. The reason that there is a lot of dairy production in the West of Scotland and Ireland is high rainfall which is good for growing grass. My ewes are outside eating grass or hayledge (which we made) all year round.

@NeverDropYourMoonCup

Oh, yay. Living on wheat, barley and oats. Just what a celiac needs to hear.

This is partly why I asked the questions. I feel way healthier and eat less when I avoid grain. I would like a more natural way of eating ( ie not processed food from half way around the planet) to be better for the environment, as it is for our health, but current thinking seems very sure that meat production is the villain. For me it's still boiling down to industrial farming being the biggest problem, along with so much over consumption among humans. It does seem to be a real case of us totally fucking up a world that could totally support us, if we hadn't gone to such trouble to 'improve' it.

@derxa

Water consumption is a mind boggler to me as on the face of it, it's a highly recyclable resource. It does not disappear, the way I understand it. Rather, it gets into the ground, or the atmosphere via sea, rainfall, filtered through kidneys, etc etc. I could be talking bollocks of course, but where does all this water actually go? It's the water cycle isn't it. The problem for agriculture around the world is the unequal rainfall levels. The reason that there is a lot of dairy production in the West of Scotland and Ireland is high rainfall which is good for growing grass. My ewes are outside eating grass or hayledge (which we made) all year round.

Yes, this is why it seems to be a no-brainer that farming appropriately depending on climate/resources is more environmentally friendly than a blanket ban on meat. Unequal rainfall levels were words I was looking for in my previous post. Thank you

@Curiouso I don't think there are "sides" in the debate as such, more different perspectives and levels of understanding. For those of us whose jobs involve measuring sustainability the complexity is tough enough, for those not trained or doing it on a regular basis it must be thoroughly confusing. The amount of misinformation out there only adds to this. The level and quality of reporting is generally aweful.

A single avocado requires 140-272 litres of water. The same amount of beef requires 2,315 litres of water, pork 900 litres, chicken 650 litres, butter 833 litres

Pigs and chickens farmed for meat have very short life spans. They aren't alive long enough to drink gallons of water. Literally a month or so in the case of chickens and less than a year usually for pigs.

Your average 'cull cow' that goes into burgers (we aren't talking prime cattle here) could easily be 12 years old and will have consumed far more water in their life before becoming a burger.

How does a cow becoming a beef burger use more water than a cow making butter?

Farmers know that, the people writing the 'shocking statistics' know that but that particular piece of information is deliberately obscured from the audience.

Similarly to how the vast majority of the soy used in cattle feed is the waste product left over from what has been used/selected for human consumption.

Methane is less of a worry to me than carbon, and I believe that farming is an easy scapegoat for other polluting industries to divert attention from what they are doing, aided and abetted by some militant veganism with good connections to the film industry (its worth following the money on game changers etc, cowspiracy etc).

Farming struggles to fight back because there isn't any billion pound advertising budgets.

Its very unfair to extrapolate farming methods on feedlots in the USA as also applying to upland hill farms in the UK. They just aren't the same thing.

Sorry, I didn't mean 'sides' in a competitive sense. Not in a ' you're either with us or against us' sense anyway. Poor choice of words on my part. But it's good that there is debate. A lot of opinions can be based on reading scientific articles that could potentially be biased either around who is funding it or as an emotional bias.

I'm really appreciating all the replies from people with more understanding of this. As ever, for me, it's creating more questions than answers!

My last post was to daft

@Scrowy the report on waterfootprint was pretty good and detailed and doesn't mention avocados anywhere! It clearly separates water source, feed, and country. I think the issue comes when a journalist, blogger or another actor with a specific agenda misinterprets, conflates or deliberately misrepresents the data, add in a healthy does of Chinese whispers and all of a sudden nothing makes sense.

I'm wary of the overall idea of culling animals, but I think we need to re-examine our relationships with animals and focus on how each of them contribute to their ecosystem.

We've spent centuries looking at animals in terms of what they can do for us, and overlooking the fact that each species evolved to fill a niche in their habitat. There's a reason for bees and wasps and cows and horses and dogs, and they don't actually exist just for our benefit.