How Does Animal Farming Contribute To Climate Change
Inside the University of California, Davis, a Holstein moo-cow has its head and neck sealed airtight inside a large, clear-plastic chamber that resembles an incubator for newborns. While giant tubes above the bedchamber pump air in and button air out, the cow calmly stands and eats her feed. Equipment inside a nearby trailer spits out information.
This is how Frank Mitloehner measures gases that come from cows' stomachs and ultimately contribute to global warming. Quantifying these emissions is fundamental to mitigating them, and Mitloehner is one of several UC Davis researchers investigating economic means to make livestock production more than environmentally sustainable around the globe.
READ MORE:Unfold, the official UC Davis podcast, examines the bad rap cattle receive as an unfriendly producer of climate-irresolute greenhouse gas.
Cattle are the No. 1 agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide. Each year, a single cow will discharge virtually 220 pounds of methane. Methane from cattle is shorter lived than carbon dioxide simply 28 times more potent in warming the atmosphere, said Mitloehner, a professor and air quality specialist in the Department of Animal Science.
With the escalating furnishings of climate change, that fact has advocates urging the public to eat less beefiness. They debate information technology's an unsustainable diet in a globe with a population expected to reach nearly x 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 accept us believe."
Cows and other ruminants account for just 4 percent of all greenhouse gases produced in the United States, he said, and beef cattle just 2 percent of direct emissions.
Better breeding, genetics and nutrition have increased the efficiency of livestock production in the U.S. In the 1970s, 140 million head of cattle were needed to meet demand. Now, just ninety million caput are required. At the same time, those 90 million cattle are producing more meat.
"We're at present feeding more than people with fewer cattle," Mitloehner said.
The global problem
Shrinking livestock's carbon hoofprint worldwide is a big challenge. Livestock are responsible for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gases.
Republic of india, for example, has the world's largest cattle population, simply the lowest beef consumption of whatever country. Every bit a result, cows alive longer and emit more methane over their lifetime. In addition, cows in tropical regions produce less milk and meat, then information technology takes them longer to get to market.
"If you take hundreds of millions of cattle to achieve a dismal amount of product, then that comes with a high environmental footprint," Mitloehner said.
Researchers at UC Davis take projects in Vietnam, Federal democratic republic of ethiopia and Burkina Faso to boost livestock productivity through better nutrition. That may be critical going forward every bit need for meat is rising in developing countries.
"We expect past 2050 in that location is going to be a 300 per centum increase in beef need in Asia," said Ermias Kebreab, a professor of animal science and director of the UC Davis Earth Food Middle.
A new nutrition
Kebreab, Mitloehner and other UC Davis scientists are looking for ways to make cows more sustainable and less gassy. One fashion to do that is to make their loftier-fiber diet easier to digest, so scientists often plow to feed supplements for this purpose. It sounds unproblematic, merely finding an affordable and nutritious additive has proved difficult.
Even so, Kebreab has succeeded in finding such a supplement by feeding dairy cattle a establish way off the trough menu: seaweed.
"We've done ane trial and showed that in that location is up to a lx per centum reduction in marsh gas emissionsby using ane per centum of seaweed in the nutrition," 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'south now testing the diet on beef cattle. It could be a relatively inexpensive solution for reducing emissions.
This type of red seaweed, chosenAsparagopsis taxiformis, has one large drawback: a wild harvest is unlikely to provide plenty of a supply for broad adoption. Other scientists are looking for ways to abound information technology to scale, and Kebreab remains hopeful that feed additives hold the nearly hope.
"I believe that we will accept a solution, ii or 3 practiced candidates, that would reduce emissions quite essentially," Kebreab said. "I tin can see that happening in the adjacent few years."
Cows as role of the climate change solution
Besides emitting greenhouse gases, another common criticism of beef production is that cows take up most one-half the land in the United States. Overgrazing those lands can degrade soil health and biodiversity. However researchers fence that, managed correctly, cows help restore salubrious soils, conserve sensitive species and raise overall ecological function. Proper cattle grazing direction can even help mitigate climate change.
On the Van Vleck Ranch e of Sacramento nearly Rancho Murieta, Jerry Spencer manages well-nigh ii,500 cattle. A good winter'south rain this year has left them a feast of green pastures. Spencer pays shut attention to the grasses, making sure the animals have enough to eat but don't overgraze. He maintains a diversity of native grasses to go along the cows healthy and rotates herds betwixt pastures to give the plants a residue from grazing and opportunity to recover.
"Y'all want to get out every bit much as grass as possible to allow water infiltration and healthy root systems," Spencer said.
(Research at UC Davis indicates just a touch on of the body of water algae in cattle feed could dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions from California's 1.8 meg dairy cows.)
Maintaining healthy root systems isn't just good for the plants. The longer and denser the roots, the more they can hold atmospheric carbon in the soil.
"One of the best and most unproblematic things we can do on rangelands to help mitigate climate change is to conserve rangeland ecosystems and keep the carbon that'due south already stored in rangeland soils safely stored there," said Ken Tate, a UC Davis rangeland watershed management extension specialist. California is at particular adventure of rangelands being converted to housing and other developments, he said.
Ranchers really accept little financial incentive to allow their herds overgraze or let their herd's hooves compact and dethrone soils. Spencer said if the land degrades, then the cattle's health can suffer besides.
"Sustainability is keeping everything viable both economically and biologically," said Spencer. "Ranchers don't proceed 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 tin kickoff it. According to Project Drawdown, this solution could sequester sixteen gigatons of carbon dioxide past 2050.
"Proper grazing sustains working landscapes that support communities, nutrient product and a healthy environment," Tate said.
Meat-gratis movement
Environmental considerations may factor into people's food choices, only those decisions are also based on religious and cultural beliefs and traditions, as well as personal tastes. In low-income countries, at that place may not be whatsoever selection. It's why Tate and Mitloehner believe the meat-free motion can become merely and then far.
"There will never be a situation where some major function of our diet will be ruled out," Mitloehner said. "My job is not to guess people for their eating habits. My job is to await at how we can produce livestock and minimize those environmental impacts that do exist."
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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