Eat less red meat to control global emissions

[Guest guest]

December 4, 2008

As More Eat Meat, a Bid to Cut Emissions

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

STERKSEL, the Netherlands — The cows and pigs dotting these flat

green plains in the southern Netherlands create a bucolic landscape.

But looked at through the lens of greenhouse gas accounting, they

are living smokestacks, spewing methane emissions into the air.

That is why a group of farmers-turned-environmentalists here at a

smelly but impeccably clean research farm have a new take on making

a silk purse from a sow's ear: They cook manure from their 3,000

pigs to capture the methane trapped within it, and then use the gas

to make electricity for the local power grid.

Rising in the fields of the environmentally conscious Netherlands,

the Sterksel project is a rare example of fledgling efforts to

mitigate the heavy emissions from livestock. But much more needs to

be done, scientists say, as more and more people are eating more

meat around the world.

What to do about farm emissions is one of the main issues being

discussed this week and next, as the environment ministers from 187

nations gather in Poznan, Poland, for talks on a new treaty to

combat global warming. In releasing its latest figure on emissions

last month, United Nations climate officials cited agriculture and

transportation as the two sectors that remained most " problematic. "

" It's an area that's been largely overlooked, " said Dr. Rajendra

Pachauri, head of the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He says people should eat

less meat to control their carbon footprints. " We haven't come to

grips with agricultural emissions. "

The trillions of farm animals around the world generate 18 percent

of the emissions that are raising global temperatures, according to

United Nations estimates, more even than from cars, buses and

airplanes.

But unlike other industries, like cement making and power, which are

facing enormous political and regulatory pressure to get greener,

large-scale farming is just beginning to come under scrutiny as

policy makers, farmers and scientists cast about for solutions.

High-tech fixes include those like the project here, called " methane

capture, " as well as inventing feed that will make cows belch less

methane, which traps heat with 25 times the efficiency of carbon

dioxide. California is already working on a program to encourage

systems in pig and dairy farms like the one in Sterksel.

Other proposals include everything from persuading consumers to eat

less meat to slapping a " sin tax " on pork and beef. Next year,

Sweden will start labeling food products so that shoppers can look

at how much emission can be attributed to serving steak compared

with, say, chicken or turkey.

" Of course for the environment it's better to eat beans than beef,

but if you want to eat beef for New Year's, you'll know which beef

is best to buy, " said Claes Johansson, chief of sustainability at

the Swedish agricultural group Lantmannen.

But such fledgling proposals are part of a daunting game of catch-

up. In large developing countries like China, India and Brazil,

consumption of red meat has risen 33 percent in the last decade. It

is expected to double globally between 2000 and 2050. While the

global economic downturn may slow the globe's appetite for meat

momentarily, it is not likely to reverse a profound trend.

Of the more than 2,000 projects supported by the United

Nations' " green " financing system intended to curb emissions, only

98 are in agriculture. There is no standardized green labeling

system for meat, as there is for electric appliances and even fish.

Indeed, scientists are still trying to define the practical, low-

carbon version of a slab of bacon or a hamburger. Every step of

producing meat creates emissions.

Flatus and manure from animals contain not only methane, but also

nitrous oxide, an even more potent warming agent. And meat requires

energy for refrigeration as it moves from farm to market to home.

Producing meat in this ever-more crowded world requires creating new

pastures and planting more land for imported feeds, particularly

soy, instead of relying on local grazing. That has contributed to

the clearing of rain forests, particularly in South America, robbing

the world of crucial " carbon sinks, " the vast tracts of trees and

vegetation that absorb carbon dioxide.

" I'm not sure that the system we have for livestock can be

sustainable, " said Dr. Pachauri of the United Nations. A sober

scientist, he suggests that " the most attractive " near-term solution

is for everyone simply to " reduce meat consumption, " a change he

says would have more effect than switching to a hybrid car.

The Lancet medical journal and groups like the Food Ethics Council

in Britain have supported his suggestion to eat less red meat to

control global emissions, noting that Westerners eat more meat than

is healthy anyway.

Producing a pound of beef creates 11 times as much greenhouse gas

emission as a pound of chicken and 100 times more than a pound of

carrots, according to Lantmannen, the Swedish group.

But any suggestion to eat less meat may run into resistance in a

world with more carnivores and a booming global livestock industry.

Meat producers have taken issue with the United Nations' estimate of

livestock-related emissions, saying the figure is inflated because

it includes the deforestation in the Amazon, a phenomenon that the

Brazilian producers say might have occurred anyway.

United Nations scientists defend their accounting. With so much

demand for meat, " you do slash rain forest, " said Pierre Gerber, a

senior official at the United Nations Food and Agriculture

Organization. Soy cultivation has doubled in Brazil during the past

decade, and more than half is used for animal feed.

Laurence Wrixon, executive director of the International Meat

Secretariat, said that his members were working with the Food and

Agriculture Organization to reduce emissions but that the main

problem was fast-rising consumption in developing countries. " So

whether you like it or not, there's going to be rising demand for

meat, and our job is to make it as sustainable as possible, " he

said.

Estimates of emissions from agriculture as a percentage of all

emissions vary widely from country to country, but they are clearly

over 50 percent in big agricultural and meat-producing countries

like Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.

In the United States, agriculture accounted for just 7.4 percent of

greenhouse gas emissions in 2006, according to the Environmental

Protection Agency.

The percentage was lower because the United States produces

extraordinarily high levels of emissions in other areas, like

transportation and landfills, compared with other nations. The

figure also did not include fuel burning and land-use changes.

Wealthy, environmentally conscious countries with large livestock

sectors — the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and New Zealand — have

started experimenting with solutions.

In Denmark, by law, farmers now inject manure under the soil instead

of laying it on top of the fields, a process that enhances its

fertilizing effect, reduces odors and also prevents emissions from

escaping. By contrast, in many parts of the developing world, manure

is left in open pools and lathered on fields.

Others suggest including agriculture emissions in carbon cap-and-

trade systems, which currently focus on heavy industries like cement

making and power generation. Farms that produce more than their pre-

set limit of emissions would have to buy permits from greener

colleagues to pollute.

New Zealand recently announced that it would include agriculture in

its new emissions trading scheme by 2013. To that end, the

government is spending tens of millions of dollars financing

research and projects like breeding cows that produce less gas and

inventing feed that will make cows belch less methane, said Philip

Gurnsey of the Environment Ministry.

At the electricity-from-manure project here in Sterksel, the refuse

from thousands of pigs is combined with local waste materials

(outdated carrot juice and crumbs from a cookie factory), and pumped

into warmed tanks called digesters. There, resident bacteria release

the natural gas within, which is burned to generate heat and

electricity.

The farm uses 25 percent of the electricity, and the rest is sold to

a local power provider. The leftover mineral slurry is an ideal

fertilizer that reduces the use of chemical fertilizers, whose

production releases a heavy dose of carbon dioxide.

For this farm the scheme has provided a substantial payback: By

reducing its emissions, it has been able to sell carbon credits on

European markets. It makes money by selling electricity. It gets

free fertilizer.

And, in a small country where farmers are required to have manure

trucked away, it saves $190,000 annually in disposal fees. John

Horrevorts, experiment coordinator, whose family has long raised

swine, said that dozens of such farms had been set up in the

Netherlands, though cost still makes it impractical for small

piggeries. Indeed, one question that troubles green farmers is

whether consumers will pay more for their sustainable meat.

" In the U.K., supermarkets are sometimes asking about green, but

there's no global system yet, " said Bent Claudi Lassen, chairman of

the Danish Bacon and Meat Council, which supports green

production. " We're worried that other countries not producing in a

green way, like Brazil, could undercut us on price. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/science/earth/04meat.html?th & emc=th