UC Davis (University of California, Davis) Professor Frank Mitloehner dismisses the claims that livestock is bad for the planet, says ruminants in fact enhance global food production and sequester carbon.
Climate activists insist that people need to drastically reduce their consumption of meat, especially beef if there is to be any hope of rescuing our climate.
Producing beef consumes huge quantities of freshwater, takes up great areas of land that could otherwise be used for growing vegetables, and leads to massive emissions of methane – a powerful greenhouse gas that is helping destabilize our climate.
The great benefits of livestock
But Frank Mitloehner, Professor of Animal Science Department at the University of California-Davis, disagrees with the alarmist claims made about cows and explains why in the following video:
The first big misconception, Mitloehner says, is the belief that 70% of agricultural land is being used by livestock and thus crowds out the vegetable and plant-based food production. “Why not use it to grow plants directly?” Because it isn’t feasible Mitloehner explains.
Using a sheet of paper, Mitloehner demonstrates how much land is used globally for agriculture: one-third of the Earth’s land surface, of which two-thirds are called “marginal land”, land that is not suitable for growing crops and is thus best used for ruminant livestock to graze on.
Ruminants produce food on land that can’t grow crops
The advantage is that ruminants are able to convert the plants that are non-edible by humans, and thus “convert them into animal-source food,” says Mitloehner. “Without ruminant animals, we could not make use of that amount of agricultural land.”
In other words, crops cannot be grown on marginal land, but livestock can graze on it and thus produce food for us.
Ruminants important in fertilizing arable land
The remaining one-third of the agricultural land is called “arable land”, which is land that is suitable for growing crops. This is less than 3% of the Earth’s total surface.
Mitloehner reminds us that the arable land needs to be fertilized, and that half of this fertilizer is organic manure coming from the ruminants on the marginal land.
Keeping livestock “precisely what needs to be done”
“If we were to forgo animal agriculture altogether, then it would effectively mean that we would throw away 70% of all agricultural land and we would have to replace all the organic fertilizer that goes on this land with chemical fertilizers, which are very carbon-intensive in their production,” says Mitloehner.
Keeping livestock on marginal land “is precisely what needs to be done,” he says.
Methane overstated by a factor of 4!
Mitloehner is not alone in contradicting claims that cows have a huge impact on climate change.
Leading climate scientist, Myles Allen “believes the effect of cattle on climate change has been overstated,” reports The Vancouver Sun here.
“The traditional way of accounting for methane emissions from cows overstates the impact of a steady herd by a factor of four,” says Allen.
Read more at No Tricks Zone
The fact that Livestock have been on Earth for Eons but its only now according to some screwballs their causing Global Warming/Climate Change and we all must go Vegan Yes this whole thing is about changing the way we live but here is someone who comes up with the facts
If they are worried about not having enough land for food production, stop burning plant-based ethanol in gasoline. There. Now you have lots of farm land back. Plenty of food for everyone.
Arable land, the total of which the Earth is blessed with is not infinite, requires fertiliser.
This fertiliser is either natural, such as manures or blood and bone, or it is synthetic. The latter is heavily dependent on the fossil fuel industry.
If we follow the activists’ demands and destroy livestock agriculture, there goes the manure possibility. If we follow the activists’ demands and destroy the fossil fuel industry, there goes the synthetic fertiliser supply.
That leaves growing plants, such as legumes or algae for fertiliser. This would require an extremely large area of the surface of the Earth to be dedicated to this end. Add in the lost land to be swallowed up by biofuels, solar ‘farms’ and wind ‘farms’ and there’d be precious little chance of feeding eight billion vegans without a second Earth with diesel farm machinery. Which we won’t have. So make that three hand-tilled Earths, for we can’t go back to horse power, as that goes against the activists’ idea of animal rights. That’s three Earths with little conservation value, to be precise, for therein lies another competing but non-negotiable demand of activists – conservation by neglect, that magically doesn’t have to be accounted for in their grandiose scheme, just like all the other ones, because they’re not those at fault. Or so they seem to think.
Ideas such as that cattle burps kill the planet, but those of the millions of wild water buffalo, bison and wildebeest do not, are the musings of those with no idea of agriculture, no common sense or, frequently, both. To gild these mad musings with the science of fools’ gold is to do the planet a real injustice.
Want to really kill the planet? Throw out what works for what doesn’t work.
It takes far more land to grow Organic then it dose Conventional the same way and that leaves little room for Wildlife