Sustainable Farming in Arizona: Debate Over Livestock Continues to be an Ongoing Challenge
By Paul Schwennesen, Southern Arizona Rancher and Young Farmer & Rancher
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations released a report back in 2006 stating that livestock contribute over 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, a larger impact than the world’s entire transportation sector. Pretty damning stuff. In fact, it’s the sort of “fact” that led to Sir Paul McCartney to call for “Meatless Mondays” and for a European campaign to equate “less meat” with “less heat.” This kind of collective lunacy has repercussions, and it’s important to do some fact checking.
Dr. Frank Mitloehner (University of California) questioned the report’s methodology, noting that the report wrapped all life-cycle costs (feed, processing, transportation, etc.) into livestock’s carbon hoof-print. Sorry? footprint. They did not, however, use the same methodology for transportation, as they chose only to account for the carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning. To be accurate, they ought to have accounted for the carbon emissions in the extraction and smelting of vehicle metal, the hydrocarbons mined to make plastic components, and probably the cumulative respiration rate of impatient drivers trying to register their gas-guzzlers at the local MVD.
Co-author of the original UN study, Pierre Gerber, told BBC News that he accepted Dr. Mitloehner's criticism and stated, “I must say honestly that he has a point - we factored in everything for meat emissions, and we didn't do the same thing with transport, we just used the figure from the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change].”
So the swipe at livestock might have been a little premature and vicious, but I guess those of us in the livestock industry, in the 400 generations since Cain, should be getting used to it by now.
I’m no climatologist. I can barely out-predict the National Weather Service. I’m not sure what’s really going on in the atmosphere in Washington D.C., let alone a mile above my head. I do know that when it comes to concerns over “global climate change,” the worst-case projections lack scale or perspective and are really rather benign in an historical sense. Give me Al Gore’s apocalyptic future over a repeat of the Pleistocene any day. I also know that of all greenhouse gases, water vapor contributes three to four times the warming effect of atmospheric carbon. Better think twice about driving that steam belching hydrogen hatchback.
Shrill predictions of impending doom always make me wary because they invariably come with demands for sacrifice. Mythology is nothing without victims, and the world is getting short on virgins. It may be one thing if the UN wants you to eat fewer Big Macs, and quite another when they tell you that you have reached your child quota. There is an underlying thread in the climate-change message: that “experts” ought to determine how best to allocate resources and that governments should regulate activities in the interest of the “greater good.” Be careful. Time and time again the world has had to prove to itself that centralized decision-making leads to poorer quality of life and environments. I feel certain that the National Socialists, the Politburo, and the People’s Party were every bit as convinced of the virtue of their “recommendations” as the IPCC, the UN, and Worldwatch.
Editor’s Note: Paul Schwennesen manages Double Check Ranch in southern Arizona (Pima County) with his wife, Sarah. After graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy and separating as a captain, he returned to the family ranch to raise and market grass-fed beef. He received a master’s degree in government from Harvard University in 2006 ? something that impresses the livestock not at all.
Special note: When governments dictate what Arizona farmers and ranchers can and can't do (the global farming community at large) then it becomes a food security issue; often putting us at risk. Plus, some contend that when the attack is on animal agriculture in Arizona and throughout the United States, the hidden agenda relates to Animal rights in Arizona and throughout America.
