Can dairy farming ever be sustainable?
bbc.com
bbc.com
I’d have loved to hear about feed additives under development to curb emissions, but the condescension throughout aligns with the general tone of pity for an industry presumed terminal.
I know farming will create some to run the machinery and transport the meant and milk but isn't it a closed loop for the cattle? They eat grass for energy. They use that energy and create CO2. But the grass had to pull the same amount of CO2 out of the air to store that energy right?
Is it that the other gases are more harmful or is there something I'm missing?
The other issue is that grassland absorbs less CO2 than forests, and lots of forests have been cut down in favor grassland suitable for grazing animals.
Cows don't have little nuclear fusion reactors in their rumens, producing carbon from other elements, nor do they eat fossil fuels.
Every atom of carbon "emitted" by a cow was taken from the atmosphere by a plant, likely a year ago at most. Now, methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, but it breaks down over time. The cycle can be perfectly "sustainable".
Much of the land in the United States that is currently occupied in grazing cattle was formerly inhabited by vast herds of American bison, an animal so genetically similar to domestic cattle that they can actually interbreed, yet the methane emissions from the bison didn't bring on a global climate crisis. Why not?
For 2, we “turn” cows faster by killing them to eat them (rather than letting nature sort it out). So that 2x is then multiplied by some factor
For 3, our consumption habits have exported the cow to new environments where bison were not native (like Brazil).
(citation needed)
> For 2, we “turn” cows faster by killing them to eat them (rather than letting nature sort it out). So that 2x is then multiplied by some factor
Neither the absolute number nor the turnover rate matter. Only the raw amount of biomass. The turnover rate has nothing to do with the fact that essentially all the carbon emitted by the cow was recently removed from the atmosphere by a plant, making the whole process carbon-neutral.
> For 3, our consumption habits have exported the cow to new environments where bison were not native (like Brazil).
I limited my observation to the United States for a reason, but okay, I'll bite. How does a cow being "in Brazil" change the fact that any carbon it emits was almost certainly removed from the atmosphere by a plant within the last year, making the cow's digestion effectively carbon-neutral?
About 95mn head of cattle in the US. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/...
Why would I make up such a specific number?
Most US beef and dairy cows also eat hay / grain that's been grown commercially (using a lot of energy to plant, fertilize, harvest & transport). It's cute to think cows just wander around grassy fields eating naturally occurring 'carbon neutral' grasses, but there's a reason one sees so many bales of hay at dairy farms.
And a cow being 'in Brazil' means it's standing where the rainforest used to be.
That's not answering my question.
Any atom of carbon emitted by a cow was almost certainly removed from the atmosphere by a plant quite recently, yes?
So how is that not a carbon-neutral cycle?
We're talking about the specific claim that cow digestion, in and of itself, leads to increased carbon levels in the atmosphere. Clearly it does not, and cannot.
Talking about the rain forest is shifting the goalposts.
Note that North America has more forest land than it did a hundred years ago, largely because modern mechanized agriculture has dramatically increased the crop yield per acre, leading to marginal agricultural land being returned to forest cover.
The "slash-and-burn" agricultural methods that destroy the rain forest are largely a feature of the "low tech" "traditional" "organic" farming techniques that are beloved by environmentalists.
Bro, I'm answering your question as to why cows cause a global warming crisis and bison did not.
You're intentionally being obtuse on that point though, right? Like yeah, cows may be just like bison in a very very narrow frame of reference, but bison did not get their food trucked to them & they did not cut down trees to graze (both of which are things cows require now).
That's why. Period.
EDIT: If you want to narrow your frame of reference even further & just talk about methane, then 1) It's not the main culprit so I guess we agree there. But again, Global Warming is a cumulative thing, so they fact that they product that methane AND require carbon emissions to exist is pretty bad. 2) Yeah, it's a crude estimate, that's why I almost doubled it to give you the benefit of the doubt.
I'm addressing the specific, and oft-repeated, claim that cow farts as such somehow magically put more carbon in the air than there was before.
Now, there may be other issues associated with cattle raising, but that is not, and has never been, my point.
Since you apparently do not dispute my main point, I think we're finished here.
P.S. After reading your reference on the pre-European number of bison more carefully, your claim of 30 million is not supported at all by the author. The previous estimates given in the paper range all over the place, up to 1 billion (!). The author is careful to point out that all of those numbers are more or less junk, and the only conclusion the author actually makes is that there were "likely" "tens of millions" of bison.
That does not match your claim of a hard 30 million.
And btw, what's your endgame here? Climate Change denialism? I hope not, b/c that's a real bummer.
Just as I said.
I'm not sure why that counts as "moving goalposts".
And my "endgame" here is to not doom billions of people in the Third World to starvation because modern agricultural methods offend the sensibilities of privileged white people living in an affluent society.
That number is just for the "western prairies", when in fact bison were found throughout the entire North American continent.
The author is also careful to point out that this number is, at best, a crude estimate.
The stable populations of both may have in fact been about half of their peak. And while that doesn’t absolve us of anything, it may mean when we are building a report card for our current progress, we may be setting the bar a little high, and could be directing some of that energy elsewhere.
I think this article reads pretty fair to the mindset of my friend's family too. My friend's family has been dairy farmers for generations, and their dad loves the hard work seemingly because it's turned into a part of his identity. They've started seeing the writing on the wall and have picked up other crops and animals to "diversify their portfolio" a little.
I've recently switched from cow's milk to almond milk for my cereal, and to an oat-milk based creamer for my coffee, and I don't miss "real" milk/cream at all.
My ancestors are rolling over in their graves though, as my grandfather and both my uncles were dairy farmers.
The glycemic index of most milk substitutes (oat,soy,almond) are equivalent or greater than a can of coke. Milk substitutes also tend to be really really high in vegetable oils that seem to at least have a troubling correlation with chronic disease.
The metrics used for the environmental impact of intensive animal husbandry tend too skew towards the worst case (obese cows on a grain fed diet in a feedlot). There are plenty of dairy farms raising cows with a more sustainable grass-based diet that doesn't release nearly as much methane (Think how gassey you'd be if the only thing you ate was ice-cream?)
I like supporting my local dairy farmers, more than I enjoy supporting some multi-national milk-substitute beverage company with a supply chain spanning the globe.
Glycemic Index - Are we talking about sweetened milk alternatives here? From what I have seen most alternatives come out the same or lower than dairy milk unless they have added sugar.
Vegetable Oil - I am sure alternatives contain more vegetable oils, but interested to know what you mean by "really really high". The opposing side is dairy milk containing saturated fat which has it's own implications.
Would love to see some studies if you have any handy.
Glycemic Index - not every gram of carbohydrate is made equal. You can have a drink with fewer grams of sugar but that still has a higher glycemic load. Lactose has a fairly low glycemic index which results in it often having a lower glycemic load of drinks sweetened with lower quantities of maltose/dextrose. In terms of scientific literature I think there are a bunch of well regarded studies on this topic (glycemic load and how it relates to health) since its a pretty key factor in diabetes.
Vegetable Oil - tbh I'm less sure of the science for this but reading https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/why-is-vegetable-oil-unhealt... gave me enough doubt to try to reduce my consumption.
I still occasionally use unsweetened coconut milk, since it has no added sugars and none of the more suspicious vegetable oils. But what I've found is that when you get rid of the sugar/vegetable oils none of the milk substitutes taste anything like milk.
That's true of oat and rice milk, but not of almond or soy. That's to be expected: the former two are made out of starchy grains, the latter two out of fatty nuts/pulses. Those are on a par with milk for glycemic index (~25).
The worst case ("obese cows on a grain fed diet in a feedlot") is also the common case: if you go to the grocery store and buy generic "milk", that's what you're going to get. Organic may be slightly better, though it's unclear. You can go out of your way to get more sustainably-produced milk, but you're going to pay at least twice as much for it.
That's a decent choice, though I'd be happier if it were easier to verify. (I don't trust the labeling of "grass fed milk", and locally-sourced milk that I can check myself is hard to come by.) The small comfort is that dairy cattle have to be treated relatively well, since they can't produce good milk if they're sick or abused.
I'd recommend checking if you can go tour a local dairy, I've found that any quality dairy will let you do that and you can judge for yourself about the welfare of the animals. You're gonna to pay more but the nutritional value of a gallon of milk at $8 vs $2 is still well worth it imo.
I'd also really recommend looking into the health impacts of vegetable oils. Most milk substitutes are, at their core, emulsified vegetable oils. I found that the trade-offs were higher glycemic load(oat/rice), increased vegetable oils(soy/almond) or something that tastes nothing like milk (unsweetened coconut milk).
(Lactose-free milk is getting better, though it's still too sweet; A2 milk (w/o the A1 proteins) is an interesting option for some people).
I get it, the cows aren't living their most self-actualized life, but I basically sit in a stall all day producing code and documentation, so while I can empathize with them, it doesn't mean I want to pay a bunch more so _they_ get to go outside all day while I'm still stuck here on the git treadmill.
I have had dairy-free versions of all of the foods above. Most are really good, though I have to admit that I don't care for the vegan cream cheeses that I've tried.
In general, I think Violife does the best job with imitation cheeses.
So the notion that "it would never happen" is a bit silly imo. I predict that the global dairy industry will be cut by half in 10 years.
I could have maybe let this go if you'd said "will have stagnant growth or have declining demand relative to the population", but cut in half? Where do you get such a grandiose proclamation from?
I wish we could bet money on that, because there's really no chance of this as long as the demand continues to exist. Where exactly do you think the demand is going to go?
As long as it exists, the industry will do what it can to ensure the product is inexpensive enough for us to buy; as long as it is inexpensive enough it will be the product of choice. The alternatives are not actually yet produced at sufficient scale to replace dairy, neither are they cheap enough, and there's no guarantee they're actually more sustainable at all (consider the long supply chain to get me some soy milk, vs the farm -> bottling plant -> grocery store pipeline that keeps the entire chain within a single city and its outlying agricultural areas in much of the first world).
Don't get me wrong - as someone who has become increasingly lactose intolerant as I age, I'm totally in favour of continued development of alternatives, but let's face it: it's not cheese you're eating, it's not milk you're drinking, and it never will be. You're fighting against thousands of years of co-evolving the dairy industry and our own bodies to be able to digest the bacteria in cheese and yogourt, no doubt helping the microbiome in ways we haven't begun to understand yet.
This whole discussion of this topic is veering into the “paper v. plastic” overthinking/overtalking discussions of the 1990s. It’s a non-trivial analysis to figure out the basic issues and their relative importance. Won’t be done here...
It has ~20% of the protein and fat content of regular whole milk, so at the very minimum it has to be 5x environmentally friendly.
In fact it is so nutritionally empty, that it is more fitting to compare it to slightly sugared water, and see if it beats that on environmental record.
I think more people drink milk purely out of habit/pleasure.
Basically feed them seaweed and try to manage the land in a way that sequesters CO2 on balance
https://extension.umn.edu/dairy-nutrition/ruminant-digestive...
[..]The rumen (on the left side of the animal) is the largest stomach compartment and consists of several sacs. It can hold 25 gallons or more of material depending on the size of the cow. Because of its size, the rumen acts as a storage or holding vat for feed. Aside from storage, the rumen is also a fermentation vat.[..]
we get milk because their stomachs are basically fermentation vats. if cows dont fart, they are not rumen. what are we doing?
https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/animal-health-literacy...
It's not sustainable, it's not ethical, heck, it's not even good for us. It's a pleasure/habit thing.
The alternatives have been getting a lot better and a lot more popular too. It won't be long till the dairy industry has to do something drastic [0].
The dairy farmers in this article try to portray a peaceful relationship between farmer and cow, yet 99% of dairy in the US is produced in factory farms quite different from idyllic pastures [2]. More like what we're seeing in China with multi-story pig farms [3].
I think economics, environment and consumer behavior could easily wipe out the dairy industry, except that it's an integral part of food/industrial production. You obvs don't have a cheese industry without dairy, but you also don't have a source of male cows for the veal industry, a source of bones and other parts for the myriad other uses like adhesives, filtration (bone char filtration makes sugar white [4]), chemicals, textiles, etc.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/4/19/8447883/milk-health-benefit [2] https://www.livekindly.co/99-animal-products-factory-farms/ [3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/18/a-12-sto... [4] https://www.journalofnaturalmedicine.com/sugar-companies-tha...
i will have to devote more time and attention to a longer proper answer that i feel obligated to provide. i hope to revisit this again once work ebbs.
If anytime you think of meat/dairy you think of mcdonalds style feedlot hellscapes, you're out of touch. Your oat/soy milks are coming from giant monocrop fields, loaded up on pesticides, fertilized with the poo scraped off the feedlots you hate.
I think its much more likely that dairy production becomes more sustainable than it gets replaced by even more intensive monocropping.