Bureaucracies have always amazed me for the ways in which while doing their mandated functions they manage to confuse the public and at times conflict with each other while representing the views and implementing the policies of their governing entities. Does the right hand ever know what the left hand is doing? I imagine the agricultural news reporting on these bureaucratic activities is as confusing to you as it is to me at times.
An example of this conflicting, confusing activity was recently reported in an obscure fashion by very few agricultural news outlets. You have heard the following statement or seen messages like it, I am sure. Critics like to report the news that what you and your cattle do every day is destroying the planet, ruining the atmosphere with the methane produced by those cows doing nothing else but spreading their evil emissions.
In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), composed of a group of United Nations scientists, has issued reports in the recent past blaming agriculture, and particularly animal agriculture, as major contributors to human-caused global warming. The reports usually say agriculture is responsible for about 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and beef and cattle production contributes 65% of those emissions. But, there are also reports that exaggerate those numbers significantly.
Of course, these reports also fail to mention positive conclusions like the American success story. Here, beef and cattle production contribute a mere 2% of these emissions while utilizing marginal arable land unsuitable for crops at least part of every bovine’s life. And no doubt you have read or heard the transportation sector exceeds 29% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. I do not mean to pick on transportation because this sector is also making great strides to reduce emissions. However, you would think the UN scientists would highlight examples of how to do things right rather than blanket criticize. They should do this because if we are at a critical time, then action rather than criticism is needed. This leads me to the point of this month’s remarks.
In March 2022, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) unanimously decreed 2026 would be the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP). Explicit in the announcement of this UN initiative was the acknowledgement that “healthy rangelands are vital for contributing to economic growth, resilient livelihoods and the sustainable development of pastoralism.”
Over half of the world’s surface (about 54%) are rangelands. And I need not remind this readership our livestock converts vegetation which cannot be utilized by humans into healthy, inexpensive, high-quality protein which helps to feed an increasingly hungry human population. It is estimated over 700 million people are suffering from hunger.
Indeed, farmers and ranchers the world over who are the stewards of these rangelands play a vital role in maintaining biodiversity, protecting watersheds and sequestering carbon to more than offset the small contribution their livestock make to greenhouse gas emissions. It is not an exaggeration to say rangelands sustained by pastoralism form the largest carbon sink on the planet. In fact, recent science has concluded that grass root systems are more important for carbon sequestration than healthy forests.
As the press release from the IYRP stated, “Pastoralism is a production system that requires little fossil fuel energy. It relies primarily on self-generating natural pastures…Thus, pastoralism can be a nature-friendly production system that optimizes the dynamic balance between production and sustainability under highly variable and changing conditions.” The stated goal of the IYRP is to put the rangeland point of view in a prominent role in policy debates regarding climate, poverty and hunger, biodiversity, and sustainable food systems around the world.
We come now to my, and perhaps, your confusion about where the United Nations really stands when it comes to assessing the contribution animal agriculture makes to a warming planet and the solutions the scientists of the world are seeking to this global warming dilemma.
On one hand, we have the erroneous claim by United Nations sponsored scientists animal agriculture is a major factor in climate change. Here is an example which leads one to question this assertion. At one point in time about 160 years ago it is estimated there were as many as 75 million bison in North America.
Bison are ruminants as are deer, sheep and goats and elk. Thus, there was a significant total number of wild ruminants emitting methane in the mid-19th century.
North America has a cattle population of around 90 million today and the numbers are declining. We can therefore conclude the methane emission today in North America is similar to where it was in the mid-19th century. What has changed since then? We humans have embarked on industrialization, not a large increase in animal methane emission.
Methane has an atmospheric life of around 10 years. Carbon dioxide exists in the atmosphere for many, many centuries. Thus, one cannot compare the ruminant methane number to carbon dioxide emitted by man-made activities without being accused of comparing apples to oranges.
On the other hand, we have the same United Nations sponsoring a group of scientists arguing for more emphasis on pastoralism to help feed a hungry world and sequester carbon to forestall rapid climate change. This necessarily means as many or more ruminants as are now on the earth to utilize those rangelands which we presume will be enhanced and made better by systematically and strategically managing the grazing of those rangelands. The model for such a system exists here in the United States because since the second world war American grazers have become increasingly scientific in their approach to utilizing these vast landscapes. Why aren’t the United Nations sponsored organizations crying doom and gloom advocating for methods proven to work?
I do not want to come across as a pessimist but sometimes I fear our future is controlled by people who have just enough knowledge and experience to get things very wrong.
Here is what I suggest. Keep doing what you are doing for the resource, for your livestock, for your ranches, and your families and that correct action will help light up the world of knowledge and the people who know nothing about what you do. The criticisms will eventually be ignored because they are not anchored in the truth.
I’ll see you soon.