Just in time for Earth Day, April 22, European scientists released a groundbreaking report linking meat consumption to nitrogen pollution. Nitrogen pollution? What on earth is nitrogen pollution?
Nitrogen is commonly used to fertilize crops. Between 70 and 80 percent of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, including nitrous oxide, comes from the production and use of nitrogen fertilizers, which cause nitrogen pollution.
So there's one more form of pollution -- big deal, right? Sadly, this one is a very big deal. The Telegraph of London explains, "the ground-breaking European Nitrogen Assessment by more than 200 scientists from 21 countries concludes that nitrogen pollution poses an even greater threat to humankind than carbon."
Honestly, I didn't think anything other than nuclear meltdown posed more of a threat to humankind than carbon. But sure enough: "[Nitrogen] leaks into the surrounding environment rather than feeding plants. This causes algae slimes to grow in water and on trees, suffocating wildlife and disturbing delicate ecosystems." As if all that weren't bad enough, nitrous oxide is about 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to causing climate change.
While this study focused on Europe, the results are even more relevant in the U.S., where farmers rely heavily on nitrogen-based fertilizers. According to Grist senior food and agriculture writer Tom Philpott, the U.S. burns more nitrogen fertilizer per capita than any other country.
The solution is simple really. Because more than half of the world's crops are grown to feed farmed animals -- and because animal manure contains nitrogen -- cutting down on our consumption of chickens, pigs, and other farmed animals will significantly reduce nitrogen pollution. Dr. Mark Sutton, a British scientist, says people can control the problem simply by eating less meat. He and the other scientists involved in the nitrogen assessment study have pledged to be "demitarians," or to eat half as much meat as they do now.
"It is about cutting down the amount from an environmental perspective," Dr. Sutton says. When you factor in climate change and the other environmental problems that I wrote about in my blog about taxing meat, you'll see why it's wise to go meatless on Mondays, on Earth Day, and on every other day of the year.
And when you look at things from the perspective of animals or your own health, as well as from an environmental one, you'll see that it only makes sense to stop eating meat, eggs, and dairy products entirely.
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First, more than 95% of all meat in the U.S. comes from CAFOs, including more than 99 percent of pork, chicken, and eggs. The focus on this ideal that is largely hypothetical for most people is a distraction.
Second, grass-fed beef is not environmentally (much) better than CAFO beef. In fact, World Bank environmental economist Robert Goodland has found that grass fed beef actually produces three times the greenhouse gases of CAFO beef (which is already a massive producer of greenhouse gases).
As environmental scientist Hanna Tuomisto from the Zoology Department at the University of Oxford puts it, “Generally, the GHG emissions from grass-fed cattle are not lower compared to feedlot cattle. The methane emissions from grass-fed animals are higher than from feedlot animals. Also, the productivity of grass-fed animals is lower, and therefore, the environmental impacts are higher when the impacts are allocated per unit of product. From the land use point of view, the benefit of grass-fed animals is that they can use land that is not suitable for production of crops directly for human nutrition. However, without livestock production those areas could be converted to forests that sequester carbon.â€
In addition to the fact that meat consumption entails the consumption of animals’ corpses, which causes unnecessary suffering and death, it’s also anti-environmental, as discussed above.
Cheers,
Bruce
This question is extremely important. If Bruce doesn't have an answer, he certainly should not be suggesting, as he has been, that we put an end to every major form of sustainable agriculture, which require animals.
Saying that if we all become vegans, vegan technology will magically find a currently unknown solution in the future, so we should just put n end to every major form of sustainable agriculture and trust in the power of veganism, which has been Bruce's previous argument, is not a legitimate argument by any stretch of the imagination.
If Bruce can't answer this question, he invalidates his entire agenda. Of course, whichever answer he gives, switching to all chemical industrial agriculture, or replacing the entire world's agricultural systems with veganic gardening, leaves him with no sturdy ground to stand on.
The UN's most recent report on agriculture found that biodiverse farming with animals is the only way to feed the poorest people in the world, because they cannot afford expensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides (let alone $9 veganic tomatoes!) and that it is the only way to effectively control pollution.
Of course, my (overt) primary agenda focuses on the immorality of abusing and killing animals unnecessarily; the environmental argument dovetails nicely, of course.
You attribute multiple arguments to me that I don’t believe I ever made.
Cheers,
Bruce
When grass based(and all beef production is actually grass based), beef production is one of the most sustainable farming practices on the planet, you can eat beef with pride, knowing most of the calories are coming from feed people could not consume, grown on land that could grow nothing but grass.
You know as well as anyone that: 1) all those cattle produce massive amounts of global warming gases; 2) very few of those cattle are raised exclusively on grass; and 3) the land could be used to grow plants that would act as a carbon sink. Sorry, my friend, but there is no one without a vested interest who agrees with you that cattle production is environmentally friendly!
Cheers,
Bruce
I would also like to know your understanding of crop production, and which crops consumed by humans that do not require nitrogen to grow. I think your list will be very short. Given we will still be consuming foods that require nitrogen, but have no livestock operations for manure(also generally a good source of phosphorus) I guess you will be advocating for the increased use of commercial fertilizer?
Bruce, you like to quote one link or another, but do so with what appears to be no practical knowledge of either crop or livestock farming. Whether you are a vegan or an omnivore, you still have to eat, and doing that requires modern farming practices, unless we all go back to subsistence farming.
I agree with you entirely that “Whether you are a vegan or an omnivore, you still have to eat, and doing that requires modern farming practices…†My point is: We don’t have to eat animals, and as you know, eating animals supports vastly more pollution (including global warming gases) than eating plants directly. It’s a pretty simple argument, and it requires rather a lot of obfuscation to miss it.
Cheers,
Bruce
Other ways of nourishing ourselves and playing with and enjoying food are being constantly unearthed. Will time, alternative pathways, and the critical will to do so help us reduce this core element in our species' social contributions to ecological destruction?
I'd say we can go vegan today, but only when we will going vegan en masse FOR OUR ENTIRE SPECIES - in the tradition of Al Gore who (though he hasn't yet seen the light, appreciates our epochal moment and asks us to make decisions AS a species.
We humans have already done this destructively - we have made destructive decisions as a species, but these decisions have crept up upon us and we have capitulated to them by default. We can go vegan (as Huffington herself reportedly has) and go further in educating our peers and community - starting first with friends - enabling their own discoveries and decisions on their own terms, through calm, comfortable exploration of associated issues.
Many people, when they are wrong, resort to disparaging those who disagree with them; that appears, to me, to be what you're doing here.
Cheers,
Bruce
Please try reading material from other sources than those promoting the vegan lifestyle to truly understand the implications for the environment (and by extension, animals) and many of the world's population if the world were covered in crops.
It isn't pretty.
Cheers,
Bruce
I am delighted to provide a space for anti-CAFO folks to talk with one another!
:-)
Bruce
When you factor in climate change and the other environmental problems that I wrote about in my blog about taxing meat, you'll see why it's wise to go meatless on Mondays, on Earth Day, and on every other day of the year.
And when you look at things from the perspective of animals or your own health, as well as from an environmental one, you'll see that it only makes sense to stop eating meat, eggs, and dairy products entirely.
We are supposed to eliminate a source of food (meat) in favor of plants because using manure and fertilizer causes nitrogen pollution.
So, we are supposed to stop using manure (that releases nitrogen slowly) in favor of artificially manufactured fertilizer (that release nitrogen more quickly), require fossil fuels to make and which need potassium and phosphorus added that are mined and running low (to the point where human urine is, dare I say, tinkered with to use because of its phosphorus content).
In other words, we are supposed to conclude it is advantageous to interrupt a natural cycle and use all parts of the cycle efficiently (eating meat and using the manure as fertilizer) in favor of an inefficient polluting artificial cycle (vegan plus artificial fertilizer).
Who are these people?
Plus that, we would not be growing any fewer crops since we would need to replace the meat no longer available as food, animals eat things we cannot and convert it to food we can eat, sometimes in places plants will not grow and to top it off, these people are promoting GMO to develop plants that absorb nitrogen from the air.
Illogical. Inefficient. No less pollution.
If they want to save the earth, they should be looking at really unnecessary agriculture such as growing food for ethanol.
You know the arguments against what you say here, so I won't rehash, except to point out that if your interest were in preserving the environment, you wouldn't be giving succor to the current system--which is what posts like this do.
Cheers,
Bruce
The facts are that artificial fertilizers used exclusively not only wreak havoc on the environment, they are not infinite by any means. Phosphorus mines are running low as are the fossil fuels used to create artificial fertilizers. Without manure, sooner or later, we are sunk.
Animals are primarily fed silage from grain crops, what is left over after we process the material for our needs. I hardly think we will stop pressing soy for oil if everyone stops eating meat. If people do not eat meat, they will need greater amounts of plant material. Do you deny this? If less acreage is not planted, the whole point of this "study" is meaningless.
The conclusions from the UN have been criticized soundly for their methodology and the IPCC recommendations are based on this faulty study.
I have been involved in working on environmental projects for over 25 years. I am not unfamiliar with science or studies. Because of the cost of purchasing pasture raised meats our meat consumption is very moderate. I do not have a vested interest in factory farming and work to eliminate it.
But I do know that a family could raise their own food on a relatively small patch with animals included but be hard pressed to do so without including meat in their diet.
Cheers,
Bruce
In addition, if you want to talk about calories and nutrients, if we all quit eating meat and dairy, we would need to replace those calories and nutrients with something else. To me, that means we would have to grow even more monocrops like corn, soy, wheat and rice. It would probably be more than is utilized by by animals right now, because we can't eat the corn husks and stalks and soy stalks and leaves and those kinds of things, so all that is waste if only humans are eating it. Plus, plants are not very good sources of protein and many nutrients aren't available at all, so it would take an enormous amount of plant food and synthetic supplements to even approach the nutrition people get from meat and dairy, and it would still be incomplete.
1. Most of the "grains" fed to livestock are the byproducts of ethanol, cooking oil and corn syrup production. These crops would be grown with or without livestock.
2. While dairy animals need some grains, most meat animals can be raised and finished on pasture and hay.
3. In my opinion, it makes more sense to use livestock that convert grass into fertilizer instead of using the Haber-Bosch method to convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia. The Haber-Bosch method requires the use of coal or natural gas... and lots of it... to make fertilizer. http://www.scienceinformer.com/Haber-Bosch-Process.html
4. Here in the United States, the nitrogen run-off from farms is second to the run-off from golf courses and lawn care products (Tru Green).
It was a nail biting few months. Would we loose our Organic certification because of this or not? The State must have realized that forcing the decertification of 1,000's of Organic farmers over this would be very bad for PR and business, so it ended up being brushed under the rug.
I buy 100% animal manure compost now. Got 60 tons being spread next week.
fanned & faved
I wonder if Dr. Mark Sutton took into consideration that most beef, sheep, and goats spend 85% of their lives on a mostly pastured, grain free diet, before being finished? His being British would lead me to believe that he should know exactly how sheep utilize millions of acres of land in the British Commonwealth that is not profitable for intensive grain & vegetable production, and they do it with no addition to the Nitrogen 'problem'. Someone really should explain that to him. Maybe he should talk to Prince Charles, a master Organic sheep breeder and mutton producer?
But I'm left scratching my head a bit. Are you advocating for eliminating animal based Nitrogen sources in favor of fossil fuel based sources? Are you saying that we should SUPPORT chemical based farming?
After all, if food is not grown with animal based fertilizers, then it must be grown with chem based.
Do you have a solution to this dilemma that professional farmers haven't stumbled upon yet ?
Thanks for your unfailing interest in my posts!
Bruce
Try it. You'll soon look back and wonder what took you so long.
Thanks for your comment!
Bruce
Also hilarious was Bruce's outlandishly ironic attempt to demonize manure to people who don't know anything about agriculture or nitrogen runoff. There are two alternatives in commercial agriculture: animal inputs such as manure, or toxic and completely unsustainable chemical fertilizers! To get rid of animals in agriculture, as Bruce advocates, would be an environmental nightmare of unimaginable proportions.
Another important issue here is the completely false, ignorant notion that farmers would just stop using their land and let it go fallow if they did not grow grains for animal feed and vegetable oil. That has little basis in reality. If the side products from growing corn and soy were not used for animal feed, farmers would have to use the crops for something else, or grow something different on the land. Either way, eating less meat would have extremely little effect on how many crops are grown in the US.
Again, since conventional plant ag pumps nitrogen into the environment, organic plant ag, which relies on manure, which is vastly more environmentally friendly and even beneficial if managed correctly, is the only environmentally responsible alternative. And if you want to cause far less nitrogen pollution, eat sustainable meat.
I plan to... in about 15 minutes!