As More Eat Meat, a Bid to Cut Emissions

[Guest guest]

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/science/earth/04meat.html]

 

December 4, 2008

As More Eat Meat, a Bid to Cut Emissions

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

 

 

[Photo caption: " The United Nations expects beef and pork consumption to

double between 2000 and 2050. "

The photo:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/12/04/world/meat600.jpg]

 

 

STERKSEL, the Netherlands -- The cows and pigs dotting these flat green

plains in the southern Netherlands create a bucolic landscape. But

looked at through the lens of greenhouse gas accounting, they are living

smokestacks, spewing methane emissions into the air.

 

That is why a group of farmers-turned-environmentalists here at a smelly

but impeccably clean research farm have a new take on making a silk

purse from a sow's ear: They cook manure from their 3,000 pigs to

capture the methane trapped within it, and then use the gas to make

electricity for the local power grid.

 

[Graphic entitled " Meat Consumption and CO2 Emissions " :

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/12/04/world/meatgraphFull.jpg]

 

Rising in the fields of the environmentally conscious Netherlands, the

Sterksel project is a rare example of fledgling efforts to mitigate the

heavy emissions from livestock. But much more needs to be done,

scientists say, as more and more people are eating more meat around the

world.

 

What to do about farm emissions is one of the main issues being

discussed this week and next, as the environment ministers from 187

nations gather in Poznan, Poland, for talks on a new treaty to combat

global warming. In releasing its latest figure on emissions last month,

United Nations climate officials cited agriculture and transportation as

the two sectors that remained most " problematic. "

 

" It's an area that's been largely overlooked, " said Dr. Rajendra

Pachauri, head of the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He says people should eat

less meat to control their carbon footprints. " We haven't come to grips

with agricultural emissions. "

 

The trillions of farm animals around the world generate 18 percent of

the emissions that are raising global temperatures, according to United

Nations estimates, more even than from cars, buses and airplanes.

 

But unlike other industries, like cement making and power, which are

facing enormous political and regulatory pressure to get greener,

large-scale farming is just beginning to come under scrutiny as policy

makers, farmers and scientists cast about for solutions.

 

High-tech fixes include those like the project here, called " methane

capture, " as well as inventing feed that will make cows belch less

methane, which traps heat with 25 times the efficiency of carbon

dioxide. California is already working on a program to encourage systems

in pig and dairy farms like the one in Sterksel.

 

Other proposals include everything from persuading consumers to eat less

meat to slapping a " sin tax " on pork and beef. Next year, Sweden will

start labeling food products so that shoppers can look at how much

emission can be attributed to serving steak compared with, say, chicken

or turkey.

 

" Of course for the environment it's better to eat beans than beef, but

if you want to eat beef for New Year's, you'll know which beef is best

to buy, " said Claes Johansson, chief of sustainability at the Swedish

agricultural group Lantmannen.

 

But such fledgling proposals are part of a daunting game of catch-up. In

large developing countries like China, India and Brazil, consumption of

red meat has risen 33 percent in the last decade. It is expected to

double globally between 2000 and 2050. While the global economic

downturn may slow the globe's appetite for meat momentarily, it is not

likely to reverse a profound trend.

 

Of the more than 2,000 projects supported by the United Nations' " green "

financing system intended to curb emissions, only 98 are in agriculture.

There is no standardized green labeling system for meat, as there is for

electric appliances and even fish.

 

Indeed, scientists are still trying to define the practical, low-carbon

version of a slab of bacon or a hamburger. Every step of producing meat

creates emissions.

 

Flatus and manure from animals contain not only methane, but also

nitrous oxide, an even more potent warming agent. And meat requires

energy for refrigeration as it moves from farm to market to home.

 

Producing meat in this ever-more crowded world requires creating new

pastures and planting more land for imported feeds, particularly soy,

instead of relying on local grazing. That has contributed to the

clearing of rain forests, particularly in South America, robbing the

world of crucial " carbon sinks, " the vast tracts of trees and vegetation

that absorb carbon dioxide.

 

" I'm not sure that the system we have for livestock can be sustainable, "

said Dr. Pachauri of the United Nations. A sober scientist, he suggests

that " the most attractive " near-term solution is for everyone simply to

" reduce meat consumption, " a change he says would have more effect than

switching to a hybrid car.

 

The Lancet medical journal and groups like the Food Ethics Council in

Britain have supported his suggestion to eat less red meat to control

global emissions, noting that Westerners eat more meat than is healthy

anyway.

 

Producing a pound of beef creates 11 times as much greenhouse gas

emission as a pound of chicken and 100 times more than a pound of

carrots, according to Lantmannen, the Swedish group.

 

But any suggestion to eat less meat may run into resistance in a world

with more carnivores and a booming global livestock industry. Meat

producers have taken issue with the United Nations' estimate of

livestock-related emissions, saying the figure is inflated because it

includes the deforestation in the Amazon, a phenomenon that the

Brazilian producers say might have occurred anyway.

 

United Nations scientists defend their accounting. With so much demand

for meat, " you do slash rain forest, " said Pierre Gerber, a senior

official at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Soy

cultivation has doubled in Brazil during the past decade, and more than

half is used for animal feed.

 

Laurence Wrixon, executive director of the International Meat

Secretariat, said that his members were working with the Food and

Agriculture Organization to reduce emissions but that the main problem

was fast-rising consumption in developing countries. " So whether you

like it or not, there's going to be rising demand for meat, and our job

is to make it as sustainable as possible, " he said.

 

Estimates of emissions from agriculture as a percentage of all emissions

vary widely from country to country, but they are clearly over 50

percent in big agricultural and meat-producing countries like Brazil,

Australia and New Zealand.

 

In the United States, agriculture accounted for just 7.4 percent of

greenhouse gas emissions in 2006, according to the Environmental

Protection Agency.

 

The percentage was lower because the United States produces

extraordinarily high levels of emissions in other areas, like

transportation and landfills, compared with other nations. The figure

also did not include fuel burning and land-use changes.

 

Wealthy, environmentally conscious countries with large livestock

sectors -- the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and New Zealand -- have

started experimenting with solutions.

 

In Denmark, by law, farmers now inject manure under the soil instead of

laying it on top of the fields, a process that enhances its fertilizing

effect, reduces odors and also prevents emissions from escaping. By

contrast, in many parts of the developing world, manure is left in open

pools and lathered on fields.

 

Others suggest including agriculture emissions in carbon cap-and-trade

systems, which currently focus on heavy industries like cement making

and power generation. Farms that produce more than their pre-set limit

of emissions would have to buy permits from greener colleagues to

pollute.

 

New Zealand recently announced that it would include agriculture in its

new emissions trading scheme by 2013. To that end, the government is

spending tens of millions of dollars financing research and projects

like breeding cows that produce less gas and inventing feed that will

make cows belch less methane, said Philip Gurnsey of the Environment

Ministry.

 

At the electricity-from-manure project here in Sterksel, the refuse from

thousands of pigs is combined with local waste materials (outdated

carrot juice and crumbs from a cookie factory), and pumped into warmed

tanks called digesters. There, resident bacteria release the natural gas

within, which is burned to generate heat and electricity.

 

The farm uses 25 percent of the electricity, and the rest is sold to a

local power provider. The leftover mineral slurry is an ideal fertilizer

that reduces the use of chemical fertilizers, whose production releases

a heavy dose of carbon dioxide.

 

For this farm the scheme has provided a substantial payback: By reducing

its emissions, it has been able to sell carbon credits on European

markets. It makes money by selling electricity. It gets free fertilizer.

 

 

And, in a small country where farmers are required to have manure

trucked away, it saves $190,000 annually in disposal fees. John

Horrevorts, experiment coordinator, whose family has long raised swine,

said that dozens of such farms had been set up in the Netherlands,

though cost still makes it impractical for small piggeries. Indeed, one

question that troubles green farmers is whether consumers will pay more

for their sustainable meat.

 

" In the U.K., supermarkets are sometimes asking about green, but there's

no global system yet, " said Bent Claudi Lassen, chairman of the Danish

Bacon and Meat Council, which supports green production. " We're worried

that other countries not producing in a green way, like Brazil, could

undercut us on price. "

 

 

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company