Green Options

I was thinking of doing a post with a title like ‘In defense of cows’ or something along those lines.  This is not just because I’m a sort of carnivorous and contrarian guy (which I am), but because cows can actually do something that is objectively remarkable.  I know that lots of the readers on this blog are vegetarians or even vegans, and that is fine as a life-style choice for you. But no matter what your personal food choices are, it is worth thinking about what cows can do for the rest of us.

What Cows Do

One of the most abundant natural, organic chemicals in the world (cellulose), is something we humans can’t digest at all.  Cows are cool because they can eat cellulose and turn it into human-edible foods like milk and meat.  The reason that I switched the title of the post is that it isn’t actually the cows that should get the credit for this feat, at least not most of it.  Cows (and other ruminants like sheep, goats, bison, camels, llamas, yaks, water buffalos…) can only make this conversion because of the bacteria that they house in one of their stomachs.  In the whole world, there are only a few bacteria and a few fungi that have the capability of turning cellulose (the main structural polymer of all plants) back into the energy-rich, glucose sub-units of which it is made (bacteria also do that job for termites!).

I can relate to why many people have ethical issues with aspects of how beef or milk is produced today. But that does not, at least for me, mean that we should abandon the idea of harnessing the remarkable microbial process that has allowed ruminant animals to be such an important part of the human food supply in diverse cultures for millenia.  In fact I would like to see us refine not just the “animal wellness” aspect of this industry, but also its greenhouse gas issues.  

In November of last year, two writers working for the Soil Association (the major Organic organization in the UK) published a 212 page document titled: “Soil Carbon and Organic Farming:  A review of the evidence on the relationship between agriculture and soil carbon sequestration, and how organic farming can contribute to climate change mitigation and adaption.”   Yesterday I posted an “open letter” to the authors of this article on SCRIBD and also emailed it directly.  I pointed out how the massive conversion to Organic that they advocate would actually be a driver of climate change, not a solution.  I hope they will respond.

The Claim

The Soil Association authors made the case that because Organic farming methods have been shown to build soil organic matter, major expansion of Organic farming would be a great way to sequester lots of atmospheric carbon dioxide and thus reduce the risk of greenhouse gas-driven climate change.  This was essentially the same argument that was made in 2007 in a publication from the Rodale Institute titled,  “Regenerative Organic Farming: A Solution to Global Warming.”  In both of these cases, the claim to sequester large amounts of carbon in agricultural soils is based on repeatedly applying many tons/ha of compost to the fields.  

Cow farts are emerging as a major source of the greenhouse gas methane, but scientists in Australia may be on to a simple way to nip that in the bud. Preliminary studies are showing that feeding “algae cakes” to cows results in a significant reduction in their methane emissions.

As reported in The Australian, a team of researchers at James Cook University anticipates a sustainable quadruple whammy from the new bovine diet: algae absorbs more carbon dioxide than other plants, it can be grown as a natural water cleanser for fish farms, it can be harvested as a biofuel crop, and the leftover “cake” produces an anti-methane effect on cattle.

The newest iteration of the climate bill in congress has just been scored by the non partisan congressional budget office and, as for the two previous climate bills (Waxman and Boxer), finds that Kerry-Graham-Lieberman would save money.

Scientists in the Netherlands recently announced that they have grown meat in a laboratory for the first time.  Though no one has yet to taste this laboratory meat, there is speculation that it could be commercially viable, and on your dinner table within the next five years.

The process of creating artificial meat started with extracting cells from a live pig and then placing them in a broth-like mixture of other animal parts until the cells multiplied.  When the cells eventually multiplied they created muscle tissue, the texture and appearance of which has been described by researchers as “soggy pork”.  Tasty.

As Arctic temperatures rise, precipitation rates, and snow/ice cover volumes, begin to change as well. In some cases, this has lead to an increase in vegetation, which can have the beneficial effect of reducing atmospheric CO2, but which can also cause a disruption in the trace gas exchange between earth and atmosphere. Also, many of these climate change impacts produce imbalances within ecosystems (the web of interactions between species, and between species and their environments) and these can and do [...]

Two million square miles of permafrost—an area two-thirds the size of the United States has now thawed since the beginning of the 20th century. And all that thawing permafrost is costing the Russian oil and gas industry billions of dollars to repair damaged pipelines and infrastructure as global warming changes the face of western Siberia.

The energy program head of Greenpeace in Russia, Vladimir Chuprov, after interviewing experts at Gazprom, concluded, “For Russia, the biggest threat of the permafrost melt is to oil and gas company infrastructure.” (from Carbon-Based)

Thawing permafrost presents even more of a threat: it could release frozen methane deposits and causing runaway global warming, mass-extinctions, and huge amounts of economic damage to global infrastructure and economic well being. In addition to Gazprom’s, that is.

Move over CO2—you’ve been ousted, along with methane, as the biggest offenders of global climate change. According to a new a study by Purdue University and NASA, the major chemicals most frequently cited as leading to climate change, namely carbon dioxide and methane, are actually outclassed in their warming potential by compounds receiving less attention. The majority of “greenhouse gases” are created by humans.

The results were discovered when researchers studied more than a dozen chemicals, or greenhouse gases as classified by their warming properties defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. From there, the team developed a blueprint for the underlying molecular machinery of global warming. The results appeared in the November 12, 2009 issue of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Physical Chemistry, just in time for the convergence of world leaders in Copenhagen.

A landfill gas-to-energy plant in Conestoga, Pennsylvania.

When it comes to corporations fighting climate change, landfill owners don’t necessarily leap to mind. But in Michigan, the landfill industry is working to repeal a 19-year-old ban on the disposal of grass clippings and tree trimmings in dumps — on the grounds that the yard waste, mixed with typical garbage when buried, makes a perfect brew for what it terms renewable methane production.

I’m probably going to irritate some people with this post.  I apologize in advance because that is not at all my intention.  For those readers that don’t think climate change is a real problem, I respect the fact that there is uncertainty in that science, but if the majority position of climate scientists is true, the stakes in terms of human suffering among the poor are too high not to act.  For those who think Organic farming is the answer, I’m not trying to argue the whole issue here - I just want to talk about the science associated with climate change and farming.  I have spent months reading the scientific literature on this topic.  That science points to some very specific changes in how we need to farm.  If those changes were compatible with Organic I’d be a big promoter.  The short answer is “Organic farming is not the best option from a climate change point of view.”

I know this sounds like heresy in the “Green Blogosphere,” but before you react, please read on.  I agree in advance that the Organic/non-Organic discussion is much broader than climate change.  In fairness, climate change was never something that “Organic” was designed to address either during its origins in the early 20th century or during the development of the USDA Organic rules between 1990 and 2000.  I have no desire to get in the way of Organic growers making a living (including my good friends who grow Organic of the old school category) or get in the way of Organic customers getting what they want.    I simply believe that it is critical that we, the declining subset of people who take climate change seriously, be accurately informed about this issue.  If we believe we “have the answer” for farming when that answer is wrong, that keeps us from continuing to find the real answer.

Focusing on the Major Crops

Because it would be far too complex to discuss this question for all crops,  I’ll only be talking about the “carbon footprint” of the major row crops (see the pie chart above) - the wheat, corn, hay, barley, oats, corn, soybeans, hay, oats, dry beans, lentils… that make up the bulk of our calorie intake, our vegetable protein intake, and our animal feeds for meat and dairy.  Those crops also make up the vast majority of farmed land, so they are what matters for climate change.  Fruit and vegetable crops are extremely important for health and food enjoyment, but not much for climate change.  Organic today is heavily weighted to the fruit and vegetable segment and beyond that, it is extremely small. Actually, all of Organic only represents 2.6MM acres ( ~0.7%  of US cropland), so it has almost no effect on climate either way. This is only a discussion about the widely held opinion that Organic would help in a climate change sense.

SAB Miller, South African grown, second largest brewer in the world has introduced anaerobic digestion to treat the waste leaving its Alrode Brewery in Gauteng, South Africa. Anaerobic fermentation of organic material produces methane, which is used to reduce the consumption of fossil fuel based energy.

Copper brewhouse in a Trappist brewery

Brewery Waste & Biogas

In the brewery the waste is a collection of unavoidable losses of carbohydrate and protein rich materials, which would otherwise be sold as beer or byproduct and the large quantities of water used to maintain a hygienic operation.