After my last post on agriculture (and some would say my kneejerk reaction), I found this op-ed by lawyer and rancher Nicolette Hahn Niman interesting:
So what is the real story of meat’s connection to global warming? Answering the question requires examining the individual greenhouse gases involved: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxides.
Carbon dioxide makes up the majority of agriculture-related greenhouse emissions. In American farming, most carbon dioxide emissions come from fuel burned to operate vehicles and equipment. World agricultural carbon emissions, on the other hand, result primarily from the clearing of woods for crop growing and livestock grazing. During the 1990s, tropical deforestation in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Sudan and other developing countries caused 15 percent to 35 percent of annual global fossil fuel emissions.
Much Brazilian deforestation is connected to soybean cultivation. As much as 70 percent of areas newly cleared for agriculture in Mato Grosso State in Brazil is being used to grow soybeans. Over half of Brazil’s soy harvest is controlled by a handful of international agribusiness companies, which ship it all over the world for animal feed and food products, causing emissions in the process.
The short version of proposed solution is that the practices used in large scale factory farming pose more threats to the environment than raising cattle or pigs for meat does. Her conclusion is worth quoting:
Still, there are numerous reasonable ways to reduce our individual contributions to climate change through our food choices. Because it takes more resources to produce meat and dairy than, say, fresh locally grown carrots, it’s sensible to cut back on consumption of animal-based foods. More important, all eaters can lower their global warming contribution by following these simple rules: avoid processed foods and those from industrialized farms; reduce food waste; and buy local and in season.
I may be more concerned with means rather than ends. How would opponents of meat consumption propose to enforce their preference? Outright bans? I think that such things are inherently tyrannical. Why would a ban on eating meat be more effective than one on drinking alcohol or smoking marijuana? Eating meat is demonstrably an intrinsic part of human behavior that goes back as far in time as we’ve been a species and beyond.
One way to approach things would be to reduce the factors that have given factory farming an edge. The first step would be to stop subsidizing them! End agricultural subsidies which tend to benefit large scale farming more than they do small farms.
Stop subsidizing highway construction. Highway construction is best done as a local decision with local support and local funding. If the citizens of Honolulu or Bangor, Maine aren’t interested enough in a highway in their respective hometowns to build or maintain it themselves, why should I be?
My preference as always would be to simplify the maze of subsidies, restrictions, and regulations rather than to pile Pelion on Ossa. But it’s ever so much easier to add a new regulation without the means or intention of enforcing it than it is to pare back our system so that we can actually see the effects of what we’re doing.
In the interest of reducing pollution and the load on world resources, we should give folks the choice between breeding and eating meat. Only the childfree, with their limited carbon and pollution footprint, should be allowed to eat meat.
I see this thing on highways occasionally. For local roads that is mostly ok, but there are national security concerns interstate highways as well as international competition issues. You should probably do it at the state level, like it is mostly now.
I would also try to price in the negative externalities, though that is difficult. How much of our current microbial resistance comes from use on feedlots? No one is sure. If meat does have a larger carbon footprint, price it accordingly. Do away with subsidies and give products their true costs, then let the markets sort it out as much as possible.
Steve
Sure. This is a point many sustainable ag proponents have been making for years – that eating meat itself is not the problem so much as the way meat is produced and distributed. That’s why so many prominent voices encourage consumers to eat less meat rather than no meat.
But (and I say this as an omnivore) you can’t separate the production from the culture. Factory farming exists only to serve the demand for meat that, as you’ve noted, is both inherent in the human species, and rises with income. Factory farms are a result of carniculture, not the other way around.
I agree with your prescriptions, as do most sustainable ag proponents. I’m not aware of any mainstream voices calling for an outright ban of meat – hell, I don’t even think PETA has called for that.