We've all heard the notion that cows are killing the planet - but the truth is, there's so much more to the story than that. Most of these claims and numbers that get thrown around that "cow farts" are contributing to green house gases (GHGs) came from a 2006 analysis by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United States (FAO) called Livestock's Long Shadow (1).
However, this paper has long since been retracted after further investigation, even though a lot of these false claims are still thrown around by experts and the media.
What the researches did in this paper is they tracked the entire lifecycle of a cow and measured how much methane it produces. Methane is a natural byproduct from a cow’s enteric digestive system that contributes to total GHGs we will talk about more in a little bit.
They tracked how much carbon a cow produces from birth until slaughter - its entire life. They didn’t just track the cow's production of carbon, but they also took note of the equipment used to keep this cow alive, feed the cow, and every variable possible that emitted carbon to determine the entire amount of carbon produced it took to keep that cow alive.
Here’s where things get sloppy.
The researchers then compared this number to the total emissions produced from car exhausts. The authors concluded by saying, “The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share than transport.”
However, they compared apples to oranges.
They compared the complete lifecycle analysis of a cow to only one tiny part of the entire transportation sector - the exhaust emissions.
They didn't do the entire lifecycle of transportation like they did with the cow. When this was investigated further, they had to retract their findings because they found that cows do not attribute 18 percent of all GHG emissions, rather they only attribute 2 percent of all GHG emissions. A HUGE difference.
Further finding out that transportation contributes 28.5 percent of all GHGs and electricity production contributes 28.4 percent of all GHGs.
Source: https://www.sacredcow.info/book
We also must note a few other key pieces to this environmental puzzle...
Cows and other ruminants have been here on earth for a very long time - many millions of years just roaming and being a part of the natural cycle of life. Being hunted by both humans and other animals. It's a natural part of life for cows to graze, burp (not farts as we've been lead to believe), and produce methane.
It's vitally important to know that this production of methane by cattle and other ruminants is a very natural part of the environmental cycle and is crucial for our world to keep on evolving.
The methane the cows produce travels into the atmosphere, gets turned into CO2 and H2O that is then rained back down on the earth. If we have good enough soil to sequester the carbon (which properly raised cattle help to do - we will talk about more soon!), the cattle eat the grass that grows from the soil and the process repeats itself (figure below).
Source: https://www.sacredcow.info/book
This is a very natural process needed to have great soil (for producing great crops) and keep the natural cycle of life evolving.
However, here's where the real problem occurs.
All of these fossil fuels and other sources of carbon we need to run our cars and produce electricity, is entirely "new" carbon that has been trapped underground for millions of years. When we dig up this new carbon and start to put it in our atmosphere, this is when we run into issues with increased GHG emissions. This is one reason why forward thinkers like Elon Musk are trying to help this problem by having us drive around in Teslas - ultimately lowering our need to dig up fossil fuels.
In this context of GHG emissions, there are three primary ones associated with agriculture:
Carbon dioxide (CO2), primarily released in plowing, cutting trees, and burning fossil fuels
Methane (CH4), which comes from mostly rice, food waste, and belching cattle
Nitrous oxide (N2O), largely coming from the application of fertilizers
Here's the rub...
These GHGs can be measured in terms of its greenhouse warming potential - GWP (essentially how much each one of these contributes to global warming):
Carbon dioxide = 1
Methane = 28 - 36
Nitrous oxide = 265 - 298
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At the time of this writing, if you search on Google "why are cows bad for the environment?" an article from Ohio State researchers pops up saying that methane is 23x more harmful than carbon dioxide. This notion that methane is 23x "more harmful" comes from the above numbers. But they are not showing the complete picture, leading the average person astray.
Look at it like this:
Each of these gases remains in the atmosphere for a different amount of time - any guesses what you think they'll be?
Carbon Dioxide remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years
Methane remains in the atmosphere for about 10 years
Nitrous Oxide remains in the atmosphere for about 100 years
Here's why this "23x more harmful" statistic is irrelevant. Cows produce 2 percent of the environment's GHG emissions, an already low number.
But that 2 percent is supposed to be in the environment. It's old, recycled carbon emissions that have been circulating through the cycle of life since ruminants have been roaming the earth.
This "new" carbon dioxide from plowing fields of monocrop agriculture (think wheat, soybean, and corn used to feed conventional cows and produce high fructose corn syrup), deforestation of trees, and the burning of fossil fuels for our cars contributes to over 28 percent of all GHG emissions and stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years.
Yet, the 2 percent of methane that cows produce as part of the natural life cycle only lasts in the atmosphere for 10 years.
Not to mention if you recall from above, methane production also largely comes from rice agriculture - over 500 million tons of methane. Also, the monocrop agriculture of growing rice over and over again in the same field completely destroys the quality of the soil.
And soil is the biggest carbon sink in the world. When you constantly regrow the same crop in the same field year after year the soil quality slowly degrades, leading to reduced amounts of nutrients and land that is unable to hold sufficient amounts of water.
As we will discuss below, properly raised cows help the soil by fertilizing it and helping our earth sequester more carbon.
Thought about logically for just a minute - why would cows (which have been roaming on earth for millions of years) be hurting our planet more than fossil fuels, cars, electricity, and monocrop agriculture (which have been around for, oh, maybe a couple hundred years)?
It's a simple question, yet still needs to be taken into consideration when making large claims such as this. Unfortunately, most people that try and dispute this are very science-bound and don't take common sense into the equation. But, I digress...
The amazing thing about all of this is that we need animals to fertilize our land, build up our soil, and keep our environment beautiful. Cows are not harming our environment, if anything, they're saving it.
Please don't misunderstand me, however. I'm not advocating for conventionally raised cattle by any means. Cows raised shoulder to shoulder on feedlot farms are not natural and are not doing anyone any good - and it is certainly not ethical.
But the problem I have is when we blame cows for a problem that humans have created.
Believe it or not, there are actually farms out there practicing regenerative agriculture that are carbon negative! What does carbon negative mean?
When you raise cattle how they evolutionarily should be raised (roaming on wide open land not eating in the same patch all the time), then it creates a net negative impact on our global warming crisis.
It was this way in Northern America for thousands of years with nearly 60 million bison roaming the Great Plains. That is until the American Army killed off all of them but 400 in the late 1800s.
It’s because of this that farms are trying to undo a lot of that damage by practicing regenerative agriculture.
White Oak Pastures is a farm that has actually shown to be a net negative carbon farm. They raise their cattle in such a way that they have five percent more soil than conventional farms and monocrop agriculture. That may not sound like a lot but think about this - every 1 percent increase in soil quality means that land can hold 1 inch of rain. White Oak Pastures soil can hold 5 inches of rain, AND they are net negative in terms of their carbon footprint. That's a win-win-win-win all around!
I think it is an amazing thing to see all of these companies like Amazon set out to be carbon-neutral. Have you ever seen these commercials from these big corporations? They say their goal is to be carbon neutral. And while this is great, they could never be carbon negative and undo the damage that's already been done.
However, properly raised animals are the only way that we can become carbon negative and actually undo the damage humans have already caused.
Source: https://www.sacredcow.info/book
I know what you're thinking, did White Oak Pastures fund their own study? No they didn't. Believe it or not, General Mills found that White Oak Pastures is truly a net negative farm (2).
They concluded their article by saying, "The net result is that WOP beef has a carbon footprint 111% lower than a conventional US beef system".
You also may be thinking, well this is great and all, but is this truly a sustainable way to do things on a large scale? Can we really get a majority of cows to be regeneratively raised? I honestly believe we can, and the General Mills study showed just that.
Source: https://quantis-intl.com/casestudy/general-mills/
If you've been eating Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers because you've been led to believe eating plant-based better for the environment, you’re doing more harm than good.
Since WWII, farmers have been given subsidies to produce wheat, corn, and soy, among other crops. They actually get incentives to produce more of this stuff. While some of the subsidies have since diminished, a lot of them still remain. What if we could get incentives for regenerative farms to produce healthy, more sustainable meat?
What if we could get grass-finished ground meat cut in half for $3 per lb? How incredible would that be?
How amazing would that be to get the most nutrient dense food on the planet to people who need it most at the same price McDonald's and a Coke is now?
What if we flipped flopped the narrative entirely? What would that do to our economy and health of our species?
It would most certainly piss a lot of people off because there's a lot of money to be made in wheat, corn, and soy production. But is health and the health of our environment not more important than a big back pocket?
It's my mission to make that happen. I hope that you are with me on this wild journey.
Final Thoughts
This starts by understanding the power you hold as an individual. We vote with our dollar every single day. We can choose to invest (and make our bodies) out of conventionally raised cattle, or we can invest in farms like White Oak Pastures who are the Teslas of agriculture.
If you’re interested in this conversation I highly recommend checking out the bestselling book, Sacred Cow. Just click the image below to grab your copy on Amazon today.
Sacred Cow does an amazing job at breaking down everything I just discussed and a whole lot more with a very unbiased perspective. I highly recommend reading it if this is a topic you are passionate about!
