Are Belching Cows Contributing To Global Warming? Are Feedlots The Way To Solve The Problem?

Today I am going to do a different kind of post than normal. I want to break down an article I read in the New York Times from October 22, 2020, called "Manure, Belching Cows, And All Those Feedlots." (Cattle Industry Is Taking Steps to Better Control Pollution) By Henry Fountain. The reason I am addressing the environmental impact of cattle ranching is that meat and organs from cattle contain all of the nutrients we need. They should have a place in our food supply. I believe that place should be humane and sustainable. The article's main point seems to be that feedlots are better for the environment than pastures. Mr. Fountain's logic is that the cattle reach market weight earlier. Thus, they spend less time spewing the dangerous global warming gas called methane. He praises Cargill for finding alternate food sources like distiller's grains from ethanol plants and a Cargill product called Sweet Bran, lint residue from ginning cotton, and Yellow grease (used oil from restaurants) for speeding up the fattening process.

I would like to go through some of the points made in the piece and show how the omission of crucial details leads us to the conclusion he and the experts want us to believe. I believe factory farming is a disaster and could lead to the complete collapse of our food system one day. As Thomas Sowell is fond of saying, "at the heart of every big disaster, there's a Harvard man in the middle of it." Not to single out  Harvard, many experts have been 100% wrong. They are usually the most highly educated and sought after people to help run large projects like building the Titanic or Hindenberg airship.  Today, we hear from some of the experts in feedlot operation.

The article starts by addressing how cattle use enteric fermentation to digest their food, which creates methane. The author describes methane as a potent planet-warming gas that the cattle belch into the air, and he adds how it adds up. Methane has been described this way for so long that it is simply taken as fact. It turns out that methane has no net effect as a greenhouse gas in our atmosphere. Let me explain. Several gases that have absorption bands in the infrared region are collectively known as the Greenhouse Gases. Methane and water vapor are the two that are relevant to this conversation. Methane is twenty times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas when studied in isolation in labs. Still, the atmospheric concentration of methane is only 0.00017%, which minimizes its effect. Water vapor makes up two percent of our atmosphere, making it the predominant greenhouse gas. Because it is so abundant, its impact is one hundred times greater than that of methane. 

Each gas has specific wavelengths of infra-red that they absorb. Methane has two narrow bands that are already absorbed by water, and you can see this in the graph below. (1) CH4 is methane and H2O is obviously Water. The blue lines highlight the overlap in the absorption of infrared light frequency bands. The result is that methane has no effect. Imagine spilling black paint on a black wall. Remember, the color things appear is based on the exact frequencies of light that they absorb. Black walls absorb black already, so when we splash black paint on them, there is no change in color, even though more paint is on the wall. 

The author truthfully tells us that methane's carbon just came from the atmosphere a short while before and will recycle out of the atmosphere within ten years. He correctly claims the cycle's result is that the global warming effect remains constant, assuming the number of cattle remains the same. He then falsely leads us to believe that worldwide cattle will lead to global warming, building on his original false premise. He makes this claim because the number of cows in the rest of the world is increasing.

Mr. Fountain proclaims the emissions efforts are part of a broader push to make beef production more sustainable, including water and land use issues. He fails to see that grass eaten by traditionally grass-fed cattle is watered by rain, which is infinitely sustainable. In contrast, corn, cotton, and other industrial crops need irrigation, which is not easily sustainable. The author also fails to mention that most pasture is land not suitable for agriculture. (2) Pastureland grass is natural and 100% sustainable, as the waste from the cows fertilize it, putting most of the carbon right back in the ground.

 Grazing lands are essential habitats for a wide variety of animals. It also helps prevent runoff, so more water infiltrates into the soil, providing cleaner, more abundant water for fish, wildlife, and human use. Most importantly, whereas agricultural practices liberate carbon from the earth into the air, grazing land sequesters millions of tons of carbon, thus reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Let's face it, grazing land is also quite beautiful to behold. (3)

The article stresses that the cattle industry is under increasing pressure from environmentalists and others. The pressure comes from groups who say we should eat less meat. The author then cites the EAT-Lancet commission that recommends less than fourteen grams of meat per day. He implies that they must be believed because the commission is composed of a group of international scientists. This recommendation is as ridiculous as they come, as the standard has always been 50 grams per day. (4) to his credit, he ignores junk science and does not blame the meat for causing cancer and heart disease.  You can read more about the subject in my previous post here.

Mr. Fountain mentions cattle have to be monitored carefully for bloat or other health problems when being fed grain. He makes it sound like a trivial problem. The fact is that cattle don't eat grain naturally. It causes their rumen (one of their stomachs) to become acidic and inflamed, which can kill the animal. It frequently progresses into liver infections. This is one of the reasons for the high use of antibiotics in feedlot animals. (5) 42% of all antibiotics imported go to the cattle industry. (6) 

The article completely fails to inform us that sludge from industrial fermentation, high carbohydrate grains, and grease are not naturally eaten by cows. Using them as a food source will lead to illness. Based on the information I just gave you, the author's praise of the Cargill company's efforts to feed cattle experimental foods and calling it environmentalism is rubbish.

The article explains that before feedlots, beef cattle would graze year-round. All the energy expended wandering, and the difficulties of winter feeding, when cattle at best could only maintain weight, he claims, made the process of fattening them take longer. Let's think about this for a second. Cattle prefer to roam around to find the choicest spots to graze. Are we supposed to believe that penning animals into tight quarters in an area of the country unsuitable to them is better than what nature designed for them? This leads me to the next bogus point from the piece.

One expert (talking about agricultural waste) in the piece proclaims, "Thank goodness ruminants can use it, because otherwise I don't know what we'd do with all this stuff." Let's get this straight. The remnants of crops being grown on lands that used to be natural habitats, but that are now being plowed under, irrigated, sprayed with pesticides, and dosed with tons of petroleum-based fertilizers are the problem that feedlot cows save us from? Let's not forget that the process kills billions of animals like mice, rabbits, snakes, spiders, and insects annually. 

The author talks about how the feedlots also produce a lot of manure and urine. Hundreds of thousands of pounds a day of waste accumulate. The arid conditions, and trampling by the animals' hooves, leaves a smooth, dry surface. The manure can become dusty, he states, and winds result in a "brown cloud" that can significantly affect air quality locally. He also makes the waste seem like it has little to do with the cattle and their digestion. He correctly tells us that the manure emits methane and other gasses, neglecting to connect that the manure content comes from what the cows are eating. The manure emissions should be included in the overall carbon cycle cattle are part of. For the same reason, the methane from cow burps doesn't contribute to atmospheric carbon, the manure does not either.

But brown clouds? How about not concentrating cattle in one area? That works. Instead, one lot is dedicating 25% of its land to figuring out the manure problem. The good news is that since all cattle graze for a good portion of their lives, only one percent of them are in feedlots at any given moment. This fact is relevant to Mr. Fountain's story and puts things into perspective. The manure problem and all the other stuff like figuring out what trash we can feed cattle only pertains to one percent of them. 99% OF ALL CATTLE ARE HAPPILY GRAZING ON PASTURE THE WAY NATURE INTENDED. The problem is diminished when this little tidbit of knowledge is handed out.

Finally, the article ends with the thoughts of a scientist from Texas A&M. He suggests one possibility is scraping off the top layer of manure if rain is in the forecast. He realizes that it may lead to another problem: more methane emissions from the compact layer underneath.

To use his direct statement, "In trying to control one thing, you're making the other worse." No offense to the gentleman who said this, but his paycheck relies on figuring out what to do with piles of sh*t that accumulate as a result of unsustainable industrial cattle feedlots. Upton Sinclaire said it best, "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on him not understanding it."

Related to Sinclaire's point, we all absorb news hoping that we will have a better understanding of the subject when we finish reading or hearing the facts. Journalism has taken on an air of entertainment as well. Many of us enjoy reading and listening to the news. I have no problem with that. The payoff after hearing news is that we feel entertained (sometimes) and smarter. Little do we suspect that the "payoff" in many instances depends on us not understanding the entire complex subject. I am not calling news pieces like the one from Mr. Fountain fake. It's not. Its faulty. What might also be faulty is our belief that The author is an expert who did all of the required research into the matter, and we are now experts in the subject he spoke about in his article as a result of his exhaustive digging. 

Digging deeper into issues is time-consuming and feels like homework. It can be unpleasant, so I can't fault any of us for not wanting to do it. If journalists did a better job, we would be spared the chore of having to do further reading into matters they cover. 

I have a BS meter a mile wide, and I like researching facts. That is why I do regular posts. Am I an expert in sustainable cattle ranching? No. Could some of my disagreements be refined? Maybe. I did spend four hours researching the subject and have spent dozens more looking into it over the years. I feel I understand the complexities quite a bit more than the average person. I also like sharing what I have learned as it might be helpful. Feel free to look at me as the nerd who doesn’t mind doing homework for his friends. As always, feel free to leave comments and additional sources of information if you have any.