If the world's cattle are formed into a "cow country", the total carbon emissions of their farts and burps are close to the entire United States. How to achieve "carbon neutrality in animal husbandry" represented by the cattle industry at an early date has become a big problem that tests all mankind
Wen | "Finance" reporter Ma Lin Han Shulin
Editor| Li Tingzhen
People often say "big fart things" and describe them as dismissive.
But when cattle fart, the power cannot be underestimated.
In a ranch in the central German town of Rasdorf, 90 cows farted and burped en masse, causing methane in the cattle pen to accumulate and causing a farmhouse explosion and injuring cows.
This seemingly funny news actually reminds us that not only industry and transportation activities will emit a large number of greenhouse gases harmful to the environment, but also the animal husbandry, dairy and leather industries that provide human beings with beef, milk and cowhide, which will also have a negative impact on the earth's ecology.
Scientific studies have shown that cattle emit a large amount of exhaust gases from the body when they fart and burp. These exhaust gas components mainly include carbon dioxide and methane, two greenhouse gases that cause the global average temperature to rise. Methane, in particular, has a greenhouse effect 21-310 times that of carbon dioxide.
A cow emits up to 500 litres of methane per day, while beef cattle are slightly less likely to emit methane than 1/2 of a cow's, but it is also a terrible number.
"Eating grass, milking is milk", hard-working and kind cows, in the destruction of the ecological environment, is not inferior to humans.
Nowadays, "carbon neutrality" has become a global trend, and in the process of coping with climate change in various countries in the world, how to start from "cattle" and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of animal husbandry, dairy and leather industries, including dairy beef breeding, is becoming an interesting and arduous issue.
The total carbon emissions of cattle are second only to those of China and the United States
Microsoft founder Bill Gates' new book, "How to Avoid Climate Disasters – Existing Solutions and Technological Breakthroughs Needed," also focuses on the environmental pressures that cattle farming puts on the environment.
In the book, Bill Gates divides the main sources of carbon emissions into five broad categories: electricity (25 percent), agriculture (24 percent), manufacturing (21 percent), transportation (14 percent), and construction (6 percent), with other sources accounting for 10 percent. If all the cattle in the world are one country, then its carbon emissions level ranks third in the world, second only to China and the United States.
Figure 1: The total carbon emissions of cattle are second only to China and the United States
Unit: Gigatons (GIT, 1 GIT = 1 billion tonnes)
Source: Gates Foundation
In addition to cattle, ruminants such as sheep, camels, and deer that feed on plants also expel large amounts of greenhouse gases through farting and burping.
This is because ruminants feed on fibrous plants, and the microorganisms in the stomach help them digest plant feed, but also produce "by-products" such as carbon dioxide and methane.
Compared with most other ruminants, cattle are relatively large in size and emit more greenhouse gases accordingly; the most critical thing is that most humans like to eat beef, drink milk, wear leather shoes, and artificially breed a large number of beef milk cattle, so the problem of "cow fart burping" is very serious.
According to a survey conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, nearly 1.1 billion cows around the world at that time emitted more greenhouse gases than the exhaust gases emitted by cars.
At present, there are a total of 1.5 billion cattle raised worldwide, of which more than 200 million are dairy cows, and the rest are mostly beef cattle.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Resources Institute, livestock, including cattle breeding, currently emit nearly 15% of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions, while all means of transport account for 24% of carbon dioxide.
In 2018, the journal Science published a study by Joseph Poore, a scholar at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, and Thomas Nemecek, a scholar at Agroscope, a Swiss agricultural research institute, saying that food and related industries contribute 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Among them, livestock and fisheries contributed 31% of carbon emissions, crop cultivation contributed 24%, land tenure of forests and grasslands contributed 24%, and supply chain-related carbon emissions contributed 18%.
Figure 2: Sources of carbon emissions associated with the food industry
Source: Joseph Poore, Thomas Nemecek related research reports
Of all animal foods, beef and milk production are the main sources of co2 emissions from livestock, accounting for 41% and 20% of total livestock emissions, respectively, while pork, poultry meat and eggs account for 9% and 8% respectively.
The greenhouse effect of methane is extremely strong. 37% of methane emissions from human activities worldwide are associated with human farming of cows, beef cattle and other ruminants. Among them, the methane emissions of cattle are 73% of the total methane emissions of livestock.
Roughly speaking, a cow emits as much exhaust gas as two beef cows, or 14 sheep, 22 goats, and 74 pigs.
Because of the bad smell of pig farms, many Chinese people think that the pig industry is more environmentally damaging. But what subverts everyone's perception is that pigs do not ruminate, and they emit less exhaust gases.
However, pig manure produces nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that causes global warming 265 times more than carbon dioxide and is not lost to methane.
Studies have shown that flatulence accounts for 39% of the exhaust gases produced by ruminants, of which cattle burp about 10 times the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by cattle farting.
In other words, the amount of methane and carbon dioxide emitted by cow burping is much larger than that of farting, which requires more attention.
In addition, 45% of the waste gases are generated during the production and processing of feed for livestock; 10% of the waste gases are also generated during the storage and processing of livestock manure; and the rest are the waste gases generated during the processing and transportation of animal products.
But there is also good news: from 2005 to 2015, the greenhouse gas emission intensity per kilogram of milk fell by nearly 11%. The main reason is that the improvement of breeding science and technology, the improvement of animal health and feed quality, and the improvement of herd management capacity have led to an increase in milk production per cow.
However, the total demand for human beings to eat beef and drink milk is still increasing rapidly, and the environmental pressure brought by animal husbandry is still huge.
How to "carbon neutralize" a cow
In recent years, scientists from all over the world have been studying how to reduce carbon emissions from livestock farming.
These research directions include: adjusting the diet of cattle, or by vaccinating cattle, or even modifying the genes of cattle to reduce the amount of methane produced by cows burping and farting; and developing masks and backpacks for cows to wear that can collect greenhouse gases.
In Europe and the United States, many companies are developing additives that can inhibit the amount of methane produced by cattle during digestion. For example, the Swiss company Agolin adds extracts containing coriander seed oil, cloves and wild carrots to its feed.
Another Swiss company, Mootral, has developed a feed additive based on garlic, citric acid extracts that claims to reduce methane emissions from ruminants by 38 percent.
Research by fast-food chain Burger King also shows that adding lemongrass to cattle feed can reduce methane emissions by 33 percent in the last three to four months of their lives.
Alltech in the United States is producing a yeast culture that can reduce methane emissions.
Costa Rica, a small country in Central America, has achieved the goal of "carbon neutrality" in animal husbandry by planting a large number of trees in the pasture and absorbing greenhouse gases. On February 6, the Costa Rican Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock released data showing that more than 20 million trees in Costa Rica's various pastures capture almost three times the country's total emissions.
More and more food industry scientists and practitioners believe that the "small repairs" to traditional animal husbandry are no longer enough to solve the fundamental problem; we must completely change the way humans eat in a subversive way. For example, the development of "artificial meat".
From the perspective of the farming and processing industry, the global meat industry, especially in developed countries, has been very productive, and the innovation potential has basically come to an end, but the global demand for meat and milk continues to increase, and the industry is not sustainable in any case.
At the same time, animal food brings many problems to the ecological environment, in addition to greenhouse gases, but also includes excessive use of land and water sources, water acidification and eutrophication, these systematic resource and environmental problems, it is difficult to solve them comprehensively through some micro-innovations.
This is the business logic of the rise of "artificial meat".
Plant-based artificial meat companies do not use animal meat as raw materials, but use plant proteins such as soybeans, peas, and algae to replace animal proteins to mimic the taste of real meat. Some companies develop artificial beef, the taste can be almost chaotic, can be expressed by molecular structure.
Barclays' team of agricultural analysts believe that in the next decade, the market size of artificial meat may account for 10% of the global meat market.
In the field of dairy products, a number of "plant milk" alternatives to milk have also emerged, such as almond milk, coconut milk, macadamia nut milk, pea milk and so on. Currently, plant-based milk has eaten 13% of the dairy market share in the United States.
Figure 3: Artificial beef balls and beef burgers launched by China's first artificial meat company
Photography / Lou Lingyuntao
In March 2021, a report on alternative foods released by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that humans ate 574 million tons of animal protein such as meat, seafood, dairy products and eggs in 2020, and about 75 kilograms of animal protein per capita. Compared with traditional animal protein, the carbon dioxide emissions of plant protein are about 1/8 of chicken, 1/3 of eggs, 1/9 of pork, and 1/12 of beef.
If humans change their dietary habits and replace some of the real meat with artificial meat, then the greenhouse gas emissions caused by livestock hiccups and manure and other environmental problems will be greatly alleviated.
The industry speculates that by 2035, when the taste, material and price of artificial protein and animal protein are equal, about 11% of meat, seafood, dairy products and eggs will be replaced by artificial protein; this proportion can be doubled if there is a stronger promotion and regulation.
In 2020, humans consumed about 13 million tons of artificial protein, about 2% of total consumption, and are expected to reach 97 million tons by 2035. If the average price per kilogram of meat is $3, artificial meat would be a $290 billion market.
In 2035, under the impetus of "artificial meat", European and American countries may take the lead in achieving "meat peak". Since then, the consumption of animal protein will tend to decline.
By the transition to artificial proteins, humans could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 1 billion tons a year by 2035, about the same amount as Japan's carbon emissions in a year. In addition to carbon emissions, artificial meat consumption could also reduce water consumption by 39 billion cubic meters by 2035.
Of course, artificial meat is not completely "innocent", and its production process also emits greenhouse gases.
However, according to recent estimates by the Good Food Institute, an artificial meat research institute, artificial chicken, pork and beef have reduced carbon emissions by 17%, 52% and 85% to 92% respectively compared to chicken, pork and beef.
The study argues that by 2030, the cost of artificial meat and some traditional meats can be comparable.
For the earth, livestock are not guilty, but animal husbandry is guilty.
Hopefully, in the future, more and more human beings will be able to accept a menu that is "delicious and environmentally friendly". Everyone should pay for their own happiness and make their own contribution to the early realization of the "carbon neutrality" of animal husbandry represented by cattle breeding.