“Our results dispel the notion that modern intensive agriculture is inherently worse for the environment than a more “old-fashioned” way of doing things,” said Jennifer Burney, lead author of the Stanford study.

And, that’s not all: Confinement feeding of livestock—that favorite whipping boy for Greens—also helps sharply reduce greenhouse emissions. I recently estimated it would take the land area of New Jersey for chicken “playgrounds” if we put all our birds outdoors. It would take the land area of Pennsylvania to raise our hogs on free ranges. Stanford should now estimate the soil carbon losses if we plowed those millions of additional hectares for animal “playgrounds.”

Indoor animals are also more comfortable, and thus need about 15 percent less feed per pound of protein produced, saving still more acres of land for Nature and still more carbon left in the soil.

Feedlot cattle, eating grain from high-yield fields, produce less methane in their guts than cattle digesting grass—because grass is harder to digest. Studies on beef cattle show methane emissions reduced by 38 to 70 percent.

Jude Capper of Cornell University reported last year (Journal of Animal Science, March 13, 2009.) that more milk, from higher-yielding cows that are fed more grain and less grass, have helped reduce the carbon footprint of the U.S. dairy industry by 43 percent since 1944.

“Interestingly, many of the characteristics of 1940s dairy production—including low milk yields, pasture-based management and no antibiotics, inorganic fertilizers, or chemical pesticides—are similar to those of modern organic dairy systems,” Capper notes.

Capper’s study also found that supplementing dairy rations with genetically modified rBST would use 2.3 million fewer tons of feedstuffs, need 540,000 fewer acres of land for crop production, and require considerably less chemical fertilizer and pesticides

Confinement feeding also protects our streams and rivers. The manure from outdoor animals washes into the nearest creek. The wastes from confinement animals are collected and used as organic fertilizer on crops.

Are confinement animals less happy?  Probably not. Cattle, hogs and chickens are all  prey animals, and they see safety in numbers. They like being together. Cattle graze and travel in herds. I’ve watched free-range turkeys, which always seemed to be huddled together in a corner of their pasture.

If the environmental movement really believes humans are warming the planet, these studies tell us that Greens must recant on their criticisms of high-yield farming and confinement feeding. They need to stop demonizing the chemical fertilizers, the pesticides, the confinement feedlots and the biotechnology which will be needed to produce twice as much food—from today’s farmed acres—in 2050.

Or is demonizing modern farming too important to fund-raising in the cities?

DENNIS T. AVERY, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC,  is an environmental economist.  He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net

Resources:

Jennifer Burney, et al, “Greenhouse Gas Mitigation by Agricultural  Intensification,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0914216107; 2010.

Jessica Marshall, “Grass-Fed Beef Has Bigger Carbon Footprint, Discovery News, Jan. 27, 2010.

Jude Capper, et al., “The Environmental Impact of Dairy Production: 1944 Compared with 2007,” Journal of Animal Science, March 13, 2009.

 

The higher food costs come on top of the already-higher prices we pay at the pump for the lower-energy ethanol being mixed with our gasoline.

 

Now, comes word of another failing biofuel “miracle.” Thousands of farmers in the developing world were told that biofuel from an oily tree fruit, jatropha, could be grown on marginal land. Thus it could produce massive amounts of renewable fuels without competing with food crops.

 

Now it turns out the experts were wrong about jatropha growing well on marginal land. Jatropha will grow on marginal land, but it needs good land to produce economically viable yields. Indian farmers, for example, find the forecast yields of 2–5 tons per hectare are actually less than 2 tons.

 

Meanwhile, millions of jatropha trees are being grown instead of food on farms from Ghana and Guatemala to Mozambique and India. EU companies have reportedly leased 5 million hectares of land for biofuel production, much of it in Africa, where it will compete with already-inadequate food production and threaten unique wildlife. 

 

Major question: In the name of all that is environmentally holy, why are we trying to grow fuel crops on “marginal land”?  Marginal land is where the world’s wild species live. There isn’t any “spare” land anywhere in the world.

 

Fuel crops are a fundamentally bad idea because we get so little fuel per acre. The U.S. burns 135 billion gallons worth of gasoline per year, and corn produces about 90 gallons worth of gasoline-equivalent per acre per year. How many million acres of corn ethanol would it take to make a significant difference in our “energy independence”? 

 

We’re already farming 37 percent of the earth’s land area, and unless research double per-acre food yields again, we’ll need to clear another 30–50 percent of the earth’s land surface just to feed ourselves in 2050. Count on at least 8 billion people, with at least 7 billion of them affluent enough to demand meat, milk, and pet food.

 

Europe is making biodiesel out of its rapeseed crop—but also importing lots of palm oil from Indonesia. There, thousands of Great Apes (orangutans) are being slaughtered to make room for the palm seedlings. This is conservation?

 

Ironically, some of the farmers who have planted jatropha are finding no one wants to buy it because the costs of refining and distribution are too high. The oil giant BP, for example, has pulled out of a planned $50 million jatropha joint venture in Africa. “As other technologies came up,” said a spokesman, “we looked again at whether jatropha was going to be the best biofuel source that could be scaled up. We have decided to look elsewhere.” 

 

Thus far, no alternative energy source works well. Nuclear power seems to be the best hope and the Obama administration is finally adjusting to that reality. Even inadequate, erratic sources such as solar panels and wind turbines are less destructive to conservation than using scarce land for biofuels.   

 

DENNIS T. AVERY is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He is an environmental economist and was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net

 

 

As a farm kid, I learned early that the cute little piglets of the spring would become our pork chops in the fall. I learned that when mother told me to “get her a chicken,” it was to be delivered deceased and de-feathered. That didn’t weaken my parents’ concern that our animals all be treated well while they were in our care. .

 

Today’s big confinement livestock industries have a major problem in convincing distant consumers that they treat their animals with full consideration. On the other hand, the activists who make “gotcha” videotapes may not be the best people to oversee livestock production 

 

The anti-meat activists tell us their goal is to end animal “exploitation.” That apparently would mean no meat production, no household pets, no circuses, no dog shows, no rodeos nor any hunting. There’s a strong temptation for activists to misrepresent the farmers and their standards of animal care, in order to get restrictive legislation.

 

One of President Obama’s “Czars”—a Harvard lawyer named Cass Sunstein—says livestock and poultry should have the right to sue their owners in the courts. A wondrous boon to lawyers that would quickly force us all into vegan diets—and poorer health, especially for kids..

 

California voters in a recent election banned cages for laying hens as of 2015. But banning layer cages results in more cannibalism among the birds, and far more bacterial contamination of the eggs.

 

Equally awkward, California egg producers will probably be forced out of business because the cost of keeping laying hens without cages has proven about 20 percent higher. It seems certain that California will thus be forced to import cage-produced eggs from adjoining states. They cannot be barred because of the Interstate Commerce clause in the Constitution. California will simply lose thousands of egg-production jobs, huge amounts of fuel will be used  to transport the eggs, and they will be less fresh.

 

What to do?  

 

Ohio is exploring a middle option. They want the public to have confidence that the farmers are treating their livestock humanely, but they don’t want to put farm supervision in the hands of extremists.     

 

Their solution is a proposed amendment to Ohio’s constitution creating an Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board. The 13 members would include:

 

• The Ohio Director of Agriculture
• A family farmer appointed by the Speaker of the Ohio House;
• A family farmer appointed by the President of the Ohio Senate;
• A “family farm representative”;
• A food safety expert;
• Two members representing statewide farm organizations;
• A veterinarian licensed in Ohio;
• The Ohio State Veterinarian;
• The dean of agriculture at an Ohio college or university;
• Two consumer representatives; and
• One representative of a county humane society.

 

The board is directed to maintain food safety, encourage locally-grown food, and protect Ohio farms and families—with best-management practices for animal care and well-being, disease prevention, food safety and affordability. This board would not, of course, end the activist complaints. But it would also not end meat production, dairying, pet ownership or hunting.

 

The Humane Society of the U.S. (not the organization that runs local animal shelters) doesn’t like the idea. It says the “industry-dominated board” is poor public policy.

 

Political compromises, however, always leave most of us with less than we’d like—but perhaps with more than we deserve.

 

 

DENNIS T. AVERY is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.  He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net

 

Unfortunately, the dairy export subsidies will make little difference to American dairymen, but they could have harsh impacts on New Zealand’s farm-dominated economy. Thus far, New Zealand has escaped the higher grain prices because they feed their cows mainly grass and turnips.

 

Our excuse on dairy export subsidies is that the EU did it first. But the real dairy problem is that both the EU and the U.S. have jacked up their own dairy production costs by diverting corn and rapeseed from feeding livestock to making biofuels. The ethanol and biodiesel games have doubled world feed grain prices and caused food riots in Mexico and Egypt.

 

The dairy export payments should be a huge red flag to the world. When push came to shove, the U.S. and the EU immediately fell into the old trap of punishing trade from innocent countries. That’s actually how we launched the Great Depression—with the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930.

 

People have actually been predicting the “green trade wars” for years because developing countries have no obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. All the affluent countries are thus terrified that their carbon-emitting industries will flee to less-developed countries. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu told a Congressional committee in March that America might well consider a “carbon tariff” on imports from China, India, and other developing countries if they “undercut” U.S. manufacturers. .  

 

Gary Huffbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics recently told National Public Radio, “Countries say, well, if we’re going to take measures [to combat global warming] we have to do something at the border to prevent the same product being produced abroad and just imported by our country. So those thoughts trigger potential for trade wars. So lawmakers here have added a provision to the greenhouse gas legislation that echoes the EU approach. It gives energy intensive companies like steelmakers, chemical plants, and paper mills the right to demand tariffs on imports if after five years they can prove unfair carbon competition” 

 

Environmentalists say the worries about China and India picking up high-carbon jobs are exaggerated—that most of America’s energy-intensive imports come from Canada or the EU. But they’re saying that today, before the carbon taxes have been imposed. With carbon taxes in place, the developing countries will look more attractive, Canada and the EU less so.  

 

Without low-cost imports from China and Colombia, meanwhile, the cost of shopping at Wal-Mart will escalate—even as U.S. exports are increasingly barred from both Kyoto member and non-member countries. Our investments in productive assets will be wasted, even as the U.S. jobs totals decline.

 

A carbon tariff would conflict with a U.S. pledge not to violate international trade rules, but Obama’s promise to cut greenhouse emission might easily override the vague “no trade war” commitment.

 

DENNIS T. AVERY is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.  He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net

 

Recently in his Animal and Dairy Sciences blog, Terry Etherton commented on the growing problem related to the pricing of dairy products marketed as “rbST-free” or “organic”. His own observations, he stated, were backed up by recent American Farm Bureau Federation Marketbasket Surveys which showed that conventional dairy products are sold at much lower prices than “rbST-free” and “organic” products. CGFI research has also found that to be the case. In fact, recent grocery store checks conducted in cities such as Seattle, Philadelphia and Minneapolis have shown that milk marketed as “rbST-free” or “organic” is sold at prices as much as 100 percent higher than its conventional competition. Something isn’t right about this situation! Somebody is getting rich off of milk that is labeled one way, but is exactly the same compositionally- and I guarantee you it’s not the dairy farmer who has given up their right to use rbST to earn a living. No…it’s not them. In fact, they will have to work harder now to make the same amount of money they could have if they were producing conventional milk. When are we as consumers going to stand up and say enough is enough? When are we going to put a stop to the fear-mongering that is so prevalent and demand the right to purchase whatever kind of dairy we want to without the irrational fear that we could be endangering our loved ones? Enough is enough.

American Farm Review Video Segment on the Use of Recombinant Somatotropin (rbST) in American Dairies