Saturday October 31, 2009, 6:00 pm
I happened to be staying at the Farmers’ Club, so the significance of the moment weighed heavily as I ordered up a defiant compromise: two poached eggs on toast with two rashers of bacon and a tomato on the side.

The former chief economist to the Treasury and the World Bank resembles at times a Methodist minister unable to temper sanctimony with wit. Since the Stern review on the cost of tackling global warming three years ago — a document that was never peer-reviewed and which drew some valid criticisms from within his profession — its author has taken it upon himself to go around making oracular statements about the magnitude of the task of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% over 40 years. “I am not sure that people fully understand what we are talking about or the changes that will be necessary,” he said last week.

He may well be right. It is beginning to sink in that we may have to change the way we travel, eat and heat our houses in quite radical ways. But whether we shall feel inclined to do these deeply green things because we have been encouraged to do so by Stern is another thing altogether.

What upset many people last week was not that Stern took on our cherished meat-eating habits and the farming lobby, but the impression he gave that he understood the implications of what he was advocating rather less than those in the business of producing food.

Let’s examine his case for eating less meat. Official United Nations figures suggest that about 18% of greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock agriculture. Roughly a third of that is caused by methane belched by ruminants, a third comes from land-use changes such as clearing the rainforest for pasture and about a third is nitrous oxide from the use of fertilisers to grow more crops to feed them on.

What Stern appears not to have grasped is that different forms of livestock agriculture produce greenhouse gases in different measure and some do not produce them at all. As an extreme example, if you want to cut out methane and you live in Australia you can eat only kangaroo. Roos don’t belch methane.

Where a sense of injustice settles on the poor British beef or sheep farmer is that very little of the UN inventory of greenhouse gas production from livestock applies to him, particularly if he happens to graze sheep on the hills or to graze beef animals on permanent grass beside the rain-fed rivers of the west. Some 60% of British farmland is suitable only for growing grass. Since Neolithic times we have used livestock to turn inedible grass into food. And as a system there isn’t an awful lot wrong with it.

Graham Harvey’s book, The Carbon Fields, tells us that grazing permanent pasture with ruminants can actually be an overall carbon “sink” because of the vast root structures below ground which take up carbon efficiently every time they are grazed hard.

Compare this with the kind of “feedlot” cattle production favoured in the United States, in which you feed grain that could be eaten by humans to animals at a conversion rate of 8lb of grain to 1lb of beef. Nearly as inefficient is the way we currently produce pork or chicken by stuffing them full of grain. Do we want a food production system that is dependent on imported crops — including, please note, soya beans produced on cleared rainforest land in South America? I’m not sure we do..... more

Saturday October 31, 2009, 6:10 pm
You are right! We haved known for some time cattle have been fed corn. This is terrible - it wastes food, and it is not good for cattle.

What else can we do? I recomnend hunting for food. Game is native, so it does not waste resources - after all, animals native to the land have adopted to it.

Also I have been flexitarian since May, 1992. We can get by on just a little meat.

We know exploiting corn for animal feed or for alcohol is destroying the planet!

Saturday October 31, 2009, 10:28 pm
There are so many more functional alternatives to the worst case scenarios of Factory Farms and Industrial Agriculture bandied about by the lunatic animal rights fringe. It's nice to see some information confirming this, although i doubt any of those bathed in the healing waters of the carrot will care to listen to facts that contradict their predetermined opinion.

Sunday November 1, 2009, 6:45 am
Thanx Cowboss. Great article. Governments should be looking to tame the ghg-emitting monsters they promoted and forced down our throats before they go infringing on our rights to choose something as fundamental as what we eat. The operative word in 'sustainable farming' is 'sustainable'.

Sunday November 1, 2009, 6:58 am
Thannnxxx Cowboss...

Monday November 2, 2009, 1:15 pm
Cowboss...Gotta give it to you for the best news articles....

Thanks for this one...what a ton of information at this article, guys please visit this to take a read and learn...

Also, I am like the three monkeys when it comes lately to what is being fed to all of these people around the world...Hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil...so what does that mean???? No evil exists...NOT!!!