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Nicolette Niman, the marketing maven of Bill Niman's independent ranching operations in Northern California, environmental lawyer, activist, and author of Righteous Porkchop, and contributor to the Food Channel, published a balanced defense of meat in Saturday's New York Times. In it she argued that meat shouldn't be demonized for its contribution to global warming, because it isn't as potent a contributor as we think. Not the pasture-raised stuff anyway.
There's truth in her assertions, but I'm compelled to point out some qualifications. Niman is clearly vexed by the one-note activists whose goals are to promote vegan or vegetarian diets as the "only option"--for climate change, moral/animal welfare arguments, or both. As a partner in pasture-based systems, she wants to draw a clear distinction between the environmental record of industrially produced meat (and soy) versus other systems. And there are many.
But Niman goes too far in saying that "meat and dairy eaters need not be part of [the real story of meat's connection to global warming]." The halo of the small ranch is not entirely deserved. Nor is it within reach of most Americans--financially or practically. I'm a fan of what she and her husband do. In fact, I spent the better part of last week arranging the stocking of hundreds of Niman's heritage breed turkeys from the Bolinas farm and their distribution to a meat distributor, to go to the colleges and corporations we serve at Bon Appetit Management Company. The Nimans' BN Ranch is so local to some accounts that the turkeys could walk there themselves if they didn't have to be delivered dead. Their production systems are what meat production should be.
The American diet is so meat-based compared with the rest of the world that questioning how much meat we eat, and what kinds, is a very good place to start the conversation.The conclusion Niman wants us to draw is that family ranchers not only do it better but the food they produce--as opposed to by industrial farms or processed food--is ultimately "low-carbon." I'm with her on the first point. I step off on the second.
Ruminant animals belch methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide, no matter what you feed them. No other food type has that burden. Research from numerous on-farm studies is showing that methane emissions vary by breed, size of animal, and what the animals eat, and can be lessened by diet and choosing different breeds. How much less is up for debate (the literature is inconclusive), but it is potentially significant. If changing animals' diets or breed types is necessary to reduce--but by no means eliminate--methane emissions from digestion, though, will people eat meat that might have a very different taste?
Methane also comes from animal waste. Niman's carefully worded assertion that in "animal farming, much of the methane comes from lagoons of liquefied manure at industrial facilities" is true, but a bit misleading. Most methane comes from enteric fermentation--digestive processes. It isn't true that with no lagoons, there's no methane emitted from waste.
In many pasture-based, more humane systems, animals live longer and mothers are kept to feed their young. When counting environmental impact, then, we have to as much as double the methane emissions and other impacts for a pound of meat produced.
No matter how you measure it, carbon dioxide is a much smaller percentage of greenhouse gas emissions related to meat production than methane. So much so that we really shouldn't even discuss CO2 when comparing meat production. While it's true that many smaller, traditional farms and ranches in the United States emit significantly less CO2 because they keep their animals on pasture rather than in fossil fuel-powered facilities, use less machinery and less often, and frequently grow their own feed, their virtues are often erased by lack of infrastructure support. Our meat production system is set up to favor industrial operations, so slaughterhouses are often located hundreds of miles from small ranches. The transport miles saved for feed is canceled due to the (literally) heavier burden of transporting animals to slaughterhouses and remote processing and distribution centers. It is simply not true to say "there are no emissions from long-distance transport" on farms that pasture their animals or supplement their feed with home-grown soy.
We're in agreement on many points. There's no question that "efforts to minimize greenhouse gases need to be much more sophisticated than just making blanket condemnations of certain foods." But the American diet is so meat-based compared with the rest of the world that questioning how much meat we eat, and what kinds, is a very good place to start the conversation.
Changes in the food system are coming. Besides livestock production changes, more processed foods are being manufactured in solar-powered facilities, and transport fleets are adopting cleaner fuel. And some producers are making changes in animal husbandry on the margins. In the food service sector, we're rethinking and radically reducing food waste throughout the supply chain.
But is the combination of these potential changes sufficient? Canadian food systems researcher Nathan Pelletier told a distinguished audience in February that "Given the projected doubling of [global] meat production by 2050, we're going to have to cut our emissions by half just to maintain current levels"--and, of course, our current levels of emissions are unsustainable. Lesson: if viewed through a lifecycle accounting of environmental impacts, meat and dairy products carry a relatively heavy burden no matter how they're produced. Most of the world's meat is, in fact, already produced on pasture-based systems.
Rather than defend meat as having less of a climate change burden, I think we should focus on the real question of how we should produce the meat we still want to eat. Pasture-based local meat is radically more expensive than industrially produced meat--unlike sustainably produced vegetables, which often come in for the same criticism. The Nimans' birds are twice the price of the sustainably raised bird our chefs generally buy, and three to four times the price of industrially produced turkey this time of year. In other words, what they do is completely out of reach for most consumers.
It shouldn't be. Federal policy, more than the scale of operations, makes the price of industrially produced meats so much less expensive than pasture-raised meats. That's what we need to be talking about, and trying to change.
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"Federal policy, more than scale of operations, makes the price of industrially-produced meats so much less expensive than pasture-raised meats."
How so?
Subsidies. The big industrial operations are subsidized-you don't get more subsidies for more expensive, more responsible production.
So, lacking subsidies what might the price difference be? What's the best guess? Are we talking about twice as expensive to 50% more expensive or are we talking only 15% more expensive?
Also consider the externalized costs of industrially-produced meats. Industrial producers do not have to pay for the environmental destruction that their operations create (manure in water, antibiotics in soil and water, methane and carbon dioxide in air, soil erosion, and on and on). These prices, therefore, are not absorbed by the producer but are "externalized," meaning we suffer collectively while industrial operations profit. This is allowed because the government turns a blind eye, despite laws intended to govern them (i.e. Clean Water Act defines a point source as including a concentrated animal feeding operation, but EPA has carved out an enforcement exemption for these entities).
I dare say if industrial animal operations had to pay the cost of properly dealing with thier own waste they would no longer be viable as businesses, which is why the industry tirelessly lobbies against enforcement of environmental laws against them. Who suffers? We all do, because taxpayers pay to treat the manure-tainted waters, we will pay for the effects of climate change, and we will suffer if anti-biotic resistant bacterial strains emerge.
Although I totally agree with what you're saying, I think it's also important to realize that other food stocks to, eventually, release methane. Some of the biggest contributors to methane production are landfills, which are partially filled with the carbon-based bi-products of plant food. Agricultural waste will do the same thing. So while it is wrong to lump all meat producers into "evil industrial methane producers," it is also important to realize that we need a more holistic approach to methane gas reduction from both food and waste.
Thank you for a somewhat balanced article and responds to Nicolette Niman. I believe for many reasons that farmers should not write about environmental impacts and science. They are not qualified and not unbiased. I can understand Mrs Niman's motivation for posing as an expert but... shame on the New York Times! What's next - car mechanics writing about cancer and doctors writing about the art of marketing?
The arguments that Mrs Niman brought up are older than the arguments that CO2 is natural and that the sun influences climate and hence not humans. If she had bothered to read the FAO's Long Shadow report or any other real science - she would not have embarrass herself scientifically speaking. (The same is true for people who scream that vegetables also produce waste or can feel pain). But it was never her objection to be truthful or to investigate in good faith.
The latest report by two Worldbank scientists states that livestock agriculture accounts for more than 51% of all green-house gases. In other words - meat and milk are worse than all energy production including coal and oil and all the cars and planes and all the factories combined.
Coming back to pasture-based meats - we cannot possibly be talking about cows here (sometimes referred to as beef) - maybe sheep and maybe goats - but absolutely no way cows. Climate change is merely a symptom of the underlying cause - which is environmental destruction via the corrupting of natural laws. Extinction and nitrogen imbalances are other symptoms which are just as bad as climate change.
Cows are middle-eastern/asian creatures that have a completely different excrement than what is naturally found in most regions where cows are raised today. Look at deer or cat or rabbit droppings and compare them to a cow's "dropping". I hope I do not have to continue in detail. Keywords soil erosion, nitrogen imbalance, water pollution and species loss. Show me pasture-raised cows and I show you environmental destruction.
But even if we adopted more sheep and goat agriculture instead of cows - with close to 7 billion people on the planet - we would most likely overdo it. If we are not good at ethics - what about simple math?
PS: What is a normal, decent vegetable farmer supposed to say to all this?
Hugo,
As Corby indicated in his Fresh Feeds column, I will be answering some of Helene's specific points later today. But to address your concern about my qualifications to write on this subject, I do not consider being a rancher my only qualification to write on the environmental issues surrounding agriculture, although it is an important part of it. I worked for a decade as a lawyer and three years as an environmental attorney, specializing in air and water pollution. The last two years of that time I was the Senior Attorney for Robert F. Kennedy's organization, Waterkeeper Alliance, and worked full time on agricultural pollution. After that, I spent the next six years doing research for my book about agriculture's human health and environmental issues: Righteous Porkchop, Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms. I also happen to have an undergraduate degree in biology.
Now perhaps you could enlighten all of us about your credentials to write about global warming?
Nicolette
Nicolette,
I understand why one would get defensive when confronted with accusations of bias and lack of qualification. But let us not descend into a qualifications battle, this debate is important to have on the merits of our arguments.
I appreciated the NY Times article as a tremendous counter-point to much of what I had been exposed to. Fact is, I wondered about the climate change implications of a more pastoral, less industrialized meat production but had not yet been exposed to this line of thinking.
I also appreciated Helene's rebuttal to the NYTimes peice, and am eager to absorb more information. Thus, I can't wait to read your answers.
Query: does anyone know of any good sources for an inquiring mind interested in the costs of meat and dairy production, government subsidies of industrial producers, and externalized costs. I am curious whether industrial producers would be able to compete in an open market with more responsible producers if both were subsidized at the same rate and if industrial producers were forced to internalize the costs of their environmental impacts. Any thoughts?
Nicolette,
First, thank you for a genuine reply. I have to admit that my post regarding your credentials was aggressive and I know feel somewhat counterproductive. ZNoB makes a good point when she/he states that "this debate is important to have on the merits of our arguments". Your credentials are just fine in this context (and so would be mine in case I need to reveal my real name etc). The important thing to me is that you are willing to discuss this very important and often overlooked issue.
What I would be most interested in for future debate is a prioritization of arguments. We could both argue that given that we all drastically reduced our meat and dairy consumption - small scale farms and pasture-agriculture would be ok. One could say the same about factory farming however. If we reduced consumption.
Given that livestock-agriculture is the biggest single polluter on the planet - I hope that all of your readers will be able to take way the point that with 7 billion people on the planet - what and how much we eat must change first somehow - and only then how we produce it. I therefore hope that we do not enter the simple and obsolete discussion of pasture is better than factory farms that feed only corn and soy. That is a given.
The pressing issue today is 7 billion consuming more and not less meat as we speak, nitrogen imbalance everywhere and water pollution. And maybe the biggest long-term threat species loss. Nobody wants for people to hear "we might invent clean coal one day and therefore nothing needs to change today". This has happened all too often. Just read the Atlantic Food section - at some point it felt as if the whole world was practicing organic free-range farming.
The US is a very special case as it has the lowest population density on the planet but it is a relatively small place compared to the rest of the world. If things go wrong in South America, Africa and Asia - the rich and free US population will lose the most and not the least. I hope we can learn to be selfish and not merely greedy.
Thanks again for your genuine reply and I apologize to you and the New York Times for my personal attack regarding credentials. Keep the issue hot.
Yours,
Hugo
Thank you for continuing this very important dialogue. 97% of Americans eat meat and this isn’t going to change anytime soon. Given this fact, as an alternative to factory farms, I do think it is critical to encourage increased consumption of grass fed and grass finished meat. But it is more important to encourage reduced meat consumption overall. Grassfed meat is no panacea for our climate change woes. Cows, no matter where they are raised will continue to generate copious quantities of methane. Our climate simply can not tolerate the steep global trend of increased meat consumption. However, as you point out, there is no doubt that grass fed is better for the planet and better for our health. And we must find ways to make this kind of meat more affordable and accessible for everyone. A critical step for creating a more level playing field for grass fed meat is wholesale federal policy reform. We need major reforms in our subsidy program, greater financial incentives for sustainable meat production and much stronger enforcement of our environmental laws so that we don’t externalize so many of those costs make factory farmed meat so cheap. Fifty per cent of our subsidized grain in the US goes to feed animals. Besides the externalized costs that Z no B-more so rightly points out , a significant amount of energy goes into producing the feed—in the form of water/irrigation, fertilizer, and pesticides, not to mention the environmental costs from that production. For more on the impact of US subsidy programs see EWG's report on the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico: http://www.ewg.org/node/18580
For those of us who have been manning the barricades in defense of pastured meats, Nicolette Niman's op-ed in the Times was welcome reinforcement. In these arguments, there is never a mention of the nutritional benefits of animal protein and fat, which are many, and which would be sorely missed by humankind, since humans evolved on a diet composed largely of animal flesh. Personally, I believe a plant-based diet is inferior. So the problem posed by greenhouse emissions produced by livestock--and the fact that there may not be enough pasture in the world to provide the benefits of grass-fed meat to every person, if she could pay for it--is truly a dilemma. But, before we declare meats of all kinds to be the "low hanging fruit" (Michael Pollan's words) in the climate war, let's everybody stop driving a car, cease using electricity from coal-fired power plants and boycott all products connected with the cutting down of forests. Then maybe we can talk.
Ed
If you believe in Darwin and evolution - then you must understand that eating as high on the food chain for some humans do is a cultural phenomenon. Our digestive system is still the same as that of other rainforest apes (in fact almost identical) and not that of omnivore wolves or carnivore cats. As apes we have evolved to eat up to 0-4% from animal sources but we have also evolved to wage wars, rape and kill each other. Chimpanzees kill many more chimpanzees than they kill other animals. We do not need to make arguments based on that foundation?
But your post is a very good example as to why articles as posted in the NY Times by Mrs Niman are dangerous. You did not grasp the science behind the environmental arguments. That is why I am often so upset about articles on clean coal.. ehh.. sustainable meat production.
If it turned out that meat does indeed account for 51% of all green-house gases, see WorldBank report above, why should we first stop driving cars? Much more money was and is invested in car infrastructure than in factory farms. But your worst, most projective, argument must be: boycott all products connected with the cutting down of forests. Well - no meat then and only then can we two, Ed, talk.
It seems to me in these articles which address predictions about the future assuming "it's always going to be this way" -- that is that Americans are ALWAYS going to eat as much beef as they do now and that the rest of the (inevitably growing) world (at least the prosperous part) will eat beef at the rate Americans currently do. Beef is NOT an essential part of anyone's diet, and it can be consumed in MUCH smaller quantities (or not at all) with NO effect on health. In fact, health for many will be improved by lowering consumption. Beef fat is one of those nasty things that affect cholesterol and are bad for people with atherosclerosis,among other things. And maybe, just maybe, by eating less beef people will learn to eat a more varied (and therefore more balanced) diet. Really, we should be talking about lowering (but not necessarily eliminating) consumption, and of course of altering production to employ more environmentally-sound practices. If this causes beef to be more expensive, great. That will do some of the lowering of consumption right there.
We live in Mexico in an area where there are a fair number of ranches with grass-fed beef which is slaughtered nearby. There's no environmental movement involved in this: it's just the way it's done. The beef is definitely different. It is tougher and has a different flavor: a pretty good flavor. We've gotten used to it without feeling like we're suffering. We don't eat it very often because we're just not in the habit of doing so. And people with cholesterol problems (me) can eat some of the cuts without fear.
Please, let's give people some credit for being able to change and then work on changing diet instead of panicking over how to keep up with the consumption of fatty American beef.
Ms. York takes her time to enumerate points of potential agreement with Ms. Niman, over the ‘cornburger’ versus ‘grassburger’ debate - pasture based versus industrial feedlot based livestock. However, she frames her disagreement with respect to the ‘price’ of a cornburger versus that of a grassburger, and in the process she expands the discussion, and rightly so, beyond just the cost of global warming to also include the costs imposed on our land, our water and our collective health all caused by industrial livestock and meat production that would be far less, if they are incurred at all, in pasture-based production.
In her third paragraph when asserting that Ms. Niman has gone “too far,” Ms. York writes “The halo of the small ranch is not entirely deserved. Nor is it within reach of most Americans--financially or practically.” She also concludes her piece with further hyperbole “Pasture-based local meat is radically more expensive than industrially produced meat” (Of course, this will leave many a reader with the impression that pasture-based farming is either un-economical, an intentional rip-off, or elitist.) I assume that for the basis of her argument Ms. York simplifies things for the reader by comparing the price of a piece of beef in a supermarket or big box store with that of a specialty market or artisan butcher shop, which on its face is more egregious than comparing an apple to a floor mop.
While Ms. York points the finger at Federal Policy, she makes no attempt to elaborate specific policies and how they impact the cost of a grassburger or a cornburger. As have been enumerated by many authors over the last decade or so, there are both the massive direct costs and indirect costs (beyond those of global warming) that we pay as taxpayers that have made the price of industrial meat so low that as a society we’ve become addicted to the “$1 meal menu” and the “all you can eat prime rib buffet.”
To finish reading this post What’s A Little Hyperbole Between Friends?
We only eat grass-fed bison ... still this talk makes me contemplate becoming a vegetarian.
Quick point of information -- some readers might come away from this article thinking turkeys (1) are ruminants and (2) produce significant digestive methane. (1) isn't so, I don't know about (2). The Niman ranch also raises goats and cows, of course, so Ms. York's critique applies to that part of their operation.
A few points - first, agricultural policies do artificially reduce the costs of grain-fed, factory-farmed livestock products, but even without them, the price of grass fed would still be higher, if only because of the longer period of time it takes to get the animals to slaughter size.
Ultimately the higher price is convenient to anyone hoping people eat less meat; if all people eat is grass-fed, consumption will go down because they won't be able to afford to eat anywhere near as much.
I think the broader, more dangerous side of Niman's NY Times piece is that it can be taken as a defense of the livestock industry in general, no matter how specifically she wrote it to apply to pastured livestock. It's similar to the clean coal arguments, 'don't worry, you can still consume this stuff sustainably,' even though most of what people consume isn't the relatively sustainable stuff.
Ms. York - you don't understand that the methane gas can be harnessed as energy. it's called biodynamic farming.
Don't take my word for it - please read Eliot Coleman's piece: Debunking the meat/climate change myth 92
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-08-07-debunking-meat-climate-change-myth/
Mr. Coleman is a preeminent expert on organic and sustainable farming. He challenges the myth that meat production must necessarily lead to harmful emissions.