Giraffes, Methane, and a Midnight Snack: Climate Change's Food Connection

Giraffes, burps, and the surprising connection to your dinner plate? Yep, we're going there. Join Dave on "Running My Mouth Off about Climate Change" as he dives into the wild world of agriculture and its impact on our planet. Forget the doom and gloom, we're tackling complex issues with a side of quirky facts and a promise to keep the numbers (mostly) digestible. From methane-spewing cows to the surprising power of algae, you'll discover the unexpected ways our food choices affect climate change. Put on your bibs, it's gonna be an interesting ride!

Transcript

I find Giraffes to be really interesting animals. I mean they look like near royalty they saunter across the plains, but then to see them drink water, how they have to spread their legs so wide to lower their heads down to a water source. Ya, I find them interesting. But what do they have to do with climate change and our food supply? Hang on for a few minutes and I’ll explain.

I’m Dave and thank you soooo much for joining me today on Running My Mouth Off about Climate Change, where we talk about some of the lesser discussed issues that surround climate change and today, that topic is agriculture, i.e. our global food supply and starting off, we’re going to talk about giraffes. 

As we begin though raising and growing the food that we require in order to survive, is a highly complex thing and it involves a lot of numbers. And it’s so tempting, and even natural to throw out a bunch of these numbers that detail things like how many calories we can grow each year globally and percentages of greenhouse gasses that happen when you eat this or that.

And I don’t know about you, but getting hit with a bunch of numbers is, well, fatiguing. There are a few numbers that i feel like I’ll throw out but I promise that I’ll take it easy on you. 

Also be warned that this isn’t the most engaging of subjects, there’s a lot of facts. I spent a lot of time trying to make it more interesting but it just started to get really long. So, in the interest of time, let’s just do it straight, for the most part. 

I’d also like to give you a bit of a roadmap for where we’ll be going so you can know what to expect.  

First, Giraffes! Then we’ll talk about burps and farts, followed by food, glaciers and deserts, a thing where the science is just a bit hazy, laughing gas, a bit of finger pointing and then we’ll wrap it all up. 

Make sense? Cool, let’s get to the giraffes! 

Giraffes, Livestock and Paper 

Ever watched a giraffe eat, either on TV or at a zoo? They’ll rip a huge mouth full of leaves and twigs from trees, sometimes the entire tree will move as they’re tugging on and tearing the foliage off of the canopy. They’ll then do that funky side to side chewing motion and then swallow pretty quickly after ripping the leaves off of the tree. Then they’re in for another mouthful. Ever wondered about exactly how well they chew this “roughage” up before they swallow? Here’s a hint, not very much. This stuff that they’re eating, these leaves and twigs, don’t think of them as leaves and twigs, think of them as wood pulp, or more appropriately, cellulose. 

Cellulose is the thing that we get when we process wood into pulp and we use it to make paper, packaging, construction products, clothing and it even finds its way into LCD screens. As humans, we can’t digest it, our stomachs aren’t designed to do that, but a giraffe? They eat that stuff all day long. 

Giraffes are what’s called ruminant animals, meaning they don’t have single stomachs like you and I do, their stomachs have multiple chambers along with some pretty robust microbes that allows them to break all of this cellulose down into nutrients. It’s a pretty cool process if your diet consists of a lot of insoluble fiber, but it does have a downside: one of the the byproducts of breaking down all of this cellulose into nutrients, is methane, and a lot of if.

By the way, you may have heard that methane is primarily emitted from flatulence, i.e., farts? Actually most of the methane emitted by ruminant animals is through burps, which is only slightly more palatable process to discuss. 

As you may or may not know, cattle, like giraffes, are ruminant animals, they have multi-chambered stomachs and are able to break down grasses, and anything else that they eat, into nutrients that help them grow. We can then consume them in the form of beef ribs, beef sausage, burgers, brisket, and everything else beef related, and take nutritional advantage of this process. But again, there’s the methane.

Methane is an unstable element, meaning it hasn’t always been and won’t always be methane. Rather, it’s created and it goes away. Its half life is about 6-8 years, so, after around 10 or 12 years, only about 20% of what comes from animal waste, burps and flatulence, is left in the atmosphere. 

It’s a pretty nasty greenhouse gas though, and its atmospheric warming potential, i.e. the havoc that it wreaks in our atmosphere,  is significantly greater than is CO2, something like 30 times greater. 

How much is 30 times greater? When we, in California, get a powerful storm, we can get about an inch of rain over a 24 hour period. Imagine that same storm bringing in 30 inches of rain over that same period, that’s something that we’re not set up to handle. Imagine the damage that would happen just from flooding alone, it’d be pretty bad.  

That’s methane. Fortunately, there’s not a lot of it in the atmosphere, but this is very much a case where a little goes a long way. Basically, it comes in, does a heck of a lot of damage, and then, after a lot of atmospheric collisions, it goes away pretty quickly, and gets broken up into mainly CO2 and water vapor.

In talking about methane, exactly how much methane comes from livestock, what are we looking at? According to the EPA, a single cow can put out up to 264 pounds of Methane every single year. And all livestock globally, put out approximately 231 billion pounds of Methane. In fact, out of all of the methane that we, as humans, produce, livestock, i.e., our need for meat, takes up about 37% of that. 

And here’s a fun fact: the methane that comes from livestock is pretty much just natural gas, very similar to what we extract from the ground and use to cook and heat our homes.

Algae and flatulence? 

Staying on the topic, there is a bit a good news. There are some studies happening right now that are attempting to reduce the methane that livestock produce. One of which incorporates a kind of red algae into livestock diets that reduces methane emissions up to 90%, and it seems to work? But, at this point at least, it’s still being researched. We simply don’t know enough about it yet to release it on a mass scale. 

There are also farms that have been using methane capture devices from the waste that cattle produce. And once this methane is captured, it can then be used to power all of the equipment on the farm. Cool process, it doesn’t capture all of the methane and methane isn’t a totally clean energy source when it’s used and burned, but it’s a positive step.

So it is an issue on which we are making progress.

Oh, and I’ve been talking mainly about cattle, cows. Sheep and goats are, again I’m referring mainly to cattle, goats and sheep are also ruminant animals so we also experience the same issues with those animals. You know how goats can eat just about anything? Cool process, but the methane. 

If you prefer chicken, pork and fish, those come from animals that have only one stomach so they’re not ruminant animals, their digestion process doesn’t produce anywhere near as much methane so they’re definitely the more “earth friendly” option if you’re prone to eating meat.

But let’s get back to livestock, specifically, what they eat and let’s talk a little bit about growing their, and our. food. 

Cows need food, too!

The first thing that you need in order to grow food, is land. So let’s do a quick dive into the land that we have available to us on a global scale and how much of it we use. I’m about to hit you with a lot of numbers, I’ll try to get them to make sense. And, as much as I hate running my mouth off with a bunch of numbers, I think this stuff is cool, and it’s honestly a bit sobering, so here we go. 

Available land for farming and how much of it we use….

Starting off, 71% of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans, can’t farm or live on that. This leaves 29% of the earth’s surface that’s land. Of that 29% of the earth’s surface, only 71% is habitable, land that we can live and farm on. 19% is what we’d call ‘barren”, land, meaning it’s desert, salt flats, exposed rock, things like that. Another 10% is glacial, and we certainly can’t live or grow stuff on that. 

So of that 71% of habitable land, i.e., not glacial or barren, roughly 50% is dedicated to agriculture. So, at this point, about half of the land that we have available to us, is used to grow food. 

There’s also a stat that’s thrown out saying that 38% of available land is dedicated to farming? Both numbers, 50% and 38% work, it’s kind of just a matter of how you calculate them. I’ve actually used 38% in previous podcasts but, for our purposes today, I’ll use the 50%, simply because it sounds more shocking and it suits my purposes better. 

So, 50% of all available land. Of that 50%, 77% is used for livestock or, animal. production. Keep in mind this 77% includes both grazing land and feed production. 

Now think about this: only 18% of our calorie supply globally, comes from livestock, from meat and dairy. 

Over 8 billion people on the earth today and that number is growing exponentially every year. The amount of land that we’re using for livestock, for meat and dairy, compared to the calories that it provides for us? 77% of the available agricultural land, producing a mere 18% of our calories. From a shear numbers standpoint, the ROI, the bang for the buck, just doesn’t seem to be there. 

I could literally go on about this for a while, but getting off of that particular soapbox, let’s get back to growing things and how it impacts the environment. 

Land use is a big one, it also takes water, and it takes fertilizer. 

One good till doesn’t deserve another

If you’ve read my previous blocks or listened to the podcasts, recall that we’re losing an area roughly the size of the state of Indiana each year from rainforests for agriculture. And, when this happens, when we clear old growth forests, it has a “double whammy” effect of sorts on the environment. Forests act as a carbon synch, absorbing a lot of the CO2 that we create and they convert it into oxygen. We lose that ability when we cut them down. 

And there’s also a lot of carbon that’s stored and gets released in the trunks, branches and leaves of these trees as we’re clearing. So, when we cut down forests, we’re reducing the earth’s ability to deal with the CO2 that we produce and we’re releasing all of the carbon that’s stored in these trees back into the atmosphere. Not exactly a good thing. 

So, now we have all of this land that’s been cleared, or it’s time to plant new crops. So what do we typically do now? We till the soil to prepare it to accept seeds and/or baby plants. 

We’ve been tilling or turning soil for almost as long as we’ve been cultivating crops, and it’s served us pretty well. It helps aerate the soil, makes it easier to control things like weeds and pests, and has a few other benefits. 

There are a few potential downsides though, and this is where the science gets a little fuzzy, I’ll explain in a minute. 

Soil, when left on its own, has a way of decomposing things which provides nutrients for almost anything that wants to grow in it. It’s a pretty cool process, like those ruminant stomachs, it includes a lot of microbes that do a really good job of breaking down all of the plants that lived there before. But when we till the soil, we throw a huge wrench into the process. 

The net result is that we disrupt the composting of the plant material and release all of the CO2 that’s in the soil, along with other gasses that are involved, into the atmosphere. Because the nutrients in the soil don’t get a chance to fully form, we need to introduce fertilizers to give the newly planted crops the nutrients that they need. And this is where things get a bit messier. 

Plants need food, too! 

Obviously, fertilizers provide nutrients to plants, but not all of the fertilizer, and in this case, I’m referring primarily to the Nitrogen component, finds its way into the plant. 

Firstly, some of it is lost into the air when applied, more is lost because it gets washed away as crops are watered or over-watered or, all too often, overwatered, and still more is lost as the microbes in the soil convert it to a form that the plants can use. Remember how tilling the soil improves aeration? Well, this is partially what allows gasses like Nitrous Oxide to more easily escape. 

Nitrous Oxide, like Methane and is far worse than CO2, or even Methane, in its ability to trap heat in the atmosphere. Remember how methane is about 30 times more potent than Co2? Well, Nitrous Oxide, that’s right, laughing gas, is roughly 300 times more potent than Co2. 

Let’s say that you get a letter from the IRS saying that you owe $1000 in unpaid taxes. Ok, most of us in the US can handle that without much problem. Now take that same letter and increase the amount 300 times. A $300,000 bill from the IRS? Ya, that’s a very different problem.   

Again though, like methane, there’s not a lot of it floating around in the atmosphere compared to Co2, but it’s even more a case where even a little bit goes a very, very long way. 

Oh, and as well as ensuring that our planet stays nice and toasty, it’s also is one of those things that’s causing problems with the ozone layer. And, it sticks around in the atmosphere much longer than does Methane, for a little more than 100 years. Pretty nasty little gas. 

By the way.  over the last 4 or 5 decades, we’ve seen about a 30-40% increase in Atmospheric Nitrous Oxide, and that’s largely because of agricultural fertilization. 

Now, as is the case with livestock feed, there are studies happening now that are aimed at reducing  the amount of Nitrous oxide that gets into the atmosphere. But, in the end, it comes down to us being more efficient with fertilizer and countries actually getting serious about agricultural Nitrogen emissions. As it is, when it comes to governments, it seems to be kind of a forgotten gas, but it looks like that’s beginning to change? 

Before continuing on, I’d be remiss if I didn’t throw this in, the part about the hazy science. Soil tillage has been a hotly contested thing amongst those who study agricultural green house gas emissions. I read one study that compiled a bunch of other studies on how much greenhouse gas is actually emitted as a result of tillage and the results seem to be all over the map. Depending on which study you look at, tillage can be good and it could be bad. It’s important though to keep in mind that most of these studies are incredibly narrow into what they’re looking at, and it can get really confusing. 

The net result, as far as I can tell, seems to suggest that long term, frequent tilling disrupts soil’s ability to effectively do its job and, the longer farms can go without tilling, the better things get for the environment. 

And this is me officially stopping the topic of tillage here.

And then there’s yet one more huge problem with agriculture. And we, as the consumers of products that are being grown or raised, are directly to blame. Simply put, we throw a lot of it away. How much? A Stanford study from 2020 says that we, in the United States, toss out roughly 30-40% of the food that we produce.

Let that sink in for a moment. 

30-40% of the total amount of food that we produce, winds up as garbage. 

So a large portion of that methane that’s produced, and all of that Nitrogen that’s thrown into the atmosphere, and all of that land that’s been cleared, is entirely unproductive.

Oh, and by the way. When food is thrown away and decomposes, even more methane and CO2 is produced. 

So what do we do with all of this? 

Firstly, beef. Keep in mind, my intention here is not to be preachy, I’m not trying to tell anyone how to live their lives, that’s not my intention. These things about the methane and land use? These are just reality, data points about where things are. But I get it, Texas BBQ? Awesomeness. Beef, probably not the best environmental choice.   

And by the way, sheep are also ruminant animals that have that same methane issues. And goat cheese? Freaking yum. You know how goats can eat just about anything? Methane! 

Pork, poultry and fish? Probably the better environmental choices.

Speaking of sheep. I’m reminded of a conversation that I had with a buddy of mine and a sheep farmer years ago in Duncans Mills, California, which is a small town on the Russian River near the coast. The two of them were talking and I was kind of tuned out, watching lambs run around, kicking up their heels and playing. I overheard the farmer say, “they’ll go to slaughter in another week.”, and I was like, wait, what??? 

Turns out lamb can be turned into leg of lamb and lamb chops at as young of 10 weeks of age. I haven’t ever been able to get that image out of my head. 

So think of the little lambs, Sorry if I put a damper on dinner plans. Pork, poultry and fish, better options, and they’re not as cute. 

Also, can we throw away less food? Grocery stores, bakeries and restaurants already throw out more than enough, let’s not help them them out. And, if given the time, I will get a little preachy on, for a lot of reasons. 

Cards on the table, I don’t call myself a vegan. I do eat eggs and turkey sandwiches but I honestly can’t remember the last time that I bought anything beef related for myself. And, as tempting as it is to stand on a soapbox and say that it’s for environmental reasons, I just stopped eating things like beef and lamb a while ago simply because I didn’t really enjoy them anymore. Knowing what I know now though, I’m glad I made that choice when i did. I also don’t throw away food, I have my diet, my routine, and it works. And nothing is wasted. Like beef, it wasn’t initially an environmental choice, it’s just how things worked out as I adjusted what I eat in order to live a more healthy lifestyle. Enough about me though. 

There’s a lot that I didn’t even come close to touching today, this is merely a very brief overview of the agricultural industry. There’s so much to talk about on this topic such as organic foods, distribution of food and fertilizer, Newer technics and technology, locally sourced food and the impact that climate change is currently having on our food supply,….

And, as fate would have it, that’s what we’ll be looking at next, how climate change is already impacting the food that we eat. 

Again, I’m Dave and thanks for joining me today on Running My Mouth Off About Climate Change. I hope y’all have a great week.

Usefull links used to create this podcast: 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969720358289

https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/10/laughing-gas-growing-climate-problem

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/methane-emissions-are-driving-climate-change-heres-how-reduce-them

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-022-00265-3

https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/

https://ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/food-waste-in-the-united-states

https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture