Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
To summarize, if we place to one side the 'atypical' rainforest beef, for all the rest of
the world's meat and dairy we are looking at net emissions of nowhere near 18 per cent of
global GHGs, more like 10 per cent, and possibly less. These emissions are comprised of:
(i) 0.32 per cent of global GHGs for fossil fuels, none of which are strictly necessary for livestock production;
(ii) 1.5 per cent from soya in the Amazon (though less than half this if we adopt 2006 to 2009 rates of defor-
estation);
(iii) an uncertain estimate of 2.8 per cent from nitrous oxide not essential to the production of food; (iv) an
unknown amount from methane, which might turn out to be anything up to five per cent, but according to current
scientific thinking is nearer the top end, mainly from cows and sheep.
The total is no higher than 9.6 per cent - plus those rainforest beef, whose encroachments
have been halved in recent years. This upper figure is still in excess of other less well publi-
cized estimates for meat emissions, of around five per cent for global livestock, and 10-12
per cent for global agriculture; and in line with those for industrial countries which range
from about 4.5 per cent to 11 per cent of national GHG emissions.
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The FAO's 18 per cent is the odd one out (or at least it was when it came out) and it is
so largely because they choose to include the LULUCF figures for Amazon deforestation
and nitrous oxide emissions for agricultural soils, when others find it wiser to treat them
separately. Why does the FAO choose to do this? I couldn't find any reasoning in the 400
word report, so I can only guess at the motive. One possibility is that the FAO's promotion-
al department decided that a high figure would bring publicity for them and their discipline.
'Hey people, listen to us, we're bigger than transport.' If so the PR people were right: one
leading UK green campaigner told me that if the FAO had distorted the figures upward,
so much the better because it had raised the profile of the meat issue. Truth, it seems, is a
casualty, not only of war, but of environmental campaigns as well.
However, more than one person has told me that Henning Steinfeld came in for a lot of
conjectural reason is that including emissions for deforestation and nitrous oxide reinforces
the main ideological subtext of
Livestock's Long Shadow
. At the foot of the table which
lays out all their GHG emission calculations, is a row which compares 'total extensive vs
intensive livestock emissions', showing that the total emissions from extensive systems are
five billion tonnes of CO
2
equivalent, while those from intensive systems are 2.1 billion
tonnes. The text goes on to state 'by far the largest share of emissions come from more
extensive systems where poor livestock holders often extract marginal livelihoods from
dwindling resources'.
Figure 3. World Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 2005
