Putting the carbon footprint of livestock in perspective

Putting the carbon footprint of livestock in perspective

Washington Ag Today May 31, 2010 Discussion of the environmental impact of animal agriculture is very different when you talk in terms of productivity instead of individual animals.

Washington State University assistant professor of animal science, Jude Capper, says there has been a lot of work done looking at the carbon footprint of a cow, a farm or acre, on an individual basis. She says while that makes logical sense you really have to think about it on an output basis, whether it’s milk, beef, pork or poultry.

Capper: “There is the perception that now farms are bigger, animals are more productive and so their carbon footprint is actually higher. Well, in actual fact this is not true. We have made huge advances in efficiency and productivity. And if we go back to say 1944, that was the year we had the peak number of dairy cows in the states at 25.6 million. Since then we have cut our dairy cow numbers by 60%. They are down to 9.2 million but produce 59% more milk. So as a consequence of that huge improvement in productivity we have actually cut our carbon footprint per gallon of milk by 63%, which is just a huge achievement.”

Capper is currently doing research on the environmental impact of a pound of beef produced in 2007 compared to 1975, which she is sure will show a reduced carbon footprint per pound.

With an increasing world population and shrinking agricultural land availability, Capper says the only way to feed the planet will be through technology that improves efficiency and productivity.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

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