http://www.un.org/News/

UN Report: Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars

Cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as
measured in CO2 equivalent, than transportation, and smarter
production methods, including improved animal diets to reduce enteric
fermentation and consequent methane emissions, are urgently needed,
according to a new United Nations report released today.

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's
most serious environmental problems," senior UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) official Henning Steinfeld said. "Urgent action is
required to remedy the situation."

Cattle-rearing is also a major source of land and water degradation,
according to the FAO report, Livestock's Long Shadow-Environmental
Issues and Options, of which Mr. Steinfeld is the senior author.

"The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut
by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its
present level," it warns.

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the
livestock sector accounts for 9 per cent of CO2 deriving from
human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even
more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 per cent of
human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming
Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 per cent of all human-induced
methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the
digestive system of ruminants, and 64 per cent of ammonia, which
contributes significantly to acid rain.

With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy
products every year, the report notes. Global meat production is
projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to
465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580
to 1043 million tonnes.

The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other
agricultural sub-sector. It provides livelihoods to about 1.3 billion
people and contributes about 40 per cent to global agricultural
output. For many poor farmers in developing countries livestock are
also a source of renewable energy for draft and an essential source of
organic fertilizer for their crops.

Livestock now use 30 per cent of the earth's entire land surface,
mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 per cent of the global
arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As
forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of
deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70
per cent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about
20 per cent of pastures considered degraded through overgrazing,
compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands
where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management
contribute to advancing desertification.

The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the
earth's increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other
things to water pollution from animal wastes, antibiotics and
hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides
used to spray feed crops.

Beyond improving animal diets, proposed remedies to the multiple
problems include soil conservation methods together with controlled
livestock exclusion from sensitive areas; setting up biogas plant
initiatives to recycle manure; improving efficiency of irrigation
systems; and introducing full-cost pricing for water together with
taxes to discourage large-scale livestock concentration close to cities.