Beef cattle are a critical part of a sustainable food system

Dr. Sara Place Author

09/02/2020 Added

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Dr. Sara Place with Elanco Animal Health discusses the role of beef cattle in a sustainable food production system.
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[00:00:11.727]All right, thank you all for joining virtually.
[00:00:14.440]Today I'm gonna talk to you about beef cattle
[00:00:16.290]and how they're a critical part
[00:00:17.750]of a sustainable food system.
[00:00:19.970]So my name is Sarah Place.
[00:00:21.120]I'm the chief Sustainability Officer
[00:00:23.220]with Elanco animal health,
[00:00:25.570]and hopefully I add some understanding
[00:00:28.060]to this issue that can be controversial
[00:00:30.390]and a little bit complex, which is sustainability.
[00:00:34.760]So just to start,
[00:00:37.030]we think about this issue of sustainability.
[00:00:40.810]It is an issue that,
[00:00:41.980]as I just mentioned is quite complicated.
[00:00:43.840]And part of the reason why is because
[00:00:45.530]it's an issue that cuts across multiple domains.
[00:00:48.060]So it's an issue that focuses on the environment,
[00:00:51.500]social issues, and economic issues.
[00:00:54.170]And how all those issues can intersect
[00:00:56.320]and have relationships with one another and also trade offs.
[00:01:00.070]So what's on the screen right now is just kind of a
[00:01:02.130]Venn diagram model of what I like to represent
[00:01:04.790]as just some of the issues
[00:01:06.023]that can relate to the sustainability of food.
[00:01:09.100]Specifically beef, or even
[00:01:10.890]more broader issue cross all foods.
[00:01:13.760]And when we're looking at this list is not exhaustive.
[00:01:17.160]But it gives you an idea of all the different complex issues
[00:01:19.084]that can be a part of sustainability.
[00:01:21.420]So in the environmental domain,
[00:01:22.760]we have environmental footprints.
[00:01:24.480]Things like carbon, water, footprints,
[00:01:27.110]which is something that often
[00:01:28.630]gets talked about with sustainability.
[00:01:31.480]But there are other environmental issues as well.
[00:01:34.540]From a standpoint of ecosystem services
[00:01:36.900]whit the benefits that we get from nature.
[00:01:39.060]Which is incredibly important
[00:01:40.250]with regard to beef and the importance of grazing lands.
[00:01:43.230]To social issues, right?
[00:01:45.610]Like animal welfare,
[00:01:48.200]the culture and traditions
[00:01:49.850]of both eaters and producers of food,
[00:01:53.060]and economic issues from the standpoint of
[00:01:55.380]the viability of the actual farmers
[00:01:57.570]and ranchers that are producing food to the
[00:01:59.720]affability of the food to the consumer.
[00:02:03.510]So as we look at this,
[00:02:04.343]again, it's very complex.
[00:02:05.580]And we're trying to juggle and balance
[00:02:07.230]all these different issues
[00:02:08.280]that it can again at times be in conflict with one another.
[00:02:11.490]And that's why it's such a difficult issue
[00:02:13.310]and seems to be a little bit of a whack a mole game,
[00:02:17.470]if you will, in terms of when one issue is addressed,
[00:02:20.850]there always seems to be another one
[00:02:22.150]that's coming up on the horizon.
[00:02:24.410]The last thing I'll point out to you on this slide
[00:02:26.630]is in the far left hand side of the screen,
[00:02:30.450]that last bullet point there.
[00:02:32.350]Recognizing the role of value judgments and uncertainty,
[00:02:35.478]particularly value judgments
[00:02:37.260]just meaning when we look at some of these issues
[00:02:39.380]with regard to sustainability,
[00:02:41.400]people can have different priority lists, right?
[00:02:44.840]Everyone may agree that all these issues
[00:02:47.340]that are on the screen right now or others are important,
[00:02:50.260]but people may rank them differently.
[00:02:52.340]And that's when the challenges that we have
[00:02:53.870]with when sustainability as well
[00:02:55.450]as we have people with many different perspectives
[00:02:58.310]that are influencing policy discussion.
[00:02:59.813]That are influencing companies
[00:03:01.691]and how individual consumers make their decisions.
[00:03:04.500]And so it can be difficult to balance
[00:03:06.240]all those different areas.
[00:03:08.160]And really just recognizing
[00:03:09.370]there is no single right answer in any of this
[00:03:12.250]when it comes to sustainability.
[00:03:17.290]So that said, a lot of
[00:03:18.580]the conversation around sustainability,
[00:03:20.780]and meat production or beef production specifically,
[00:03:24.970]has been focused around environmental impacts.
[00:03:27.350]And I'll spend a lot of the rest
[00:03:28.600]of this presentation talking about that.
[00:03:30.397]And it's also been focused around the idea
[00:03:32.850]that we are quote, unquote, over consuming meat,
[00:03:36.350]or that we cannot in the future produce enough
[00:03:39.310]in a sustainable manner
[00:03:40.430]to nourish everybody around the world.
[00:03:42.770]So with that in mind, I think it's important
[00:03:44.503]to just kind of take a step back
[00:03:45.820]and really look at where we actually are
[00:03:48.070]with regard to meat consumption globally
[00:03:50.080]and in the United States.
[00:03:52.248]So the global picture is we're looking
[00:03:54.110]at this screen right now.
[00:03:55.120]This is information from the UN FAO
[00:03:58.850]in terms of meat availability
[00:04:01.010]in kilograms per person per year.
[00:04:04.080]So from 1961 to 2013.
[00:04:06.137]And this trend lines just pretty much continued on
[00:04:08.970]the rest of this past decade.
[00:04:11.280]What kinda stands out is it if you look
[00:04:13.230]at our ruminant meats, the bottom part of the graph, right?
[00:04:16.500]Bovine, so we got beef and buffalo meat thrown in there.
[00:04:20.850]And small ruminant meat.
[00:04:22.730]If we look at those trends,
[00:04:24.330]the actual per capita availability
[00:04:26.540]for those different meats has remained quite flat
[00:04:29.620]for the last 50 years.
[00:04:32.290]It's actually increasing below
[00:04:34.160]population growth last decade or so, right?
[00:04:36.410]So we're not on ever increasing path
[00:04:38.607]of increasing amounts of ruminant meat
[00:04:41.140]for each person in the world.
[00:04:43.660]If we look at pork and poultry,
[00:04:44.940]those trends are very different, right?
[00:04:46.320]We have an increasing amount available per person per year.
[00:04:50.570]And so when we talk about increasing
[00:04:52.440]animal source food demand.
[00:04:53.640]In the future, I think it's important just to look at
[00:04:55.410]these trend lines and realize
[00:04:56.880]that it's not the same across all species.
[00:04:59.250]There are certain efficiency advantages
[00:05:01.577]or at least located within certain regions of the world
[00:05:05.150]were more this growth is gonna be happening
[00:05:07.108]that points to the fact that probably poultry and pork
[00:05:09.690]are gonna continue on the trend line that they're on.
[00:05:12.210]And I would argue that probably ruminant meats
[00:05:14.290]are gonna continue on the trend line
[00:05:15.530]they're on as well, right?
[00:05:17.110]So again, this is availability.
[00:05:18.580]It's not necessarily willingness to pay
[00:05:20.530]or (murmurs) in the industry.
[00:05:22.440]But I think it's important to be clear eyed
[00:05:23.910]about what the prevailing trends
[00:05:25.210]have been over the last 50 years.
[00:05:28.850]If we look at the US situation, right?
[00:05:31.340]So we are a more high income country
[00:05:33.520]and we do eat more meat than the world average.
[00:05:36.850]But I think the trends sometimes
[00:05:38.140]may surprise people as well in terms of
[00:05:40.570]from 1970 till today,
[00:05:42.230]if we look at this USDA Economic Research Service data,
[00:05:46.380]the total amount of meat that we're eating today, right?
[00:05:49.107]That's actually available per person per day
[00:05:52.190]is only 4% greater than 1970, okay?
[00:05:55.170]Pretty insignificant, it's pretty much flat, okay?
[00:05:58.690]But a similar trend has happened in the US
[00:06:01.550]as around most of the developed world
[00:06:05.710]in that we're actually eating less red meat,
[00:06:09.100]specifically beef, we've gone from about three ounces
[00:06:11.600]down to 1.8 ounces per person per day in the United States
[00:06:15.460]compared to the 1970s.
[00:06:17.870]So we've dropped the amount of red meat that we're eating,
[00:06:19.890]and we're eating more poultry specifically.
[00:06:23.510]So again, this is a fairly universal trend
[00:06:25.430]that's taken place.
[00:06:26.720]Total amount of meat is the same.
[00:06:28.980]So I think this is always again,
[00:06:30.210]important context when folks say,
[00:06:31.707]"We're eating too much meat."
[00:06:33.010]Or talk about meat, and usually one conflated
[00:06:36.030]only with red meat, right?
[00:06:37.490]We're missing the poultry piece.
[00:06:38.730]And of course, I'm not even including fish on here.
[00:06:41.341]But I think that that statement that we're eating too much,
[00:06:44.100]it's very interesting, right?
[00:06:45.160]Because what are the criteria for too much, right?
[00:06:48.440]If that's true, then I guess we've been eating too much
[00:06:50.850]for the last 40 years, right?
[00:06:52.220]And some of these arguments
[00:06:54.792]are maybe less based on data
[00:06:56.740]and more based on perspective of meat eating
[00:07:00.610]and other issues that go with it
[00:07:02.718]that are almost ethical in nature
[00:07:04.510]that it kind of drive a lot of this conversation.
[00:07:10.200]So that said, there is a lot of positives
[00:07:13.700]to eating animal source foods
[00:07:15.050]and just what animal source foods provide
[00:07:16.810]to humanity that often gets left off this discussion
[00:07:19.560]'cause we're usually talking about it again,
[00:07:20.920]from a wealthy country perspective, from the US
[00:07:23.900]and other places where there's these arguments
[00:07:25.750]of excess being made.
[00:07:28.190]But in reality, the more pressing issue in the world
[00:07:30.700]or the one that has a direct impact on people
[00:07:33.230]and their quality of life
[00:07:34.350]is really under consumption, right?
[00:07:36.440]Of critical central micronutrients
[00:07:38.300]that can often be found in higher amounts
[00:07:40.600]in animal source foods.
[00:07:42.210]So there's a lot of information happening on the slide here.
[00:07:44.240]This is a great infographic
[00:07:45.530]or even part of an infographic
[00:07:46.990]from the livestock lab at University of Florida.
[00:07:50.060]It's really focused on developing countries
[00:07:52.610]and how can you increase
[00:07:53.980]animal source food availability through science,
[00:07:56.210]through management practices changing, right?
[00:08:01.460]And really the impetus behind this lab
[00:08:03.329]and driving this is that stat
[00:08:05.530]that's at the top of this slide.
[00:08:07.140]It says nearly one in four children under five is stunted.
[00:08:12.090]So nearly one in four children around the world
[00:08:14.657]are not going to meet
[00:08:15.740]their full potential cognitively or physically.
[00:08:19.290]And in part that's due to the fact
[00:08:20.910]that they're not getting the right
[00:08:22.260]and proper amounts of nutrients, right?
[00:08:25.350]It's not only caused by food, but a key part of it is food.
[00:08:29.360]And we know and we've seen repeatedly
[00:08:31.780]in research that adding animal source foods
[00:08:35.130]to children's diets,
[00:08:36.440]especially to vulnerable populations like pregnant mothers,
[00:08:39.824]diets can have big impacts
[00:08:42.020]on the quality of life for people.
[00:08:44.090]So again, while this discussion
[00:08:45.430]is often focused on the wealthy nations
[00:08:47.846]of the world and this discussion of eating too much,
[00:08:51.279]the reality is the more pressing issue in the world
[00:08:54.290]is trying to increase availability,
[00:08:55.800]these populations are more vulnerable
[00:08:57.910]to nutrient deficiencies.
[00:09:02.600]So that said,
[00:09:03.433]when we go through the rest of this presentation
[00:09:04.890]is kinda hit some of those greatest hits
[00:09:07.150]of that whack a mole I mentioned earlier, right?
[00:09:09.180]Where we seem to have these repeat issues
[00:09:10.800]that come up again and again,
[00:09:12.550]as they relate to sustainability.
[00:09:14.040]And hopefully as I go through this kinda separate out
[00:09:16.190]fact from fiction,
[00:09:17.330]and also highlight the complexity
[00:09:18.840]of some of these issues.
[00:09:20.360]But I think they are really key
[00:09:21.480]'cause they're driving a lot of the conversation
[00:09:23.160]around sustainability.
[00:09:24.540]And some of these misperceptions
[00:09:25.930]can really have big implications
[00:09:28.109]for the beef industry in the US around the world.
[00:09:31.360]So the first of these issues comes down
[00:09:33.190]to feed food competition
[00:09:34.780]or just overall resource use competition.
[00:09:37.780]So what this means is thinking about
[00:09:39.650]animal feed as a competition with human food, right?
[00:09:43.430]The idea that animals specifically beef cattle
[00:09:45.980]are stealing food from the mouths of babes,
[00:09:47.740]we'd be better off without them,
[00:09:50.720]without the quote, unquote, middleman
[00:09:52.517]taking feed resources or taking land resources,
[00:09:55.660]diverting it towards the quote, unquote,
[00:09:58.390]inefficient use of food production.
[00:10:00.280]Which is what some people view beef as.
[00:10:05.780]So what's key here is thinking about
[00:10:07.230]the bigger picture and the role
[00:10:09.903]that ruminant animals, right?
[00:10:11.500]We're talking about beef cattle here,
[00:10:12.590]but really it's across all ruminants.
[00:10:14.710]What role are they really playing in our food system?
[00:10:17.530]And really, why the heck did we domesticate
[00:10:20.010]these animals in the first place?
[00:10:22.110]And I would say one of the real key reasons
[00:10:24.660]is because these animals act as upcyclers, right?
[00:10:28.070]So we've all heard of recycling,
[00:10:29.580]taking something and making something of equivalent value.
[00:10:32.670]Upcycling is this idea of taking something
[00:10:34.840]that's a little to no value
[00:10:37.140]and making the higher value product.
[00:10:39.830]And really, this is where rune nets shine, right?
[00:10:42.690]They're taking human inedible feed resources
[00:10:46.236]and creating higher quality products for human use, right?
[00:10:51.950]So if we think about this simplified diagram
[00:10:53.730]that's in the middle of the side.
[00:10:55.040]Really what beef is,
[00:10:57.430]is a capture in a transformation of solar energy
[00:11:00.540]into much more valuable products, right?
[00:11:03.030]Ultimately, that's what agriculture is, right?
[00:11:05.073]It is as a solar energy driven carbon capture industry.
[00:11:08.900]And we don't think about beef as a photosynthetic product,
[00:11:11.900]but really that's what it is.
[00:11:14.550]So when cattle are consuming these plants,
[00:11:17.150]they're really concentrating nutrients
[00:11:20.245]in the result in product, right?
[00:11:23.250]In the agricultural system.
[00:11:25.260]They are gonna lose energy.
[00:11:26.790]That's the basics of ecology
[00:11:28.360]when you go from one trophic level to another.
[00:11:31.140]But again, much of that energy
[00:11:32.390]is not available to us humans anyways,
[00:11:34.350]'cause it's in the form of cellulose.
[00:11:37.180]So just to further illustrate this point,
[00:11:39.360]this donut charts in the bottom
[00:11:40.930]left hand part of the screen.
[00:11:43.240]This is the US wide average
[00:11:45.410]for research that we did
[00:11:46.880]at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association
[00:11:49.580]funded by the Beef Checkoff,
[00:11:51.030]looking at our regional feed use
[00:11:56.100]from all the segments of the beef industry
[00:11:57.920]from cow calf, to stocker, to feedlot.
[00:12:01.170]And what we see is that on average
[00:12:03.140]for the whole lifecycle of grain-finished beef,
[00:12:05.990]82% of what cattle eat is not grain, it's forage.
[00:12:10.720]Mostly grazed forage,
[00:12:12.030]but also any of the harvested forages
[00:12:14.480]from hay to psychologists that we feed cattle.
[00:12:17.410]Another 7% are all the mostly human in animal byproducts
[00:12:21.370]that we use within the beef cattle industry.
[00:12:23.760]Whether it's wet corn gluten feed,
[00:12:25.960]distillers grains,
[00:12:27.412]it could be cottonseed meal, could be anything, right?
[00:12:29.770]All those byproducts that come
[00:12:31.080]from the processing and plants for fiber,
[00:12:33.760]or for fuel, biofuels, right?
[00:12:35.690]For human food, that are leftovers
[00:12:38.170]and would be waste without being able
[00:12:39.860]to be upcycled through a ruminant.
[00:12:41.830]And then only about 11% of the feed resources
[00:12:45.199]required by beef cattle are actually grain.
[00:12:48.050]Of course, in the United States
[00:12:49.350]most of that is corn, right?
[00:12:52.880]But that's really the feed that is directly
[00:12:55.396]in competition with human foods.
[00:12:57.380]So about 90% of what cattle are eating
[00:13:00.530]is not directly in competition with human food production.
[00:13:07.060]So we can expand upon this a little further.
[00:13:09.570]And think about how we can express
[00:13:11.720]feed conversion efficiency a few different ways.
[00:13:13.610]And really, when we see feed conversion efficiency cited
[00:13:16.490]in sustainability papers,
[00:13:18.360]that's what that issues or the metric is trying to get at
[00:13:21.510]is this idea of resource competition
[00:13:23.160]and efficiency of resource use, right?
[00:13:26.160]So this slide here is just no illustration
[00:13:28.370]of a couple of things.
[00:13:30.204]One of talking about feed conversion efficiency
[00:13:32.830]in different ways, but also highlighting
[00:13:35.110]that in the sustainability space
[00:13:37.470]you can express data multiple ways all being correct,
[00:13:41.470]and get kind of different answers
[00:13:42.910]about which system is quote, unquote, better, right?
[00:13:46.580]And that's always a caution point
[00:13:48.050]is that a lot of this comes down to
[00:13:50.265]the determinations that you make
[00:13:52.740]or again, back to your own value judgments
[00:13:54.880]about what you view as the right way to express data.
[00:13:59.130]So if we're looking at this slide,
[00:14:00.780]we're comparing grain-finished beef as a lifecycle, right?
[00:14:04.110]Again, we're including cow calf and stocker here.
[00:14:06.810]Dairy cattle, and these are just some generic numbers
[00:14:09.190]coming out of the UK.
[00:14:10.650]Broiler, chickens, and pork.
[00:14:12.710]And this first column that's in black
[00:14:14.420]is looking at dry matter feed conversion
[00:14:16.750]across all four of those species and systems.
[00:14:21.400]So again, this is a full lifecycle number for beef.
[00:14:24.120]But most folks would stop here and say,
[00:14:25.810]look at the ruminant meat production, right?
[00:14:27.350]If we were to swap out lamb for the beef,
[00:14:30.440]similar ratio there.
[00:14:32.550]So most folks would say,
[00:14:33.383]"Wow, that is really inefficient
[00:14:34.970]as compared to pigs and chickens
[00:14:36.380]or other meat animals on the side."
[00:14:38.890]So maybe if we were gonna eat meat,
[00:14:40.930]we should only eat pork and chicken.
[00:14:43.490]So that is an argument that's made often
[00:14:45.170]and usually these type of numbers
[00:14:46.750]are used to justify set arguments, right?
[00:14:50.170]That doesn't take into account
[00:14:51.870]what I just showed you on the prior slide, right?
[00:14:53.670]Most of those feed resources
[00:14:55.240]are not in direct competition with human food use.
[00:14:58.420]So this middle column is saying,
[00:15:00.060]what is the potentially human animal feed
[00:15:03.400]being consumed by these animals
[00:15:06.040]per unit of library gain or
[00:15:07.430]per kilogram or per pound of fresh milk
[00:15:12.220]that's being produced.
[00:15:14.100]So when we look at that a lot of those differences
[00:15:15.970]when we zoom in on the meat animal species,
[00:15:19.040]a lot of these differences across species really go away.
[00:15:21.910]Which is kind of interesting, right?
[00:15:23.180]Essentially, that human edible feed inputs
[00:15:25.700]are pretty similar per unit of gain
[00:15:29.190]across all three species.
[00:15:30.520]And again, that's because most of the feed resources,
[00:15:32.530]mostly animals life save that last 150, 160 days.
[00:15:36.550]not gonna be in a feedlot,
[00:15:37.790]not gonna be consuming much grain resources
[00:15:40.700]when you think about beef.
[00:15:42.720]So this third column,
[00:15:43.700]this is kind of taking this feed conversion efficiency
[00:15:46.810]and flipping it on its head a little bit
[00:15:49.910]and saying, what are the value the value of the proteins
[00:15:55.920]being generated from beef, from milk, from pork,
[00:15:59.960]from chicken to people.
[00:16:02.310]And by value, I mean what is the
[00:16:04.268]amino acid composition, right?
[00:16:06.490]The actual building blocks of protein that we need.
[00:16:09.760]And how bioavailable are those amino acids in that protein.
[00:16:14.580]So that really cuts to the chase
[00:16:15.940]in terms of what we need
[00:16:17.480]from these animal source foods and from foods in general.
[00:16:19.900]We don't need crude protein, we need those amino acids.
[00:16:23.230]So what does that protein value of beef milk,
[00:16:25.810]pork, and chicken versus
[00:16:27.640]that same measure of protein quality and amount
[00:16:30.130]of the feed resources going into those animals?
[00:16:33.110]Okay?
[00:16:33.943]So hopefully that made sense.
[00:16:34.776]In this case we're flipping it on its head,
[00:16:36.020]so a higher numbers better.
[00:16:38.310]And a number above one actually means
[00:16:40.640]generating more high quality protein
[00:16:42.490]within the system that we're using.
[00:16:45.190]And as you look on the slide
[00:16:46.880]the ruminant species in this case are well above one,
[00:16:50.490]engendering a lot more high quality protein
[00:16:51.987]that's being used within the system,
[00:16:53.870]whereas the monogastric animals are not.
[00:16:56.970]And this is really a reflection
[00:16:58.390]of the biology and the different species, right?
[00:17:00.620]Monogastric animals are like us, pigs, and chickens.
[00:17:04.310]They're omnivores, they need to consume
[00:17:07.970]their dietary essential amino acids, right?
[00:17:10.237]And so that means you're gonna be consuming
[00:17:12.000]more high quality protein,
[00:17:13.640]usually in the form of soybean meal here in the US.
[00:17:16.470]And that is more high quality,
[00:17:18.080]potentially human animal protein
[00:17:19.950]going into those species as compared to dairy cattle,
[00:17:22.927]and beef cattle, right?
[00:17:25.260]So again, as you look from left to right,
[00:17:27.530]the answer of which is quote, unquote, best
[00:17:30.240]totally changes, right?
[00:17:31.710]So transparently my bias is that third column, right?
[00:17:34.130]I would say that is what we really care about
[00:17:37.010]in terms of actually producing
[00:17:38.561]the nutrients that we all need.
[00:17:41.250]But again, others would say,
[00:17:42.807]"No, we had to look at that first column."
[00:17:45.210]So again, sustainability is complex.
[00:17:47.550]It really depends on how you're presenting
[00:17:49.490]this data in terms of which system
[00:17:52.020]you're gonna say is better.
[00:17:55.784]Now, I've been talking about direct feed food competition.
[00:17:59.518]Meaning is the actual material going into the animal
[00:18:02.860]potentially human edible?
[00:18:04.800]And usually in in those type of conversations
[00:18:08.110]you'd have with people about that.
[00:18:09.370]They would say, "Well, what about the land?"
[00:18:10.640]Right?
[00:18:11.694]"Couldn't we have used the land
[00:18:12.527]that was growing the corn to grow something else."
[00:18:15.580]Right?
[00:18:16.413]Or whatever the whatever the system may be.
[00:18:19.800]So it's important to kind of take a step back
[00:18:21.590]and think about what are the different
[00:18:23.290]land resources used by beef in the US,
[00:18:25.657]and how much arable land really
[00:18:27.430]does get used for beef production.
[00:18:31.150]So to kind of give ourselves
[00:18:32.730]a graphical representation of this,
[00:18:34.560]this is information from the American farmland trust.
[00:18:37.380]There are a group that's very interested
[00:18:38.770]in all the red splotches all over this map,
[00:18:40.820]which is where we have urban areas
[00:18:42.770]and the PERI urban areas around there
[00:18:44.570]that are often high quality farmland,
[00:18:46.380]they get lost to development, right?
[00:18:48.739]So that's a serious issue in the United States.
[00:18:50.970]And actually, one of the land use changes
[00:18:54.240]is a lot more relevant talks
[00:18:55.370]as compared to things like before station, right?
[00:18:59.500]That's said, the other colors on the map,
[00:19:01.340]this kind of brown color on the right hand side
[00:19:04.140]in the eastern US, right?
[00:19:06.500]That's our forested lands,
[00:19:09.060]the dark green are our cropland,
[00:19:10.940]so in the US Corn Belt, Mississippi River Valley,
[00:19:13.860]Central Valley, California really stands out.
[00:19:16.830]And then the lighter greens would show up
[00:19:18.560]in eastern Oklahoma, Eastern Texas.
[00:19:21.020]And then all the yellow colors on the map
[00:19:23.070]are our pasture and range land resources
[00:19:25.220]in the United States.
[00:19:27.570]So I highlight this to say that
[00:19:29.510]yes, beef does have a larger land footprint
[00:19:32.450]than most other foods
[00:19:33.500]because it's using land that cannot be used
[00:19:35.410]for anything else, right?
[00:19:36.880]So when we think about land use, is a very complex issue.
[00:19:41.050]And just saying how many square meters
[00:19:42.983]or whatever unit of areas required
[00:19:45.810]per unit of land, ignores suitability of land.
[00:19:49.990]It ignores the multi-functionality of land use.
[00:19:52.810]It ignores the quality of land use, right?
[00:19:55.470]So it's a lot more complex
[00:19:56.950]than a simple footprint can make it out to be.
[00:20:00.800]The other thing is if we think about
[00:20:02.410]that number I gave you earlier, about 11%
[00:20:04.840]of the total feed resources
[00:20:06.864]that cattle consumed in the United States is corn.
[00:20:11.000]What that translates into in terms of land area
[00:20:13.500]is about the size of that black box on the screen, right?
[00:20:16.970]So it's not nothing.
[00:20:18.236]However, the area of corn
[00:20:19.970]that goes directly to cattle
[00:20:21.300]in the US is about a fifth of the size of Iowa.
[00:20:25.320]It's about 2% of us cropland acres.
[00:20:28.739]So we can improve the quality of that land use
[00:20:31.770]as we get more new till
[00:20:34.110]and other conservation type tillage
[00:20:36.650]and other conservation practices
[00:20:38.523]that improve the quality of that land use.
[00:20:42.140]But it's just not a massive amount of land
[00:20:44.470]in terms of the total land area required for beef,
[00:20:47.180]but it's actually in direct competition
[00:20:49.380]with other potential cropland uses
[00:20:51.220]and plants that we would want to eat directly, right?
[00:20:53.760]And as I told you, of course,
[00:20:54.880]we generate more protein for the human food supply,
[00:20:57.610]high quality protein by taking the corn
[00:21:00.310]in that equivalent area, that black box
[00:21:01.900]and running it through cattle,
[00:21:03.103]than if we were to eat the corn directly.
[00:21:07.470]The other thing is, of course,
[00:21:08.440]as I referenced about quality of land use,
[00:21:10.272]none of these things are static, right?
[00:21:12.760]And one example there is just
[00:21:14.420]how things have changed over time.
[00:21:16.020]If we just look at USDA data from 1975 to now.
[00:21:20.810]And the total amount of corn
[00:21:23.390]that goes to animal feed actually has increased.
[00:21:25.700]It's increased 52% over time, okay?
[00:21:29.420]But corn yields have gone up 104%.
[00:21:32.600]So what that translates into
[00:21:33.780]is that even though we are producing
[00:21:36.970]more corn and we're feeding more corn
[00:21:38.740]to all the livestock species in the United States,
[00:21:41.260]the total land area required
[00:21:44.100]to actually produce that corn has dropped 26%.
[00:21:48.540]It's dropped by over 10 million acres, right?
[00:21:51.360]So that's pretty incredible.
[00:21:52.700]And that's really what we would call
[00:21:54.090]a decoupling of total production,
[00:21:57.040]from the inputs that are going
[00:21:58.240]into that system, right?
[00:21:59.260]In terms of land area input.
[00:22:01.940]And at the bottom you can see
[00:22:03.010]that we've increased the total
[00:22:04.250]amount of animal source food production
[00:22:06.730]over this equivalent timeframe by 95%, right?
[00:22:09.870]So shrunk the land area, increase the total output,
[00:22:12.911]producing more with less.
[00:22:15.050]More with less alone is not sustainability
[00:22:17.380]but it is a key part of this whole discussion
[00:22:19.670]because we do have an increasing population, right?
[00:22:22.580]So we do have to pay attention
[00:22:23.830]about the land area required,
[00:22:27.520]particularly arable land inputs required
[00:22:29.550]per unit of production,
[00:22:31.710]because we do have a finite amount of land in the world.
[00:22:37.580]The other thing I would say on this whole
[00:22:38.750]resource use competition piece is that it is complex.
[00:22:42.130]And one of the things
[00:22:42.980]that gets thrown out there is trying to say
[00:22:45.240]we're gonna substitute one thing for another.
[00:22:47.570]And that misses some of the complexities,
[00:22:49.270]the interconnections,
[00:22:50.150]and I'll expand on that a little bit later.
[00:22:51.960]But also the fact that we think about
[00:22:53.830]just livestock in general of course,
[00:22:55.250]beef cattle, they're providing more than just food, right?
[00:22:59.180]They're providing more than just beef.
[00:23:00.430]They're providing leather.
[00:23:01.540]They're providing all sorts
[00:23:02.770]of other pharmaceutical byproducts
[00:23:04.410]that are really important to society, right?
[00:23:07.950]They're providing fertilizer and nutrient cycling services.
[00:23:11.600]They're upcycling all those byproducts.
[00:23:14.140]They're providing fuel and a lot of cases
[00:23:15.980]when we think about cattle manure,
[00:23:16.813]and we think about this more globally, cow dung
[00:23:18.840]is actually quite an important source of fuel.
[00:23:22.150]It's an important building material in some cases, right?
[00:23:25.290]Cattle are still important for their draft power
[00:23:27.250]in many places in the world.
[00:23:28.920]They're central to livelihoods
[00:23:30.330]here in the United States and around the world,
[00:23:32.370]central to culture, right?
[00:23:34.340]So all these things are tangible
[00:23:35.940]and intangible of how livestock and cattle
[00:23:38.740]specifically are important to human beings
[00:23:41.560]can't be ignored in these discussions either, right?
[00:23:44.360]Everything can't be about greenhouse
[00:23:45.850]gas emissions or land footprints, right?
[00:23:48.000]We do have to take that broader picture.
[00:23:52.520]So speaking of greenhouse gas emissions,
[00:23:53.557]a little bit of context on this issue
[00:23:55.640]'cause it is quite complex
[00:23:57.220]in terms of all the ins and outs,
[00:24:01.250]what is the right statistic
[00:24:02.610]or not the right statistic to use
[00:24:04.390]when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions?
[00:24:07.750]So just to orient ourselves
[00:24:08.583]on the situation of United States,
[00:24:10.900]if we were to look at the official government
[00:24:12.710]data from the EPA, every April the EPA puts out
[00:24:16.950]an emission inventory looking at
[00:24:18.410]all the different sectors of the economy,
[00:24:20.740]and looking at what emissions come
[00:24:22.130]from which activities, right?
[00:24:24.820]Including agriculture.
[00:24:26.550]And so if we look at that emission inventory
[00:24:28.270]for the latest year, that's 2018.
[00:24:31.420]About 2.1% greenhouse gas emissions
[00:24:35.060]come from these cattle directly.
[00:24:36.890]So this is all the methane
[00:24:38.090]that cattle so called belch up
[00:24:40.037]and any methane and nitrous oxide
[00:24:42.110]that comes from animal manure, managed manure.
[00:24:45.520]So there's another 7% or so emissions
[00:24:47.937]that come from agriculture.
[00:24:49.410]Seattle together, it's about 9% of us emissions
[00:24:52.650]come from producing food and fiber in the United States.
[00:24:55.970]And actually, if we add in forestry
[00:24:57.890]and all their land uses, it's actually in that carbon sink.
[00:25:00.820]We added together all the carbon
[00:25:02.130]that gets sequestered by trees,
[00:25:04.230]grasslands, cropland, etc, with the emissions.
[00:25:08.140]So that's a key thing to keep in mind
[00:25:10.530]as we talk about all this.
[00:25:12.020]The other thing is even waste disposal like landfills.
[00:25:15.110]And it's almost as much as beef cattle do, right?
[00:25:17.360]So this is methane that comes from landfills.
[00:25:19.300]And some of the material
[00:25:21.040]that's generating this methane is actually food waste,
[00:25:24.130]which is another key issue
[00:25:25.400]when we think about the sustainability of food.
[00:25:27.600]And there's a lot of resources
[00:25:28.433]that go into producing edible food
[00:25:31.120]that then get thrown away.
[00:25:33.430]And if they get thrown away to actual landfills,
[00:25:35.670]it's kind of a double whammy
[00:25:36.690]of we had the resources used
[00:25:38.402]to produce the food that was edible that wasn't consumed,
[00:25:41.380]and then it also produced greenhouse gas emissions
[00:25:43.540]at the end of its lifecycle.
[00:25:46.610]But when we think about the greenhouse gas emissions,
[00:25:48.700]the US what really dominates the picture
[00:25:50.520]is fossil fuel emissions, right?
[00:25:51.940]We're a post industrial society, if you will.
[00:25:54.930]We have a lot of vehicles.
[00:25:56.310]We burn a lot of fossil fuels for electricity use
[00:25:58.970]to do things like record remote webinars, right?
[00:26:02.600]All the plastic that we have in our society.
[00:26:04.630]All these different things
[00:26:05.640]come from fossil fuel burning fossil fuel use.
[00:26:09.100]And so that makes up the majority
[00:26:11.140]of our emissions in the United States.
[00:26:13.417]And really a majority of the emissions in the world
[00:26:15.630]come from CO2 emissions burning fossil fuels.
[00:26:22.230]So just to dig into this a little deeper,
[00:26:24.040]because one of the other key issues
[00:26:25.700]that happen with using statistics
[00:26:28.750]regarding greenhouse gas emissions
[00:26:30.410]and beef cattle is there's a lot of conflation that happens.
[00:26:34.000]So global estimates used to be less
[00:26:36.360]and all livestock species get conflated with beef cattle.
[00:26:39.430]This happens again and again, okay?
[00:26:41.810]So what we're looking at on the screen here
[00:26:42.850]is just the global greenhouse gas emissions
[00:26:45.490]as they were in 2010.
[00:26:46.797]And these different bars are kind of breaking out
[00:26:48.820]the different contributions of different segments
[00:26:51.280]to kind of clarify this picture.
[00:26:54.480]So in 2010, if we start over
[00:26:55.920]on the left hand side of the screen,
[00:26:57.033]this big blue bar, we emitted 49 gigatonnes
[00:27:01.970]of greenhouse gas emissions in 2010.
[00:27:05.340]So this is from all human activities.
[00:27:07.680]And of that, that purple bar
[00:27:10.500]that's the next one over to the right,
[00:27:13.070]is what came from livestock from a life cycle perspective.
[00:27:17.280]So life cycle, meaning all the feed
[00:27:20.360]required for these animals,
[00:27:22.380]including any sort of deforestation activities, right?
[00:27:27.220]For example, if we were in South America
[00:27:30.190]and we had forest that was cleared,
[00:27:32.040]that would be counted towards livestock in this case.
[00:27:35.140]So 14 1/2% of global emissions
[00:27:37.460]came from global livestock production.
[00:27:40.300]Often this number gets used
[00:27:41.780]when people are talking about cattle,
[00:27:43.940]but in reality cattle are subset
[00:27:45.890]of that 14 half percent, right?
[00:27:47.710]So beef cattle specifically globally
[00:27:49.690]emit about 6% of emissions.
[00:27:51.890]Dairy cattle emit about 3% of emissions,
[00:27:54.710]so 9% total for cattle.
[00:27:57.150]If we were to zoom in even more to the North American
[00:28:00.770]beef and dairy systems, right?
[00:28:03.025]US and Canada specifically,
[00:28:06.100]we emit about 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions,
[00:28:09.650]beef and dairy together.
[00:28:11.410]So hopefully that makes sense
[00:28:12.590]as you go from right to left is we break that all out.
[00:28:16.040]The absolute contribution really does matter
[00:28:18.290]in terms of how much us agriculture emits globally,
[00:28:21.750]because when we're trying to affect
[00:28:22.930]our global emissions and global average concentrations
[00:28:27.070]of different gases in the atmosphere, right?
[00:28:28.710]So that 1% number is important.
[00:28:31.290]Doesn't mean that we should work on reducing emissions.
[00:28:33.530]But hopefully, it's pretty intuitive
[00:28:35.610]that the absolute impacts
[00:28:37.060]that the beef and dairy industries can have
[00:28:39.710]on the global greenhouse
[00:28:40.640]gas emission budget is pretty minor.
[00:28:45.980]None of these things are static around the world.
[00:28:48.040]And just illustrate that,
[00:28:49.050]this is the greenhouse gas emissions per unit or protein
[00:28:52.010]for beef production systems across the globe.
[00:28:54.830]This is information from a publication in 2013.
[00:28:58.900]But the differences still kind of remain
[00:29:01.820]in terms of what's driving the different colors
[00:29:05.120]on this map are differences
[00:29:06.530]in productivity of the system, right?
[00:29:08.400]So the darker greens on the map are we have
[00:29:11.310]lower carbon footprints, the US, Western Europe,
[00:29:14.900]Western Europe's beef production system
[00:29:16.580]looks particularly good
[00:29:17.660]because a lot of it actually comes from dairy.
[00:29:19.780]And a lot of the emissions
[00:29:20.990]get allocated to dairy cattle, right?
[00:29:23.360]So there's more of an even split there.
[00:29:25.734]The lighter green like we see in South America,
[00:29:28.180]parts of Southeast Asia are kinda
[00:29:29.630]intermediate carbon footprints
[00:29:31.130]and the purple colors on the map
[00:29:32.530]can have carbon footprints that are 50 times greater
[00:29:35.620]than they are in the United States, right?
[00:29:37.540]So that's a big variation.
[00:29:39.810]A lot of it comes down to how many live animals
[00:29:41.850]are required to produce beef.
[00:29:43.890]We think about ruminant animal production.
[00:29:46.380]Things like the reproductive efficiency
[00:29:48.110]of the animal, right?
[00:29:49.390]How quick they're growing.
[00:29:50.450]How long does it take the animal to get to slaughter
[00:29:53.120]really drives how much total feed resources,
[00:29:55.690]how much total greenhouse gas emissions
[00:29:57.440]are gonna be produced per unit of beef, right?
[00:30:01.360]So all those things that come back to again, efficiency,
[00:30:04.060]efficiency alone is not sustainability
[00:30:05.830]but it is a really key driver of a lot of
[00:30:07.326]these metrics that we care about.
[00:30:12.670]So that said, I'm gonna go a little bit more deep
[00:30:15.240]into some of these issues with regard to methane, right?
[00:30:19.690]So this is something that seems to always be news.
[00:30:22.120]And recently we add a whole commercial episode,
[00:30:26.100]if you will, from Burger King about gassy cows.
[00:30:29.210]And one clarification, right?
[00:30:30.360]Most of the mentions,
[00:30:31.280]they actually come out the animal's mouth, right?
[00:30:32.900]Not the other end.
[00:30:34.235]But ruminant animals they're naturally produce methane.
[00:30:38.553]There're these actually the subset of microbes
[00:30:40.310]within the rumen called methanogens
[00:30:42.598]take the waste products and fermentation,
[00:30:44.750]take carbon dioxide and take hydrogen gas
[00:30:47.720]and produce methane, right?
[00:30:49.467]So it again, is a normal part of human functioning.
[00:30:52.640]And really, those advantages
[00:30:53.960]are actually quite key
[00:30:55.070]in the whole ecosystem in the rumen, right?
[00:30:57.060]If they're that hydrogen gas isn't
[00:30:58.860]given an outlet besides the methanogens,
[00:31:03.580]they can potentially slow
[00:31:05.280]the rate of rumen fermentation, right?
[00:31:06.920]So again, they're not just there by accident,
[00:31:09.780]if that makes sense in terms of this rumen ecosystem.
[00:31:12.960]So about once a minute cattle,
[00:31:15.120]they produce all this gas.
[00:31:16.924]Most of it is CO2, some of it's methane.
[00:31:19.130]They're removed from their mouth
[00:31:20.220]and process tells you rotation.
[00:31:22.920]Now what's important is that most folks
[00:31:25.100]especially probably lay public they think
[00:31:27.100]that when we feed cattle corn,
[00:31:28.610]we feed cattle more concentrate grains,
[00:31:31.440]concentrate feeds,
[00:31:33.080]that will actually increase methane emissions.
[00:31:35.313]It's actually the opposite, right?
[00:31:37.080]The more fermentable carbohydrates,
[00:31:39.540]higher present starch that we have in an animal's diet
[00:31:41.870]or ruminant animals diet,
[00:31:43.070]the lower methane emissions will be.
[00:31:45.830]Really this comes down to the efficiency
[00:31:47.580]of energy capture of the animals diet, right?
[00:31:50.320]Methane is a loss of energy.
[00:31:51.810]So the practical consideration here,
[00:31:54.430]if you're thinking about reducing methane
[00:31:55.930]is that you're hopefully increasing
[00:31:57.290]the caloric efficiency of the animal, right?
[00:31:59.560]Capturing morphine energy,
[00:32:00.920]losing less of it to the atmosphere.
[00:32:03.890]And that's what's really key
[00:32:05.520]is one of the things that we do
[00:32:06.673]that we do not advertise
[00:32:09.200]as a methane emission reducing strategy
[00:32:11.670]is finishing cattle in feedlots
[00:32:13.510]and feeding them a corn based diet, right?
[00:32:14.980]A lot of folks have a negative perception
[00:32:17.220]of that practice from a sustainability perspective.
[00:32:20.400]However, it quite clearly reduces
[00:32:22.340]the greenhouse gas emissions of methane specifically
[00:32:24.909]from us cattle production.
[00:32:26.490]Is one of the reasons why we have
[00:32:27.640]such a low carbon footprint compared
[00:32:29.310]to other parts of the world.
[00:32:32.240]So the reason there's so much attention drawn to methane
[00:32:34.520]is it is a bulk of the total
[00:32:37.240]greenhouse gas emissions from beef production
[00:32:39.120]from ruminant production in general.
[00:32:41.620]So if we look from all the feed inputs,
[00:32:44.486]and tractors, and fertilizer, all the way
[00:32:47.640]to the farm gate from cattle leaving the feedlot
[00:32:49.960]to get to the packing plant,
[00:32:51.710]about 56% of the total emissions are from nothing.
[00:32:55.820]So that's why this is such an issue
[00:32:57.860]that gets a lot of attention, right?
[00:33:00.190]It's one of the reasons why
[00:33:01.230]beef has a higher carbon footprint
[00:33:02.620]is 'cause these animals naturally produce methane gas.
[00:33:06.630]What's key is that methane
[00:33:07.970]when we think about it from a perspective
[00:33:09.710]of how it's being accounted for
[00:33:11.820]in most discussions of warming,
[00:33:13.893]is a little bit disjointed between
[00:33:16.560]how we've been accounting for methane
[00:33:18.030]and what his impact is on warming.
[00:33:20.070]And walking through this infographic
[00:33:21.890]that's on the screen hopefully
[00:33:23.200]will drive some that home
[00:33:25.270]about why there may be different ways
[00:33:27.990]to account for methane emissions
[00:33:29.007]and the impact on warming
[00:33:30.720]that will clarify some of these things in the future.
[00:33:34.210]So if we look at this graphic
[00:33:35.880]on the left hand side of the screen,
[00:33:37.130]we have what we all know, right?
[00:33:39.390]Solar energy plus CO2,
[00:33:41.840]and photosynthesis and plants equals carbon capture, right?
[00:33:45.100]Capturing energy from the sun
[00:33:46.800]in the chemical form of carbohydrates,
[00:33:49.260]mostly cellulose, right?
[00:33:51.080]In the world.
[00:33:51.913]And again, that's where ruminants really shine.
[00:33:54.320]Cellulose is the most abundant
[00:33:57.050]organic compound in the world.
[00:33:58.494]And we ruminants are able to unlock that energy
[00:34:01.880]for the rest of us since
[00:34:02.770]we can actually break it down ourselves
[00:34:04.700]in our own digestive system.
[00:34:07.680]So what happens when cattle eat those plants,
[00:34:11.120]they're consuming carbon
[00:34:12.440]that was very recently in the atmosphere.
[00:34:15.850]And that carbon enters the animal,
[00:34:17.560]some of it goes right back out
[00:34:19.050]the other end of the animal, right?
[00:34:20.210]So our ingestible feed, that's a carbon flow.
[00:34:24.090]Some of it gets retained in the animal
[00:34:25.430]in the form of meat, or milk, right?
[00:34:28.710]Usable products.
[00:34:30.387]A lot of it gets respired from the animal,
[00:34:32.030]just as we're respiring right now that CO2,
[00:34:34.710]and then a small fraction
[00:34:35.940]of the total carbon of the animal
[00:34:37.320]just actually gets admitted as methane, right?
[00:34:41.630]So that methane again, one carbon, four hydrogens.
[00:34:44.910]To be clear, methane does have
[00:34:47.173]a more potent effect of trapping heat in years.
[00:34:50.226](murmurs) very well documented
[00:34:52.080]and as a higher radiative forcing potential, as we call it.
[00:34:55.590]But methane is also different than CO2
[00:34:57.760]in terms of doesn't stick around too long
[00:35:00.010]in the atmosphere, right?
[00:35:01.430]So after about 10 or 12 years,
[00:35:03.870]most of the methane emitted from any source,
[00:35:05.930]whether we're talking about a wetland or a ruminant,
[00:35:07.730]whatever it may be,
[00:35:09.240]is gonna get oxidized to carbon dioxide.
[00:35:14.350]So one thing to take away from this,
[00:35:16.110]as you're looking at that left hand side of the screen
[00:35:18.100]is that what ruminants are doing
[00:35:19.580]is essentially recycling biogenic carbon, right?
[00:35:22.320]They're temporarily transforming it
[00:35:23.880]to a higher potency gas,
[00:35:25.770]and then it gets oxidized and the cycle repeats.
[00:35:27.660]Or that carbon atom can cycle around
[00:35:29.510]several times throughout the ecosystem,
[00:35:31.460]many times as it goes through its life, right?
[00:35:37.200]What is key here is the arrow going
[00:35:40.780]from the animal to the methane
[00:35:43.050]and the breakdown of methane, right?
[00:35:45.440]The question is, are those two rates
[00:35:48.360]in sync with one another or are they mismatched?
[00:35:51.040]And this actually matters for all of climate change
[00:35:53.180]'cause ultimately, what we care about
[00:35:55.850]is how human activity is increasing
[00:35:58.210]the concentrations of gases in the atmosphere, right?
[00:36:01.150]Not just per se the emissions
[00:36:02.830]but how increasing emissions
[00:36:04.760]are affecting concentrations atmosphere.
[00:36:07.750]So with methane, what's really key here
[00:36:09.460]is that if the emissions per year are constant,
[00:36:13.020]and pretty much imbalance
[00:36:14.170]with how much is being broken down
[00:36:15.710]then the emissions themselves
[00:36:18.150]are not gonna be increasing
[00:36:19.280]the concentrations in the atmosphere.
[00:36:21.300]It can be a little bit confusing.
[00:36:22.520]One analogy you can kind of think of in your
[00:36:24.210]in your mind is what we really care about
[00:36:26.473]is an analogy of like, say water level in a bathtub,
[00:36:31.310]is the level of the water on the bathtub, right?
[00:36:34.680]So as we all know, if we have a bathtub
[00:36:36.980]with a set water level and we have water
[00:36:38.840]flowing into the bathtub and draining out of the bathtub
[00:36:41.850]at the same rate, right?
[00:36:43.990]The water level itself will not change, right?
[00:36:47.440]So there's a parallel here between
[00:36:49.790]the emissions and the breakdown
[00:36:51.430]of methane in the atmosphere, right?
[00:36:53.560]If those emissions for the input
[00:36:55.270]going into the system is equivalent was being removed,
[00:36:58.470]the level where the concentration of methane
[00:37:00.270]will not change in the atmosphere.
[00:37:02.520]So both things can affect it, right?
[00:37:03.830]We can plug up the drain
[00:37:04.750]or we can increase the amount of emissions.
[00:37:07.050]And this is true for all the different gases
[00:37:08.990]that we're talking about in the atmosphere,
[00:37:10.650]very simplified model.
[00:37:13.060]And the reason I mentioned this with regard to cattle
[00:37:15.030]in the US, and have some more information
[00:37:16.800]in the next couple slides is that
[00:37:18.500]we know the cattle populations
[00:37:20.390]in US have been pretty stagnant
[00:37:21.630]for the last 30, 40 years actually declined, right?
[00:37:25.540]Each individual animal is probably larger,
[00:37:28.170]more productive than eating more, which means more methane.
[00:37:31.760]But overall the populations
[00:37:33.920]have declined pretty considerably, right?
[00:37:36.340]So we're not in the situation the United States
[00:37:38.130]where we're dramatically increasing
[00:37:40.330]methane emissions from enteric fermentation
[00:37:42.660]year, over year, over year, right?
[00:37:44.990]Globally, the situation is a little bit different,
[00:37:47.170]but that is a situation in the US.
[00:37:49.570]Last thing I'll say on this slide
[00:37:51.240]is if we look at the right hand side of the screen,
[00:37:53.700]this is fossil fuel combustion.
[00:37:55.750]And in this case what we're doing
[00:37:57.350]is we're adding a lot more carbon to the system.
[00:37:59.530]Fossil fuel are old photosynthetic carbon
[00:38:02.083]that was locked in the earth's crust
[00:38:03.750]for 100, 200 million years, right?
[00:38:06.840]So a lot of that carbon,
[00:38:08.010]it's gone in the atmosphere.
[00:38:09.300]It's gotta go somewhere.
[00:38:10.530]Some of its been absorbed by the app by the oceans.
[00:38:13.480]Some of its been absorbed by more plants.
[00:38:16.010]But if we go back to our bats of analogy, right?
[00:38:17.713]What we're doing is we're turning up the faucet,
[00:38:19.830]we're putting a lot more into the system.
[00:38:22.830]Our drains increase a little bit, but not enough.
[00:38:25.490]And so the water level
[00:38:26.652]where the concentrations
[00:38:28.240]in the atmosphere keeps increasing, right?
[00:38:29.717]And that's why we see a very strong correlation
[00:38:32.540]between how much fossil fuels are burned
[00:38:34.670]and the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
[00:38:39.820]So this idea of accounting for methane
[00:38:41.830]a little bit differently
[00:38:42.663]because of its short lived nature,
[00:38:43.810]and the fact that it's gases
[00:38:45.470]flowing through the system pretty quickly, right?
[00:38:48.270]Is not something that just
[00:38:49.470]animal science is putting out there.
[00:38:50.690]But it's something that climate scientists are saying,
[00:38:52.247]"Hey, you know, we need to account
[00:38:53.580]for this a little bit differently."
[00:38:55.240]Because we have been using
[00:38:56.450]100 year global warming potentials.
[00:38:58.400]And methane of course, is long gone.
[00:39:00.047]And most of its effects are long gone after 100 years.
[00:39:04.300]So this group in Oxford specifically
[00:39:06.490]has really been leading the way
[00:39:08.690]in terms of trying to better link
[00:39:10.350]emissions of methane with warming.
[00:39:13.577]And the reason I keep coming back to this warming concept
[00:39:15.840]is this is what most of our climate agreements are globally,
[00:39:18.880]Paris Climate accords, and others.
[00:39:19.743]They're all based on temperature change, right?
[00:39:21.990]Trying to keep temperature within a certain range.
[00:39:24.720]And so if that's the case, and that's the end goal,
[00:39:26.797]but we need good metrics that link emissions to warming.
[00:39:31.950]It does make a big difference
[00:39:33.630]in terms of how we account for this,
[00:39:35.610]both positive and negative, right?
[00:39:36.597]But if you have increasing emissions
[00:39:38.350]this new metric doesn't make things better,
[00:39:40.040]it makes it look worse.
[00:39:41.560]But if you have declining emissions,
[00:39:42.910]it better represents the fact
[00:39:44.490]that you're not increasing warming.
[00:39:47.360]So just to drive this home,
[00:39:48.610]if we were to look in the US,
[00:39:49.960]this is EPA data for us beef cattle in 1997.
[00:39:54.730]They emitted 131.5 million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalence.
[00:40:00.530]This is using the old school 100 year
[00:40:02.230]global warming potential.
[00:40:04.160]And in 2017, it dropped slightly.
[00:40:07.790]Right down to 126, okay?
[00:40:10.520]So the difference this makes
[00:40:13.040]if we look at the global warming potential
[00:40:14.680]where say, "Yeah, it's declined slightly."
[00:40:16.520]Right?
[00:40:17.353]But it's still 126 million metric tonnes
[00:40:18.910]of CO2 equivalent emissions.
[00:40:21.470]If we use this 20 year timescale
[00:40:23.490]and look at how that's actually affected warming,
[00:40:26.240]or CO2 warming equivalence, it drops down to 13.5, okay?
[00:40:31.570]This is using this new metric from Oxford University.
[00:40:34.770]So the takeaway here is in that purple outline box, right?
[00:40:38.020]Essentially it reduces what cow burps
[00:40:41.199]from beef cattle in the United States,
[00:40:43.830]what they emit, and it affects warming by 89%.
[00:40:47.670]So it goes from the cow burps,
[00:40:50.190]emitting about 2% of emissions to 0.2%
[00:40:53.559]of the US greenhouse gas emission budget.
[00:40:56.500]So all I would say with this, is this
[00:40:58.300]is not some sort of creative accounting scheme.
[00:41:00.150]All it is really a more of incentive
[00:41:02.670]to reduce methane emissions, right?
[00:41:04.490]'Cause you get more bang for your buck.
[00:41:06.050]So highlighting again that we do things
[00:41:08.039]in the United States to reduce methane
[00:41:10.050]with different feeding strategies,
[00:41:12.620]Animal Health improvements,
[00:41:13.970]productivity improvements, animal genetics,
[00:41:16.310]all those things that we do
[00:41:17.230]to become more and more efficient
[00:41:19.536]and reduce methane emissions per unit of beef
[00:41:22.250]is actually super key to the climate solution.
[00:41:24.900]So if that makes sense.
[00:41:25.770]This whole thing is not a get out of jail free card.
[00:41:29.350]It's more about saying,
[00:41:30.183]"Hey, if we do our part,
[00:41:32.630]the beef cattle industry can really contribute
[00:41:34.620]to essentially becoming net zero
[00:41:37.630]in terms of warming effects really quickly."
[00:41:39.900]And maybe even help in creating space
[00:41:43.220]in the carbon budget in the future.
[00:41:46.040]So that's that's a really positive thing
[00:41:48.120]for this metric of better representing
[00:41:50.450]the impact that beef cattle have on climate.
[00:41:55.530]So I'll just wrap this up
[00:41:56.610]by talking a little bit about dietary change.
[00:41:59.540]Because I think this is an issue
[00:42:00.650]that comes up again and again,
[00:42:02.680]especially in the last few years.
[00:42:03.830]And we've seen that a lot through
[00:42:06.100]some of these alternative proteins that are out there.
[00:42:09.430]And I just wanna point out to people
[00:42:10.890]that whether it's impossible
[00:42:12.390]or beyond or any other protein imitation type products,
[00:42:16.330]what a lot of these folks are doing,
[00:42:18.130]or these companies are doing is really marketing products
[00:42:20.650]on sustainability, right?
[00:42:22.100]So even if you still think
[00:42:23.240]that this issue is a little silly,
[00:42:24.781]hopefully it makes sense in that
[00:42:26.472]because we have this perception gap,
[00:42:29.060]that beef isn't sustainable.
[00:42:30.610]It gives an opportunity for products to say,
[00:42:32.507]"Well, we are the sustainability solution."
[00:42:34.660]Right?
[00:42:35.870]So I think most folks know about these products.
[00:42:38.910]They're not cheaper than beef, right?
[00:42:41.430]They're actually more expensive than beef
[00:42:43.480]in all cases that I've seen,
[00:42:45.230]whether in retail or in food service situations.
[00:42:49.750]And they're not necessarily marketing themselves
[00:42:51.650]as better tasting, right?
[00:42:53.300]What they're marketing themselves on
[00:42:54.646]is really sustainability issues, as I've just said.
[00:42:57.570]And if we look at the upper
[00:42:58.490]right hand quadrant of this slide,
[00:43:00.480]This is some of the materials from beyond meat.
[00:43:03.070]And I think it tells a story, right?
[00:43:04.780]So they say we're improving human health.
[00:43:08.320]It's questionable if you look at
[00:43:09.340]the the nutrition facts label, right?
[00:43:11.447]But that's one of their claims.
[00:43:13.000]They say that they're positively impacting climate change.
[00:43:15.597]And they use CO2 superscript,
[00:43:17.400]which of course, is not a chemical formula.
[00:43:19.140]Which is kind of a little bit emblematic
[00:43:20.770]of other marketing materials.
[00:43:23.490]They say we're addressing global resource constraints.
[00:43:25.660]So think about all that stuff,
[00:43:26.610]I told you about feed food competition, right?
[00:43:30.200]They're directly talking about that issue.
[00:43:32.087]And they say we're improving animal welfare,
[00:43:35.480]because of course they're not killing an animal.
[00:43:36.970]So they must be in animal welfare, right?
[00:43:39.870]So again, the reason I put this up here
[00:43:41.170]is just to be crystal clear is that
[00:43:44.270]whether it's plant based milks or plant based meats,
[00:43:47.040]in a lot of cases what these products
[00:43:48.580]are positioning themselves as as a guilt free,
[00:43:51.990]more quote, unquote, sustainable way to eat
[00:43:55.270]what you really wanna eat.
[00:43:56.260]Which is animal source foods.
[00:43:57.900]Most people want to consume those products
[00:43:59.468]and that's where these companies
[00:44:01.400]have seen an opportunity as to
[00:44:04.270]market themselves as such, right?
[00:44:06.370]A lot of this is predicated by the media,
[00:44:08.130]of course if (murmurs),
[00:44:09.660]agriculture cannot improve enough.
[00:44:11.940]And so therefore there must be a substitute effect, right?
[00:44:16.760]So I think a lot of us have seen
[00:44:18.690]these type of pictures during this pandemic.
[00:44:20.880]This is this is one from Michigan
[00:44:23.470]back in March or April.
[00:44:26.350]And that initial run on stores that people had,
[00:44:29.250]and then we had a actual supply chain squeeze, right?
[00:44:33.150]With all the packing plant issues
[00:44:34.590]that were happening later in spring and into early summer.
[00:44:39.830]But this picture kind of tells a story, right?
[00:44:42.516]In terms of when push comes to shove
[00:44:45.100]and everybody had to make a run on the grocery store,
[00:44:47.900]at least the early adopters of panic buying, right?
[00:44:50.980]Went to the meat case and about all the meetup, right?
[00:44:54.750]And we see that in the actual data.
[00:44:56.770]I mean, again, a picture's an anecdote.
[00:44:58.960]But we see that in the data.
[00:45:00.380]Is that meat sales are up.
[00:45:02.960]So are plant based meat sales quite frankly, they're up too.
[00:45:05.860]But if you look at plant based imitation products
[00:45:09.160]as a percent of actual meat
[00:45:12.350]in terms of how much they represent,
[00:45:14.760]it's still the same as it was
[00:45:16.100]in the beginning of the pandemic.
[00:45:17.320]It's about 0.7%.
[00:45:19.110]So it has not changed.
[00:45:21.250]And I think that's really key takeaway
[00:45:23.810]is that there's a lot of there's a lot of hype
[00:45:26.160]around these products,
[00:45:27.000]there's a lot of arguments made
[00:45:28.160]about substitution, etc, etc.
[00:45:31.120]We just don't see a lot of evidence
[00:45:32.430]in any of that as mounting anything right now, right?
[00:45:34.960]So the reality is in the future,
[00:45:37.200]it looks like humans are gonna remain omnivores, right?
[00:45:39.760]So it's more the telling the story
[00:45:44.360]or using data and verifying
[00:45:46.730]how are we how are we documenting progress over time?
[00:45:49.330]Whether it's plant agriculture or animal agriculture.
[00:45:52.270]I think that's what's gonna be really key.
[00:45:53.283]I think some of these kind of quick fix ideas
[00:45:55.520]that we can just eat our way out of things,
[00:45:57.870]probably not reflective of reality.
[00:45:59.784]Just to drive that home,
[00:46:01.780]this is a study that shows that eating red,
[00:46:04.150]a climate change really isn't gonna be a solution, okay?
[00:46:07.550]So this is a study that got published
[00:46:08.990]a few years ago on the proceedings
[00:46:10.220]of National Academies of Sciences
[00:46:12.020]by a couple of animal scientists.
[00:46:13.310]It looks at a scenario that
[00:46:14.460]to be frank is unrealistic, right?
[00:46:16.460]Especially as we've just gone through this pandemic.
[00:46:18.250]It highlights how unrealistic it is.
[00:46:20.730]But this is showing what would happen
[00:46:23.260]if all Americans became vegans, okay?
[00:46:26.540]What would that actually do to emissions, right?
[00:46:28.213]And so you couldn't look at all the ripple effects,
[00:46:30.560]but trying to look at what are the implications
[00:46:32.530]of our agricultural system
[00:46:33.740]if we want to eat animal free Ag environment,
[00:46:37.800]and animal free food supply.
[00:46:41.460]So these researchers found that
[00:46:42.740]we would actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions
[00:46:45.350]by 2.6 percentage points
[00:46:46.930]and I put in parentheses there,
[00:46:48.330]it's less than one half of 1%
[00:46:51.400]of global greenhouse gas emissions, okay?
[00:46:54.290]In terms of whatever you produce.
[00:46:56.100]We would produce more total pounds
[00:46:58.650]and more total calories of food in our agricultural system.
[00:47:03.360]But I would argue we probably
[00:47:05.070]don't need more calories in the American food system.
[00:47:07.260]We already have enough energy to go around.
[00:47:09.790]What we wouldn't have enough essential micronutrients,
[00:47:13.290]specifically things like vitamin B 12,
[00:47:15.640]to actually nourish everyone.
[00:47:16.680]And that's pretty self evident
[00:47:18.100]if you know and understand that vitamin B 12,
[00:47:20.730]in terms of how it's found in any sort of foods
[00:47:24.160]is only found in animal source foods.
[00:47:26.580]So of course, if we get rid of animal source foods
[00:47:29.510]we now have no vitamin B 12 in our food supply.
[00:47:32.400]That has big ripple effects and consequences, right?
[00:47:35.520]In terms of meeting everybody's essential nutrient needs.
[00:47:40.708]The other thing that's on this slide
[00:47:41.700]are these bar charts over
[00:47:42.650]on the right hand side of the screen.
[00:47:44.060]This shows the consequences and again,
[00:47:46.470]not all of them but just some of the consequences
[00:47:48.590]of changing our food system.
[00:47:50.070]So plus animals are the greenhouse gas emissions
[00:47:52.510]in agriculture as they are in omnivorous system.
[00:47:55.917]For the blue chunk there,
[00:47:57.050]the emissions that come from animals
[00:47:58.647]and all the other colors are comes from plant agriculture.
[00:48:02.410]So if we get rid of animals,
[00:48:03.620]we don't just get rid of that blue chunk, right?
[00:48:06.210]If we get rid of animals,
[00:48:07.060]we get rid of animal manure.
[00:48:09.190]We get rid of that source of nitrogen, fertilizer.
[00:48:13.720]And so minus animal scenario
[00:48:15.810]where you see these different colors on there.
[00:48:17.660]That's why there's an increase in synthetic fertilizer.
[00:48:20.420]'Cause we've now gotten rid of our manure resource
[00:48:22.780]we're gonna have to supplement
[00:48:24.200]and increase the amount of synthetic fertilizer
[00:48:25.990]that has nitrous oxide implications,
[00:48:28.810]which is a very potent greenhouse gas.
[00:48:31.500]In the right hand side bar,
[00:48:33.170]we also had to grow a lot more legumes.
[00:48:34.880]One, because we had to eat a lot more legumes
[00:48:36.790]to meet our protein requirements,
[00:48:37.970]but also for the nitrogen credits and soil, right?
[00:48:40.390]So again, from a nutrient standpoint.
[00:48:43.010]The takeaway from this is that
[00:48:45.210]there is no free lunch, right?
[00:48:46.490]You don't just get rid of animals
[00:48:48.250]and get rid of all their emissions.
[00:48:50.020]There are ripple effects
[00:48:51.340]because the food system is all intertwined.
[00:48:53.550]So you pull the string in one place
[00:48:55.150]and you move everything, right?
[00:48:57.150]And again, this study didn't even look
[00:48:58.760]at all those things that get moved.
[00:48:59.950]But just some of them and just shows
[00:49:01.390]the magnitude of how important
[00:49:03.730]thinking about this more systemically is.
[00:49:06.890]And the last thing I'll say on this
[00:49:07.723]is this is assuming that all the livestock
[00:49:09.820]in the United States disappear, right?
[00:49:11.720]Which is completely unrealistic,
[00:49:12.834]but it does highlight this complexity too.
[00:49:15.980]Is that this is all livestock going away poof, right?
[00:49:19.601]In a Thanos snap, if you will.
[00:49:22.740]Just one day, right?
[00:49:23.650]We have one final barbecue and then that's it.
[00:49:26.770]So that is what's key is that
[00:49:29.570]we can't have any more bison
[00:49:31.610]or any other ruminant take the place
[00:49:33.530]of these livestock, right?
[00:49:35.410]Because that's just gonna add back admissions.
[00:49:38.390]It just highlights how complex things are, right?
[00:49:40.330]So people may wanna change their diet
[00:49:41.950]for other personal reasons,
[00:49:43.370]but just one person changing their diet
[00:49:45.590]or even a handful people change their diet
[00:49:47.330]to meatless Mondays or vegetarian or veganism.
[00:49:51.350]Everybody's important but you just can't change
[00:49:53.320]the whole food system through
[00:49:54.550]what you eat in a significant way.
[00:49:56.900]More the opportunities lie
[00:49:58.210]on improving production where there's (murmurs).
[00:50:02.968]And just to tie this all together
[00:50:04.170]a little tongue-in-cheek.
[00:50:05.330]And we think about plant based meats and dietary change.
[00:50:08.110]I think partially the challenge
[00:50:09.500]is just explaining to people
[00:50:11.000]what beef cattle production is, right?
[00:50:13.900]In maybe a little bit different way.
[00:50:15.410]And we can say that we already have plant based meats.
[00:50:18.260]And we already use really cool technology
[00:50:19.890]that makes me from plants in the beef community, right?
[00:50:23.550]It's a technology that is powered by solar energy.
[00:50:27.370]It's able to harvest solar energy and in edible plants.
[00:50:30.630]And it's mobile in terms of harvesting this energy, right?
[00:50:33.820]Completely solar powered, no fossil fuels required.
[00:50:36.940]And while it's doing this harvesting,
[00:50:38.240]it actually produces high quality organic fertilizer
[00:50:40.910]that feeds the soil, so it's pretty cool.
[00:50:43.940]And the technology itself can self replicate, right?
[00:50:49.030]Pretty amazing package
[00:50:50.110]if we put it all together
[00:50:51.050]and tried to market it to Silicon Valley
[00:50:53.110]or other places, right?
[00:50:54.840]Of course, this is tongue-in-cheek.
[00:50:56.890]What is this technology?
[00:50:57.960]Cattle, right?
[00:50:58.970]So moving animals are particularly amazing
[00:51:02.260]in their ability to take human inedible material
[00:51:06.060]and produce something of higher quality, right?
[00:51:08.830]The consequence of that is methane,
[00:51:10.670]we can manage that issue.
[00:51:12.173]It's not a dramatic challenge
[00:51:14.500]as some make it out to be.
[00:51:15.590]I think we can make a lot of progress
[00:51:17.040]and document our progress to a lot of people's concerns
[00:51:20.610]with this bigger picture
[00:51:21.620]that agriculture is solar powered,
[00:51:23.900]running off of carbon out of the atmosphere,
[00:51:25.840]I think needs to be re oriented to people
[00:51:29.310]and reiterated to them many times.
[00:51:33.550]So just to wrap this up.
[00:51:34.620]Again, sustainability is about balancing
[00:51:36.760]all these different domains.
[00:51:38.102]It's not gonna be the same answer everywhere.
[00:51:40.480]It's gonna change over time.
[00:51:42.640]But core and fundamental to it
[00:51:44.730]is improving over time, right?
[00:51:46.690]In many different ways or maintaining
[00:51:48.670]when we have good production practices, right?
[00:51:51.210]So continuous improvement is key.
[00:51:53.920]Livestock, beef cattle, livestock in general,
[00:51:56.870]they produce nutrient rich food.
[00:51:59.830]They produce food that provides a lot of micronutrients
[00:52:02.290]and protein per calorie.
[00:52:04.170]That is their advantage.
[00:52:05.110]They concentrate these nutrients
[00:52:06.610]from plants and foods for us.
[00:52:08.910]But they also produce a lot more than just food
[00:52:11.520]in terms of societal benefits.
[00:52:13.060]They often gets missed in this conversation.
[00:52:16.110]And if you want a number just to take home again,
[00:52:18.500]according to the EPA.
[00:52:19.640]about 2% of greenhouse gas emissions come from beef cattle,
[00:52:23.200]and that's before all this stuff
[00:52:24.560]that I told you about methane
[00:52:25.630]in terms of how we account for it.
[00:52:26.880]And if we can slightly reduce methane
[00:52:28.190]even further in the future,
[00:52:30.090]Hopefully, you can take that 2%
[00:52:31.340]to essentially zero percent in terms
[00:52:33.270]of its effect on global warming.
[00:52:36.670]So with all that said,
[00:52:38.020]thank you very much for your attention,
[00:52:39.560]and I appreciate you all for joining me today.

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Beef cattle are a critical part of a sustainable food system

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