A world without agribusiness, COP22 and regenerative agriculture

Throughout this blog the tone tends towards the negative. Agribusiness causes this problem, agribusiness causes that problem and so on. I was interested to see if any alternative opinions had real substance. Many consider industrial farming as a necessary evil for a rapidly growing human population. It has many socioeconomic advantages which ultimately result in more efficient and therefore cheaper production of large amounts of food, which increases food security. Is it possible that without industrial farming we would be in a worse environmental and climatological situation?

A recent study (Burney et al, 2009) suggests that had humans not taken up the practice of widespread intensive farming we would indeed be much further along the climatic path of no return! In the study the authors build three models which represent different scenarios of agricultural advancement. One model is of our current reality whereby modern agricultural practices are in place, the second suspends agricultural yields at the levels of 1961 while increasing population and living standards and the third model is identical apart from also suspending living standards so that only population increases. Incredibly while fertilizer use would be lower, cropland would have to increase to nearly 1.8 billions hectares which dwarfs the 1.2 billion hectares that cropland currently takes up. Moreover the researchers believe the net effects of intensive agriculture have saved 161 gigatonnes of carbon since 1961!

Source: Burney et al, 2009

An earlier study cites the potential of increasing crop productivity as a means of climate change mitigation (Wise et al, 2009). If improvements to crop productivity continue at historical rates it could provide emissions mitigation in the same league as any other major renewable energy strategy. The study concludes that improving crop productivity should be added to any greenhouse gas limiting technology strategy of the future. 

Studies have also investigated the current and future benefits to intensive animal farming. Havlik and others (2013) investigates the role of 'livestock production system transitions' (LPST) which are more efficient and less demanding livestock systems. They modeled a scenario of swift LPST against an imagined reality whereby consumption levels increased but livestock productions systems did not advance. They also looked into the role of LPSTs under different emissions mitigation strategies. The results were very promising. Simply transitioning to more efficient systems would save huge amounts of land from conversion and could subsequently reduce emissions by 736 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year (MtCO2e·y−1) and if these systems were also put under only moderate mitigation policies 3,223 MtCO2e·y−1 after the year 2030. It is conceded that the establishment of such systems would face many barriers and could only occur with significant investment in market infrastructure.

As it so happens COP22 was held earlier this month and at the forefront of discussion was agriculture. Specifically 'regenerative' agriculture which outlines improvements to agricultural practices in the context of environmental change while also sustaining or even increasing production. At the heart of this is French Minister for Agriculture, Stéphane Le Foll's, 4 per 1000 initiative, which has the simple aim of increasing the quantity of carbon contained in soils by 0.04% every year. This increased quantity of carbon will be taking from the pool of atmospheric carbon and in doing so reduce climate change! 

The science behind this is simple. Plant photosynthesis relies on sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. Fixing carbon as part of the photosynthetic process removes it from the atmosphere and eventually through plant decay this carbon will makes its way into soils as 'soil organic carbon'. Therefore the more the soil is covered by plant material the more carbon it will store.

Intensive farms contain massive amounts of biomass and, if managed well, could act as huge carbon sinks, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 

The initiative outlines five key strategies towards reaching the 0.04% CO2 reduction goal:

1)  Never leave soils bare and work them less
2) Introduce intermediate crops
3) Add to hedgerows and further develop agroforestry practices
4) Optimizing pasture management
5) Cultivate unused or poor land in arid and semi-arid regions. 

The scope for this kind of farming is huge, especially when it is considered that better quality soils retain water better, are more resilient to erosion and most importantly produce higher quality crops, benefiting the farmer and the consumer. 

So far 34 countries are signed on to the initiative with a large number of NGO's, research institutes, agricultural organisations and private sector companies. The outlook is promising. A very recent study (Yigini and Panagos, 2016) modeled a number of climate and land cover changes in Europe and found overall increases in soil organic carbon stocks by 2050. There's only one place that carbon could have come from!

Final thoughts...

It's difficult to associate vast industrial farms with climate change mitigation and so far I have only been able to see it as unavoidable in a world where food security is of utmost importance. In it's current state it is undeniable monoculture and animal supplementation are negatively impacting the environment however it is interesting to see that without industrial farming the impacts could be far worse. With political and economical will (easier said than done!) intensive farms could well be turned into zones of carbon sequestration which could at the least make the agricultural processes carbon neutral and at the very best could begin to reduce global atmospheric carbon dioxide, decrease land degradation and deforestation and provide global food security!

Source: http://www.seppo.net/cartoons/displayimage.php?pid=902 

Cow business..

After last week taking a look at the environmental impact of palm oil plantations and the innovative use of yeasts that could see these impacts lessened I am straight back to what is becoming a recurring theme in this blog, cows!

As explained in previous posts, industrial farming of cow's has become a major contributor to global GHG emissions. Cows eat A LOT! They are ruminant mammals meaning they ferment ingested food in the first of their four stomachs before passing it onto the next stomach for digestion. During the break down of plant material (enteric fermentation) hydrogen is released which is used by digestive microbes (methanogens) to produce methane which must then be removed from the cows system back through the esophagus and out of the nose and mouth by exhalation or belching.

Processes of Enteric Fermentaiton
Source: Singh and Sikka (2008)

The most obvious and most effective way to reduce these emissions is to eat less beef and therefore reduce the global cattle population. This is fanciful and it is generally agreed that any strategy to reduce beef consumption would be ineffective. Luckily, as I was surfing the web looking for an answer to this problem I was met with an abundance of research that tackles this very matter! Dietary Changes


Research has been conducted since the 1960s looking at various dietary supplements that can reduce the methane producing ability of cattle (Lee and Beauchemin, 2014). One of the most effective of these has been the practice of chemically adding nitrates to cow feed. By doing this methanogens within the cows gut will produce ammonia (NH₃) preferentially to methane (CH₄), thus reducing the amount of methane that is released into the atmosphere. Zhou et al's (2011) in vitro study found methane production to be reduced by nearly 70% when rumen fluids were incubated with sodium nitrate (NaNO_3). 

Yes, 70%! In the USA this kind of reduction would be equivalent to reducing their population by 61.4 million cattle!

Unfortunately there is one very large problem with this method. If nitrates are broken down to nitrites in the rumen there can be interference with red blood cells which in a number of studies have resulted in cows dying or needing serious medical treatment. More research is therefore required before this method becomes appealing to farmers.

An alternative to directly adding nitrates to the diet is to add oils which appears to have a number of positive effects similar to those of nitrates. The most important of these is the suppression of methanogens. In a study by Mcginn et al (2004) as much as a 22% decrease in methane output was noted when ruminants were fed a diet supplemented with sunflower oil! Some oils have the added benefit of improving the productivity of the cow. Grainger et al (2008) found that increasing the oil component of the diet by 1%  using whole cotton seed, caused a decrease in methane emissions by 6% while also increasing milk output! More milk from a single cow perhaps means less cows overall would be needed?

Other studies have shown similarly promising results using a variety of other oils including palm oil (uh oh!). There is certainly potential here although there are concerns over whether repeated feeding over an extended period of time would allow the rumen to adapt to a new 'feed environment' and revert back to producing just as much methane as previously. 

anti-Methane Vaccine

What if we could suppress the population of methanogens in the gut? Less methanogens = less methane production. Simple!

Turns out this could be a viable option. The only hurdle is the very large number of methanogen strains that preside in the rumen and therefore an effective vaccine would need to be able to act on a range of different substrates (Wedlock et al, 2013). This makes the production of a vaccine an extremely difficult task. One study produced a vaccine that accounted for over 52% of the methanogen population in the ruminant animals they were testing and yet while methanogen population composition changed, there was no significant difference in methane output (Williams et al, 2009). 

Methane inhibitors

One of the most recent and most promising anti-methanogen technologies is that of the inhibitor. Different to vaccines in that they do not reduce the population of methanogens, these inhibitors have been shown to vastly reduce the capability of them to produce methane. An investigation into adding 3-nitrooxypropanol (3NOP) to animal feed has produced results showing 30% decreases in methane output while, importantly, having no negative effects on the cows growth or milk production. In fact those cows treated with the inhibitor saw increased weight gain and it is hypthesised that this is due to less energy being used in enteric fermentation and instead being used for tissue synthesis (Hristov et al, 2015). 

A win win for farmers!? 

Cows fitted with devices to measure the composition of exhaled gases.
Source: National Geographic

But is it enough? Final thoughts...

To me 30% doesn't seem like a 'climate-change-solving' reduction. It certainly is difficult to see 30% as a success when simply having 1 less burger a week could potentially have the same impact. It's all a step in the right direction but surely we need more than 30%!

I get the feeling I have only scratched the surface here. The vast amount of literature on this subject provides scope for an array of new technologies which can decrease bovine emission. All the methods here involve preventing the production of methane, what of the methods that can capture and utilise this methane post-production? Check back in the next few weeks to find out!

Palm Oil's latest competition... Yeast?!

My last post hinted at being more conscious of the products we use and the food we eat in the context of environmental change. While the distinction between eating beef and chicken is easy, some products contain ingredients that have enormous environmental impacts, yet we may never have even heard of them!

Palm oil is derived from a tree species known as Elaeis guineensis (the African palm oil tree). While it originated in Africa the tree can be grown anywhere with a warm and moist climate, most notably South East Asia where 85% (World Wildlife Fund) of global palm oil is produced.

What other species thrive in warm and wet conditions? Answer: those that comprise a rainforest.

This is where the problems arises. Palm oil became the most consumed vegetable oil in the world in 2002 and while you may not cook with it you can be sure it is in a number of the products you use on a day to day basis such as shampoo or detergent. Such a high demand for the product means more and more land is needed to produce it. When this land inevitably overlaps with tropical forests the economic incentive is to clear the land and expand palm oil plantations.

Perhaps the most obvious change that occurs when rainforest is replaced with palm oil plantations is the change in biodiversity. An area which once would have contained literally millions of different species is reduced to the equivalent of a desert. Plantations exhibit monoculture whereby to be most efficient palm oil tree and only palm oil trees are grown and harvested.

A palm oil 'green desert'. 

These ecosystems are irreplaceable and so when they are gone, so too are the benefits that they bring (Bell and de Zylva, 2014), not to mention the loss of huge carbon sinks which remove CO2 from the atmosphere and produce O2 through photosysnthesis (Pan et al, 2011)

How can we reduce Palm Oil consumption?

The trouble with palm oil is that it's found in practically everything! This makes simply not using it very difficult and making conscientious consumer decisions almost impossible. Luckily it appears there may be an alternative. 

Yeast?!

Yes yeast. A very specific strain called Metschnikowia pulcherrima which has previously been used in South African wine-making produces an oil with very similar characteristics to that of palm oil. Importantly this yeast can be grown practically anywhere and survive off almost any organic feedstock! This means as long as the matter contains carbohydrates it could feasibly be used to kickstart the growth of the yeast (Whiffin, 2015)

No more deforestation? 

Land uses for yeast production would be massively lower than those of palm oil, up to 100 times less. Importantly, the production would not require the warm, moist conditions that oil palm trees do and therefore would not require land occupied by precious rainforest. 

There is real promise to this discovery as well. The laboratory that made this discovery has received significant backing. At the end of last year they received a £4.4 million grant to fund further research into scaling the process up to an industrial scale and determining if this would be viable globally (University of Bath, 2015).

In this video, lead engineer Dr Chris Chuck explains where they hope to take the project in the near future (credit to University of Bath). 

Many hurdles still await the engineers at Bath however it is inspiring to see work being done in areas such as this to create viable, and sometimes improved alternatives to established uses of natural resources. I'm certainly interested to see what alternatives are popping up in other aspects of the industrial farming business! Eco-friendly fertilisers, selective pesticides, less noxious cows?!

Before the Flood - Leonardo DeCaprio

Leo's 'Before the Flood' is breathtaking. It is a heavily emotional documentary that explains the causes and wide-ranging repercussions of climate change. Mid-way through, Leo addresses Agribusiness.

Interviewee Gidon Eschel, PhD considers a worldwide change of diet to be the easiest out, the simplest change one can make to their lifestyle which would have drastic and immediate benefits regarding climate change.

My first thought to this statement was 'Great! But it'll never happen' and I think this is what many peoples first reaction is. Unfortunately diet, and particularly meat eating, is ingrained in Western society to such a point where vegetarians and vegans are often confronted with complete bemusement. Could a smaller change in diet work, perhaps to eating meats of animals with a smaller GHG footprint? Possibly. Certainly if we completely cut beef and only ate chicken this would still have a significant positive impact.

Could we ever see beef banned from supermarket shelves? In which case would we see the rise of an underground illegal beef market?

Climate Change - non CO2 emissions.

When we think of climate change we picture smoke billowing from vast fossil-fuel power stations or exhaust fumes rising from cars in gridlocked cities. What most of us do not associate with climate change is a herd of cows, peacefully grazing on picturesque farms in the British countryside.

Now this is not to say cows cause climate change. However the intensification of farming practices that has occurred in recent decades most certainly can be attributed to climate change. So while we may think of cars and planes when we think of climate change, we perhaps need to take a closer look at agriculture.

Estimates of agricultural global GHG input vary between 19-29% but what is certain is that it dwarfs the transportation sector and is second only to the energy sector (Vermuelen et al, 2012). In the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, only non-CO2 GHG's are reported as agriculture is largely considered a 'carbon-neutral' process meaning it removes as much CO2 from the atmosphere (through photosynthesis) as it emits. These non-GHG emissions are not to be sniffed at.

The non-CO2 GHG's we are interested in are Methane (CH4) and Nitrous Oxide (N2O), the two next most significant GHG's to CO2 and included in the 'Kyoto Basket'.

NO2 emissions are a result of fertiliser applicationa and the (mis)management of manure. The inefficiences of nitrogen uptake in plants results in soils that are nitrogen-rich which readily provide nitrogen to microbes that use the element to produce energy for their growth and reproduction and as a byproduct release N2O. This process also occurs in the wet and warm conditions of manure management tanks so N2O emissions are produced by both crop and livestock oriented farms (Ussiri and Lal, 2013)

CH4 emissions are a product of enteric fermentation, rice cultivation and again manure management. Enteric fermentation relates to the normal digestive processes of farm animals, particularly cows and sheep, which produces CH4 as a byproduct that is exhaled or released by flatulence. This results in nearly a third of all human induced methane emissions (Bousquet et al, 2006). Rice cultivation is also a large human-induced source of CH4. Paddy fields are man-made wetlands and as such are the ideal environment for a host of microorganisms. The decomposition of organic matter within these wetlands produces excess methane which is released into the atmosphere. With such vast paddy fields in some areas of the world, rice cultivation now contributes 9% of all human CH4 emissions.

The total volume of non-CO2 GHG's in the atmosphere is significantly less than CO2 itself, however their ability to trap heat is far greater. Indeed CH4 has been reported to be 34x more effective at trapping heat than CO2 over a 100 year time scale (IPCC 2013), while N2O is yet 15 times more potent than this (Jeong et al, 2012)!

Predictions for future non-CO2 emissions do not look promising. As demands for food increase and diets change so does the scale of industrial farming. This results in more livestock and more fertilizer use. In order to keep pace with global food demands N2O emissions will likely increase 50% by 2020 (Mosier and Kroeze, 2000) and CH4 emissions will increase 60% (relative to 1990) (FAO, 2003).

How can we solve this issue? We can't demand a reduction in use of animal products can we? McMichael et al (2007) boldly concludes that an effective contraction and covergence policy would seek to

'(1) reduce greenhouse-gas emissions per unit of meat or milk produced; (2) reduce consumption of meat (especially ruminant red meat) and milk from the current high levels in high-income countries, with predicted health benefits; and (3) taper the rise in consumption of meat and milk in developing countries, also with predicted health benefits.'

With meat so embedded in many societal practices in high income countries and it seemingly unethical to prevent developing countries from increasing their meat consumption these policies seem implausible. However with the impacts of climate change becoming ever more real is it time we start looking at these more radical responses? This is something that I am intrigued by and am yet to completely establish my opinion on.

Check back in the next few weeks for more on the subject as I broaden my understanding and hopefully come to a conclusion on this problem of non-CO2 emissions.