One Farmers point of view

[Terry - Somerset]

You don't have to go back 70 years to Thalidomide to find drugs withdrawn because of side effects identified after their clinical trials and introduction Withdrawn drugs. Additionally I suspect there is an equal or longer list of chemicals used in cosmetics, paint, food, etc etc.

It seems evident that caution is the right response.

I am not even convinced that reducing methane laden burps etc produces a long term reductions in greenhouse gases - simplistically (one could get very detailed about atmospheric half lives etc):

• cow eats grass burps, emits CO2 and methane. Alternatively,
• no cow, vegetation reigns supreme, dies, rots, emits CO2 and methane

Short term there may be a benefit as methane is far more harmful than CO2, but has a much shorter atmospheric half life. It balances out over time!!

 

[Vulcan]

This pie chart is interesting. If for arguments sake we say Cows are say 6% of that slice, and Bovaer reduces Methane by 27% (manufacturers figures) then it will only reduce methane by 1.62%?
Methane from Oil and Gas extraction is reckoned by some to be wildly underestimated.

 

[Delaney]

if you say ‘why can’t humans stop trying to interfere with nature’ or more precisely ‘evolutionary biology’, you would be ignoring the profit motive.

Monsanto tried to privatise nature. They sold their wares under the guise of ‘doing good’, hocking them around India and other places they could con farmers.
Their wonder seeds created problems with the water tables, the land became infertile; farmers killed themselves.

Bill and Co. just moved on.

European politicians seems so intensely concerned about the environment. Mostly because it’s the main way the EU can rob more of its citizens money without calling it a tax.
Yet they don’t seem concerned with collapsing birth rates. Lower birth rates, less pollution, yet we’re importing more people than in European history.

None of it makes any sense.

‘We’re saving the planet’ Ok can I buy a cheap Chinese electric car?
‘No we have to save out auto industry’
Ok I thought we were saving the planet.

It’s all b*ll*cks.

 

[jetsetwilly]

Farming is not 'natural' and depends heavily on the prior work of 'so-called experts'. Today's cows don't look, eat or grow like the wild cattle that they have been bred from.

Right, now I've got that off my chest I'm off to see what the Daily Mail can tell me about welding cast iron. I don't need no stinking experts to tell me - they'll just try to control me.

 

[Hugh M.]

Farming is not 'natural' and depends heavily on the prior work of 'so-called experts'. Today's cows don't look, eat or grow like the wild cattle that they have been bred from.

Right, now I've got that off my chest I'm off to see what the Daily Mail can tell me about welding cast iron. I don't need no stinking experts to tell me - they'll just try to control me.

Cast iron? Best use a methane/oxygen mix. Oohhh…

 

[Jacob]

....

I am not even convinced that reducing methane laden burps etc produces a long term reductions in greenhouse gases - ....

Why not enquire further and look for facts? https://earth.org/cow-burps-and-global-warming-whats-the-link/

 

[Delaney]

Farming is not 'natural' and depends heavily on the prior work of 'so-called experts'. Today's cows don't look, eat or grow like the wild cattle that they have been bred from.

Right, now I've got that off my chest I'm off to see what the Daily Mail can tell me about welding cast iron. I don't need no stinking experts to tell me - they'll just try to control me.

Interesting! What did cows used to eat?

 

[Vulcan]

This chart from 2011 suggests dairy cattle account for an even lower percentage of Enteric Fermentation than I thought, just 18%. 18% of 11% = 1.98%. Reduced by 27% with Bovaer = 0.5346%.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Why not enquire further and look for facts? https://earth.org/cow-burps-and-global-warming-whats-the-link/

A good write up but still misses the point.

All animal, human and organic waste as it decomposes produces methane - plus CO2, H2S etc.

Is the difference that cows accelerate the process by doing a bit of in body processing. If cows did not eat the vegetation (grass) would other animals (which produce methane producing waste) or plants/trees (which ultimately decompose) replace them.

There may be little difference over time in total emissions.

That there is a timing difference may help reduce short term climate change impacts - but the fundamental climate destabiliser is oil and gas consumption which is being consumed around 1,000,000 faster than it was laid down.

 

[Jacob]

A good write up but still misses the point.

All animal, human and organic waste as it decomposes produces methane - plus CO2, H2S etc.

Is the difference that cows accelerate the process by doing a bit of in body processing. If cows did not eat the vegetation (grass) would other animals (which produce methane producing waste) or plants/trees (which ultimately decompose) replace them.

There may be little difference over time in total emissions.

That there is a timing difference may help reduce short term climate change impacts - but the fundamental climate destabiliser is oil and gas consumption which is being consumed around 1,000,000 faster than it was laid down.

The point is we need to give up meat eating. It's one of the simplest things we can do to reduce our CO2 and methane footprints, could be implemented very quickly and would actually be good for us!
https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/how-eating-less-meat-can-reduce-our-carbon-emissions/
https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/climate-issues/food
It's not likely to happen though, and climate change is now accelerating and unstoppable.
Meat takes 4 times as much land area as plants, to produce equivalent amounts of food.

 

[Jacob]

Interesting! What did cows used to eat?

Same sorts of stuff but in the past were not around in such huge quantities, using vast areas for grazing directly and even more for planting animal feed. Meat production has expanded enormously in the past few hundred years.
https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production

 

[mg123]

Tobacco was safe too.

Was safe? Wait what, did i miss the memo?

 

[Vulcan]

Was safe? Wait what, did i miss the memo?

Obviously you did, I’ve seen some of these old adverts many times.

“Some of the biggest tobacco salesman were doctors, dentists and nurses.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/blowing-smoke-vintage-ads-of-doctors-endorsing-tobacco/

They also has things like this.

“A Scientific, drugless treatment needed in every home.”

https://www.orau.org/health-physics...radium-water-jars-late-1920s-early-1930s.html

 

[Jacob]

Obviously you did, I’ve seen some of these old adverts many times.

“Some of the biggest tobacco salesman were doctors, dentists and nurses.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/blowing-smoke-vintage-ads-of-doctors-endorsing-tobacco/

They also has things like this.

“A Scientific, drugless treatment needed in every home.”

https://www.orau.org/health-physics...radium-water-jars-late-1920s-early-1930s.html

Back in the 50s and 60s not difficult to find a few doctors, dentists and nurses who would happily appear in ads and get paid, but they were not representative of medical opinion as a whole.
It was an actual doctor who set off the MMR scare and the right-wing press joined in too. He was struck off https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/apr/25/mmr-scare-analysis
There's lots of nutters about including people who should know better and their effect on the climate change issue has been disastrous.

 

[Vulcan]

Back in the 50s and 60s it was not difficult to find a few doctors, dentists and nurses who would happily appear in ads and get paid, but they were not representative of medical opinion as a whole.

But they were in the 1930’s and 1940’s when these adverts appeared.

 

[TRITON]

Meat takes 4 times as much land area as plants, to produce equivalent amounts of food.

They're cutting down large swathes of the amazon to make way for soya production farming that is used in animal feed.

But the holier than thou dont get away with the part they play, as this soya also is used for things like tofu production

This pie chart is interesting. If for arguments sake we say Cows are say 6% of that slice, and Bovaer reduces Methane by 27% (manufacturers figures) then it will only reduce methane by 1.62%?
Methane from Oil and Gas extraction is reckoned by some to be wildly underestimated.

View attachment 193948

How did you arrive at a figure of 6% when it has Enteric fermentation at 11% and animal waste at 4%, making the total percentage from animals as 15%
(I hope you've taken vegans into account, apparently they fart a lot )

Either way, any reduction is a step in the right direction is it not ?

 

[artie]

Either way, any reduction is a step in the right direction is it not ?

Absolutely not.

A reduction at what cost?

 

[DrPhill]

Either way, any reduction is a step in the right direction is it not ?

Any step at all? How about tax on meat? That would reduce consumption……. And therefore production reduced production would mean less methane

 

[Jacob]

Any step at all? How about tax on meat? That would reduce consumption……. And therefore production reduced production would mean less methane

Dunno, there'd be increased methane from the farmers leaning on gates etc.

 

[jetsetwilly]

Interesting! What did cows used to eat?

Well, I was actually referring to their consumption rate. Cattle today have been selectively bred to eat a lot, grow quickly and maintain a high soft tissue mass relative to their wildtype counterparts, and they inhabit an environment where food is not limiting, and thus their metabolism optimises for rapid, rather than complete, digestion. All animals do this. Whether it makes a difference to methane production I don't know, but my point was just that farming cattle is not some 'natural' thing that must be preserved exactly as it is today. Unless we accept that all man's activities are 'natural', then farming definitely isn't, and as for today's farming being the optimum, the Copernican principle states that it's safest to assume we are at some random point in a timeline - not at the end.

But back to your question, for which I had to resort to wikipedia. It varies a lot by region (as I'm sure all you cattle farmers know far better than I) but in general, I think we can say that ancestral cattle (aurochs) ate grass plus whatever higher-calorie plants were available. They do not seem to have generally existed in large herds, which suggests that their diet could be expected to be more diverse than today's cattle, since mass grazing reduces the browsable plant diversity. And of course they ate no processed food or manmade supplements. But mostly they ate grass.