Agricultural emissions and the meat and dairy industry

It’s actually not hard to reduce agricultural methane emissions. We simply need fewer livestock, and less intensive methods of farming. A shift to more plant-based, ecological farming methods is both achievable and has many co-benefits for people, nature and animals.

To make that happen, we need decision-makers and world leaders to regulate the livestock industry, because voluntary efforts from the industry have proven not to be enough.

The easiest way to reduce agricultural methane emissions is to reduce stocking rates. That means fewer cows, sheep, pigs, or chickens creating methane. 

Unfortunately, there are not currently any technological solutions to reduce methane emissions at the scale or speed necessary to prevent climate chaos. That means we have to do what we can with the tools and knowledge already at our disposal.

Ultimately, we need to diversify land use, away from intensive livestock – but that doesn’t mean stopping farming. We just need to change the way that we farm to ensure that our food systems are sustainable into the future.

Already, some farmers are shifting toward ecological, plant-based farming practices. It is not only possible, but it has many benefits for both people and the planet. But farmers need support to be able to scale up these practices.

‘No Additional Warming’ is a problematic concept used to justify maintaining current levels of climate pollution. It suggests that as long as no extra global warming is produced – i.e. as long as levels of agricultural methane emissions remain stable – it’s okay to continue polluting the climate. It basically resets the status quo, enabling business as usual for agribusiness.

Agribusiness has pushed for methane emissions targets to be set using the ‘no additional warming’ approach, arguing that because methane is a short-lived gas, they shouldn’t be responsible for the pollution they’re causing. This is patently false – methane is much more powerful than carbon dioxide, and does a significant amount of damage over its lifetime. In fact, reducing methane emissions rapidly is the climate emergency brake we need to prevent catastrophic climate change.

The agribusiness lobby ultimately benefits from No Additional Warming – while the rest of us, including farmers and rural communities, suffer from the consequences of weakening action on climate change.

Agribusiness benefits because they get to continue making billions from their business-as-usual approach of continuously producing more livestock and more pollution.

New Zealand has announced that it will rewrite its climate laws to adopt a new, weaker, methane target aligned with No Additional Warming. It will also amend the law so that future methane targets are required to be set in line with No Additional Warming. The Government aims to do this by the end of 2025.

Ireland is also looking to do the same, likely within the same timeframe. Paraguay and Uruguay are also looking into the concept.

Primarily, this is being adopted by wealthy export-driven nations with high levels of livestock emissions, as it means they can get away with doing less on climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses a tool called GWP100 to measure methane emissions. This is the tool used for reporting on methane emissions to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is the globally-agreed metric for measuring methane. The key difference is that it uses a baseline of not emitting – i.e. pre-industrial levels – rather than arbitrarily setting a baseline in the recent past.

Methane is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas. It is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period. It is a short-lived gas, so stays in the atmosphere for less time than carbon dioxide, but still has a significant impact on the climate.

Scientists have called methane our ‘emergency brake’ for preventing the worst of the climate crisis. Because it is a short-lived gas, if we reduce methane emissions now and keep them down, we can slow global temperature rise  within our lifetimes. Every fraction of a degree matters when it comes to climate change.