Essay by Eric Worrall
“No one wanted to go to the next step of saying … we need to mitigate it [Agriculture] – including … reducing production levels …”
‘The anti-livestock people are a pest’: how UN food body played down role of farming in climate change
Ex-officials at the Food and Agriculture Organization say its leadership censored and undermined them when they highlighted how livestock methane is a major greenhouse gas
- Ex-officials at UN farming body say work on methane emissions was censored
- Analysis: Impact of farming on climate crisis will be a key Cop topic – finally
The night before publication, Henning Steinfeld was halfway across the world dealing with panicked politicians and an outbreak of avian flu. His report, and how it would be received, was frankly the last thing on his mind.
With a small group of officials, Steinfield, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s livestock policy branch, had been working for months on a report analysing the link between the six major species of livestock and climate change, which they all knew could be explosive. “I was very frustrated by the fact that the livestock-environment issue hadn’t resonated even though people accepted in private that it was a big issue – for climate change, and also water and biodiversity,” he said. “But no one was interested in getting into it because I think they were afraid of what it could mean.”
Another FAO official, “Michel Criollo” (not his real name), remembered: “No one wanted to go to the next step of saying agriculture is a problem for the planet and we need to mitigate it – including by potentially reducing production levels or changing things in less profitable ways.”
…
Between 2012 and 2019, “the lobbyists obviously managed to influence things”, Holstein said. “They had a strong impact on the way things were done at the FAO and there was a lot of censorship. It was always an uphill struggle getting the documents you produced past the office for corporate communications and one had to fend off a good deal of editorial vandalism. You had to accept relatively small steps forward in changing the narrative on livestock.”
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/the-anti-livestock-people-are-a-pest-how-un-fao-played-down-role-of-farming-in-climate-change
According to the WHO, 828 million people go hungry every night. Some of these unfortunates end up with lifelong health complications or even starve to death.
What kind of monster would recommend reducing food production in a world where so many people are hungry?
Deliberately reducing food production and availability, driving up prices in the name of climate action, would be an act of unspeakable cruelty.
Some vegans and other Greens want to make Paul Ehrlich’s failed predictions of mass famine come true after all. As they despise people, reducing population by any means necessary is a good thing in their view.
Yet this is exactly the outcome of eliminating Nitrate Fertilizers produced from Coal/Gas and reducing CO2. You Could eliminate some fertilizer usage IF you also eliminate the use of Foods to produce fuel (corn ethanol) OR allow for increased atmospheric fertilization through increased CO2 enrichment.
It’s not rocket science that eating crops directly yield more calorie per $ / acre than feeding it to animals to eat them. I’m by far no vegan, but saying veganism causes famine is not helping any argument for animal husbandry you are trying to make.
Can you eat grass? What ruminants eat is largely inedible by people, but vegans oppose animal agriculture anyway. As it benefits people, who lack the proper moral standing to benefit from other animals, their self-referential “principles” are clear to anyone naive enough to buy into it.
They eat corn.
They eat corn.
Not any of the cows in the pastures around me.
Not that many steer that we turn into meat are raised on pastures any longer, 80% of US meat production for beef comes from grain fed cows, not pasture raised.
I have not bothered to pursue any references, so cannot state positively on any side of the arguments, but more than a few articles have concluded quite the opposite:
there is a great deal of land unfit for crop farming that can be used for feeding farm animals.
most cattle and sheep on raised on that land.
for the great majority, grains are fed only during the last few weeks before sale to processing companies.
You are confusing grain finished cattle with exclusively grain fed cattle. Most cattle graze until a few months before slaughter, and are then fattened on grain.
That’s true, that grain is usually fed to finish the weight gain of cattle (in feedlots) before slaughter.
Another point that people seem to miss, is that cattle are mostly finished on kinds of grain that humans would normally never eat, i.e., high starch, or low quality grain, often, as with feed corn, being deliberately being grown that way. Also, cattle eat grain that *could* have been human grade, except for frost damage, or other kinds of crop damage, spoiling the quality. Farmers can’t control nature, so they often end up harvesting frost damaged wheat, for instance, which is no good for direct human consumption at all.
Of course, if we are planning to starve lots of humans, wrecking the meat economy, then dumping lots of grain that you can’t even feed to humans or make bread from, that would do it, I guess.
80% of US meat production for beef comes from grain fed cows
Possibly. I would like to see your source for this claim as I was unable to find any on my own.
“While the diet provided to finishing cattle in feedlots relies on some human-edible inputs (i.e., corn grain), the forages and byproducts fed to cattle throughout their lives are largely inedible to humans2. For example, once the entire lifetime feed intake of cattle is accounted for (meaning all the feed they consume from birth to harvest), corn accounts for only approximately 7 percent of the animal’s diet3. The other 93 percent of the animal’s lifetime diet will consist largely of feed that is inedible to humans, thus not in direct competition with the human food supply. Unlike humans, cattle can efficiently digest fiber and convert previously human-inedible feeds into nutritious, human-edible foods.”
https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/corn-as-cattle-feed-vs-human-food.html
That is untrue. Vast majority of U.S. Cattle spend 75% of their life grazing on federal land or private pastures only in the last 4 to 8 months are they put into a feed lot and fed corn as PART of their diet. Feed consists of alfalfa mixed with barley, corn, corn husks and other grains Roughly 220 million acres of federal land is used for grazing. This land with no other agricultural value. Hay, alfalfa and silage are main feed for dairy cattle.
When allowing for possible crop failures, having a population large enough to eat all grain is rash. Converting animal feed to humans in an emergency is something one should allow for.
And ancestors of modern humans were not vegetarians, anyway, so vegans knowledge of biology is rather deficient.
Our teeth show that we’re by nature omnivores.
And the length of our gut is not that of a vegetarian.
An equally persuasive argument is Vitamin B12. Its an essential nutrient, and we do make it, but we (unlike cows, sheep etc) make it in our guts after the point at which absorption stops.
Vegans who do not take B12 supplements will get very malnourished, and kids will have developmental disorders.
One way of getting B12 in under developed societies is that food storage will be somewhat infested with insects, so what seems like a strict vegan diet isn’t really that at all. You don’t need a lot, but you need some, and there are no plant sources.
Do these cows eat corn?:
https://www.google.ca/search?sca_esv=575309331&biw=342&bih=635&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=Africans+with+cattle&oq=Africans+with+cattle&aqs=mobile-gws-lite..0l5
One can’t be west-focused only. In Africa cattle are a sign of wealth and prosperity.
And it’s not a zero sum game with fixed rules. We’re already feeding everyone with current range of tech – imagine how well we could do if the whole world was using modern technologies?
Why are they trying to frame the debate as veggie vs meat? Why have they jumped the shark 🦈 when we haven’t even tried fertilization of the oceans (that’s if we assume the doomsday narrative) to get rid of CO2 (which is plant food….).
Shows the plan has nothing to do with CO2 – it’s just the latest pop issue that they can twist to Malthusian stupidity.
Silage is corn, cob and stalk. They run it through a chipper and allow it to ferment for a while before feeding to cattle. They love it and while it smells good, it’s not human food.
“They eat corn”
Nope: most of that is now used to make ethanol, to be used as an impractical, subsidised biofuel.
No, but countries where people starve are not exactly known for rolling grassy hills and lots of rain / water. That’s why lentils are seen as a solution to fight hunger, and not a luxury product like gras fed beef.
Most grazing land is unsuitable for growing grain or row crops, so it is a non sequitur.
Opposing people eating animals does not benefit poor people. Biofuels might be a different case, marginally.
are mostly know for their lack of infrastructure for distribution and storage of what would be adequate food supplies
plus corrupt governments that prevent development of resources for the general population.
Two different issues. Why should farmers in the developed countries give up cows because Somalia has a drought?
Do you see the stupidity?
Anyways most improved areas are due to politicians warring with each other and not giving a damn about the citizens.
Actually sounds like DC or Ottawa as much as Mogadishu.
Zimbabwe is a prime example of people starving in a country which was formerly a major agricultural producer.
Places like Arizona and Israel prove that water isn’t exactly a limiting factor. What most often causes starvation is politics. Wars, Socialism and other political games have caused many deaths through starvation.
That’s not what Tom said – he didn’t blame veganism, he said “some vegans” – and yes sometimes they can be worse than Jehovah’s witnesses, Moonies or Climate Warriors in shoving their idiot religion in one’s face.
It’s in every report urging people to go vegan or eat bugs – this more-eco-holier-than thou attitude on a subject that’s a lie anyway.
Its all vegans. Every one of them. Vile creatures.
‘Remember, it’s not a lie … if you tell it to a vegan.’ – Hank Hill
Imho in mentioning vegans and famine he draws a correlation between the too – maybe not all vegans, but he indicates that vegan philosophy can lead to famine. I’m sorry if I didn’t understand that correctly.
No he doesn’t! It’s the various governments and agencies and NGOs who are now floating the vegan idea, testing the waters and in a few years they’ll be restricting fertilizer use and husbandry – basically micromanagement by idiots who don’t even care what the output will be.
Veganism is just a smoke screen they hide behind, the politicos are still going to eat the Kobi beef on the taxpayers dine, but they are going to work overtime to guilt everyone into letting them interfere with farming in general and then we’ll get the same result as what happened in Sri Lanka, but on a global scale (except China, India countries in Africa and Asia where the leaders aren’t stupid as rocks like in the west)
If people want to be vegans, fine- but they should keep it to themselves.
You are correct. And while some grazing lands are strictly incapable of lots of food production a lot of it is. I think here in the comments you’ll receive a lot of deniers on that fact. While I eat meat I also eat a lot of veggies, lentils, and fruits as well, probably more so than meat because I’m frugal by nature and meat is ridiculously expensive right now unless you buy the cheapest of cuts. Good luck with our downvotes lol. That is all orthogonal to the greenies attempting to reduce the food supply by eliminating GMO plants and man-made fertilizers. We should always be open to new methods of farming, especially if they’re cleaner, but not if they reduce the food supply and starve people. Most of those people are starving because of corrupt governments and not low food production.
Using the “Deniers” tag is offensive and you should be banned. And no one here is denying any basic fact of farming. And remember the politicos and activists are not pushing to ban animals from getting feed from arable lands, they are pushing to ban the animals themselves – that will be the end result of of the current badgering regarding cattle and so on – the end goal is Soylent green.
“Thin edge of the wedge”
“Camel’s nose in the tent”
Oh, yes they are.
The anti-meat and anti-fertiliser mob keep poking their heads up.
You, and smart likeminded people like you, should get together, pick up that land that would be more efficiently used for growing lentils & such, and move forward making money and setting a great example.
But you have to find some likeminded people that are smart.
One example of such “Applied government (and other) optimism in action” –
Towards the end of the 1900’s “Millenial Drought” here in Oz the very optimistic state government of the day opened our district for “selection of land for wheat growing”.
Land blocks start at 100 acres near the railway line and got up to a dizzy 1280 acres further away. The period from the end of the Millenial Drought must have lurched towards reasonably reliable winter rainfall as wheat was produced. According to my father a crop about 4 years out of 5. Other enterprises also included dairying, with cream by rail to a butter factory about 100 miles away. Our ranch has one 320 acre block that was a dairy – for a while. Early wheat production equipment is still in evidence, such as wheat “strippers”. One grandfather was farming in a pretty big way for horsedrawn days.
The population had expanded to justify one school in town and another two within about 20 miles. Our ranch still has “The School Paddock”. Now the one in town struggles to maintaln enough numbers for survival.
After the 1915 drought, winter rain went missing. The block sizes did not support other endeavours, so property amalgamation has been on here since about half past 1915. One local ranch is an amalgamation of 30 of those small blocks. The last wheat crop was planted (unsuccessfully) on my grandfather’s farm in 1932.
There is currently no cropping in the district despite the advances in techniques for low rainfall farming.
Federation drought.
That was an interesting account of your district. Which general area, if that’s not being too much of a sticky beak?
That land that you are talking about is used for grazing (at least in the First World) because growing vegetable and grain crops on it would be at an economic LOSS. You can do it – but with a lot more inputs of fertilizer and water – most of it also requiring more tillage, as the gradients are not suitable for “low or no till” farming.
The only reason that you see grain crops on far too much formerly “wild” land is the government mandates and subsidies for ethanol. The farmers COULD NOT sell food crops from it and break even. Another “green” notion that destroys biodiversity, just like windmills and solar farms.
But we feed the livestock ‘low cost’ and/or ‘high yield’ products which we cannot, or should not eat ourselves.
Combine this, with the fact that most cattle are range cattle, which means they live on land which is not suitable for other agricultural use, e.g. its too rocky, too steep, too dry for crop farming, hence its used for grazing.
It’s not just about calories.
Eating calories is only a requirement for subsitstence level eating. To live a healthy life and be able to participate in strength and endurance activities requires protein. Animal protein is generally much higher quality than plant protein, so feeding lower quality proteins to animals and then getting the concentrated higher quality proteins for us to eat actually makes sense.
“subsistence” no “subsitstence”.
Vegans are perfectly healthy, except for their health issues, nothing a pill or five won’t possibly, maybe help
Veganists, climate alarmists and satanists are just misunderstood by the masses, their religion, like others, is not up for debate
Henry David Thoreau, an original back to nature hippie from the mid ’19th century, mostly a vegetarian, said once that sometimes he’d see a woodchuck in the forest and he’d get an irrisistable urge to grab it and eat it raw. 🙂
I tried the vegetarian route, plus supplements, (NOT vegan) for somewhat more than a year two different times. There are many very tasty recipes and it is less expensive, at least if one avoids the fake meats. However, both times, my stomach eventually started hurting more and more often until I went back to more reasonable eating.
One of those trials leaned heavily on the “Diet for a Small Planet” approach, assuring complete proteins by combining foods with the right amino acid contents. Whatever the problem was, it was not lack of protein.
There are amino acids for protein – and then there are AVAILABLE amino acids for protein. Otherwise, we COULD eat grass ourselves, rather than putting it through processing plants that we call “cattle.”
The other problem with “vegetarian” and “vegan” diets is essential minerals and vitamins. Which (properly selected) plants do have – but they also have an AVAILABILITY problem.
We can’t digest cellulose. That’s what those 4-legged fermentation vats do for us 🙂
We can eat and digest many plant products, principally the fruits *fruit, nuts, berries, grains) and some roots.
We can apparently obtain the mix of required amino acids from a mix of pulses and cereal grains.
It’s always seemed that the eco scientists most vocal about the gentle warming being the end of the world are really closet nazis who hate people, especially dark poor ones, and only regard them as a statistic to be manipulated.
Have misanthropes working in any capacity at FAO is a recipe for disaster.
You will own nothing, be hungry, and happy
You will own nothing, but ensure the elites are not hungry and always happy
You will be happy or else…
Mr. Lomborg from a Swedish NGO reports that annually 4 million people die because they don’t have access to fossil fuels and perish from cooking & heating by burning parasite infected dung – casualties for the greater good I’m sure all the climatistas would say
760Mn people around the world don’t have access to electricity, imagine that
not to mention that CO2 is good for the planet & its inhabitants – well documented that the level of CO2 presently in the atmosphere is just about the lowest ever recorded, so there have been periods of much higher levels and guess what – life flourished with higher CO2 & warmth, but perished with lower CO2 & cold – when something is so obviously incorrect there must be another motivation, and that motive was made clear in a speech by a former head of the UNIPCC who stated that the environmental movement is more about the destruction of capitalism than the climate
meanwhile termites add more CO2 than cows – anyone for ridding the earth of termites
Most likely considerably more difficult than achieving net-zero and almost certainly more of a planet wide disaster.
Yeah. I still have no idea what termites actually contribute, other than eating wood and turning it into methane.
Dead woody matter piles up VERY quickly if not broken down.
What about only half the termites?
as long as that half include where I live
I think that’s CH4 rather than CO2, but probably CO2 as well.
It should be considered criminal.
There is an odd consistency to this. I have known for quite some time that a mild increase in global temps are a good thing for humanity. Longer growing seasons, cheaper food, fewer people dying of cold (many more times than people dying of heat, except maybe in French nursing homes during vacation month!).
And, as we may be entering a new Maunder minimum. I am worried that there will be major food shortages across the globe.
We are preparing for the wrong things, IMHO.
Some recent reports show that the Chinese, looking at their historical record, have come to that same conclusion. If they want to rule the world (as is apparent!), all they have to do is keep the climate change stuff going.
One child policy might looks like a bad idea if their economy gets passed by India in 25 years.
They already killed that policy – almost 100 million men without a date. Their sisters were murdered in the womb.
We are definitely preparing for the wrong things, by short-sighted stupidity and negligence. Climate enthusiasts, when looking at what should be done back in the 70’s and 80’s, used game theory to test out their idea of the consequences. They looked at what would happen if the planet warmed or didn’t and concluded that, even if the planet didn’t warm, no harm would be done. In their stupidity they failed to account for cooling, despite that’s what can happen with temperatures and despite the fact we’re heading towards the next ice age. If a period of cooling does happen we are doing exactly the wrong things and are pulling in the opposite direction to what we should be doing. It’s utterly bonkers and potentially catastrophic.
“”No one wanted to go to the next step of saying … we need to mitigate it [Agriculture]””
Some think dengue fever will do the job – maybe
“”Dr Oliver Brady, Associate Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and an expert in mosquito-transmitted viruses, says that the numbers of infections across Europe can differ quite drastically between modelling projections – but this is expected due to the uncertainty surrounding climate change.””
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/global-dengue-fever-risk-warning-mosquitoes-climate-change/
[numbers] can differ quite drastically between modelling projections – due to the uncertainty surrounding climate change
Check.
I don’t know how well the common citizen understands that adjusting even one arbitrarily selected variable can be used to make the same complicated-looking equation predict paradise or apocalypse.
Wow, never thought I’d think UN & potential genocide in the same thought!
The globalists (UN) and its nation guiding tentacles are peddling this attack on food chains on many fronts
From eat less meat, to eat more bugs and the insane nut zero attacks on fertilisers, farmlands and farmers (eg, putting solar farms on prime agricultural sites instead of growing crops, rearing cattle etc)
They are either planning for less people via poverty & cold related ill health, or, via starvation – either way, it’s a safer method of culling global populations than by releasing a lab grown pathogen, that won’t differentiate between rich & poor
I know, it sounds outlandish, almost conspiracy theory, but, what if………….
Is it a “conspiracy theory” if you have a valid theory about a real conspiracy from socialists and WEF cultists
Darth Schwab….
I am strongly opposed to the U.S.climate envoy’s points on the climate impact of agriculture.
John Kerry says emphatically that it is a matter of “physics and mathematics”!!
No, sir. It is a pernicious illusion.
John gets paid, a lot, to say those silly things – his lifestyle doesn’t come cheap
$700 haircuts- and that was way back when he was running for the presidency.
Heyyyy, don’t anybody worry about ‘the lights going out’
They already did: We are now in Scientific & Political Dark Age
….and the folks now in control are certifiably insane.
Let them eat bugs!
North Koreans have to eat bugs. Asian rice production produces more CO2 than transportation. We must reduce John Kerry and his fellow travelers.
All land animals are carbon neutral, because all of the carbon that comes from them came from the atmosphere in the first place.
Meat is how we humans eat grass.
I’ve said the above many times on other forums. They are so obvious that they shouldn’t need saying. I could add, of course, that much land is suitable for grass but not for crops.
Some facts…
Would it be better if the methane was burned right away in the atmosphere (I imagine a solar powered spark plug backpack kind of thing near the butt of the animal) or just left to oxidize over a few years.
What if each farmer “wilded” a bigger area and took care of it to enhance its carbon sink (and bee 🐝 biosphere).
What if farmers took all the stubble and left overs and plowed it under for extra carbon sinks? I know that’s old fashioned and causes dust bowls in some areas, but it beats eating bugs.
What about more artificial reefs and fertilization of the oceans, to help out the plankton?
Nevermind, I forgot the whole climate change narrative is the biggest lie since Hitler’s.
E. Schaffer – Those numbers are only one side of the equation. The other side of the equation is that all the carbon that comes from livestock has come from the atmosphere in the first place. ie, in = out, net C emission = zero. While the C is in the livestock, it isn’t in the atmosphere and methane breaks down quickly in the atmosphere (a few years) so that doesn’t make much difference either). The temperature increase from livestock is more like 0K than 0.05K.
(edited, minor)
I’m telling you the UN is worthless. Reducing food production was not their goal, reducing human population was their goal. Reducing food production was a means to achieve their goal of reducing population. Reducing food production sounds so much more civilized than reducing population, and more acceptable than Hitler or Stalin or Mao’s approach.
“Deliberately reducing food production and availability, driving up prices in the name of climate action, would be an act of unspeakable cruelty.”
No, this is a crime against humanity. It is barbaric and completely unhinged.
Yes, it is a crime against humanity.
It’s ridiculous to think that reducing methane will have any effect on the Earth’s atmosphere. These climate alarmists are delusional. The facts don’t support their claims about methane.
The amazing circular logic of the righteous zealots of climate change alarmism:
1. Climate change is dangerous because food production will be adversely affected.
Also:
2. We must reduce food production because it will cause climate change.
The FAO appears to be another of those organisations full of policy advisors but nobody with subject matter expertise. Have they dispensed with their agronomists, plant breeders and veterinarians?
Yes, ruminants do produce methane due to microbial digestion of cellulose.
Is the mass of ruminants (domesticated, feral and wild) increasing?
Is the mix of ruminants changing appreciably?
According to the SI of the Ivanovich et al paper discussed earlier this year, Sheep and goats produce half the CH4 emissions per kg of meat as cattle. Switching from beef to lamb and kid could potentially drastically reduce CH4 for a similar amount of meat.
The caveat is, of course, that these species fill different ecological niches. Cattle are wet climate grazers/browsers, sheep are dry climate grazers and gots are dry climate browsers. Sheep and goats suffer from a number of diseases and parasites in wet conditions.
btw, the Nobel Committee still hasn’t been in touch for proposing this 🙁
From the article: “What kind of monster would recommend reducing food production in a world where so many people are hungry?”
Especially over an inconsequential issue like methane.
More evidence for the Climate Change POLICY Crimes Against Humanity trials.
What the vegans and vegetarians want is a reduction in livestock (i.e, animals for meat production), not food per se. After all, livestock is an incredibly inefficient means of turning air, water and sunlight into food. The average yield of macro-nutrients (ie Protein, carbs, fats) of a hectare of land devoted to crops produces 500% to 1000% more than livestock. As a bonus, much land devoted to agriculture, could be returned for non ag use. 45% of crops are grown to feed livestock.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-protein-poore
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5366844/