Why Taxing Beef Isn’t the Answer
A carbon tax on beef to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be more detrimental to the growing population than it would be helpful. As two economists from the University of Guelph recently argued, “It will likely increase food prices for consumers and decrease the prices farmers charge for their products, but it’s unlikely to lower meat consumption significantly and therefore unlikely to lower GHG emissions from the livestock sector.” Taxing nutrient-rich foods is regressive idea and, based on these arguments, would impact low-income Americans disproportionally.
In the United States today, we produce the same amount of beef with one third fewer cattle as compared to the mid-1970’s, according to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. The men and women who raise cattle in the United States have dramatically reduced carbon emissions by improving animal husbandry practices, implementing better animal nutrition, and improving animal genetics. They have adopted the most up-to-date science to be good stewards of the land and caretakers of cattle. By continuously improving their production practices and doing more with less, U.S. beef producers have avoided 2.3 gigatons of carbon emissions since 1975, according to calculations based on the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s FAOSTAT database.
It is common to see articles comparing emissions from beef production to that of transportation vehicles. This is not a sound comparison for many reasons, most notably that this originated with the 2006 UN Food and Agriculture Organization report Livestock’s Long Shadow report, which one of the report’s authors later admitted was a flawed comparison. The UN Food and Agriculture’s 2013 report Tackling Climate Change through Livestock estimated life cycle carbon emissions from livestock as 14.5 percent of global emissions, and beef and dairy cattle at 9 percent. While these percentages are valid at the global scale, they are not at the individual nation-level. Unfortunately, facts around greenhouse gas emissions from livestock are often muddled by inappropriate comparisons and the misapplication of global statistics to specific countries such as the United States. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, GHG emissions from beef cattle represent 2 percent of U.S. emissions, while transportation vehicles contribute 26 percent of our nation’s carbon emissions.
That said, we have a great blueprint to further reduce carbon emissions from beef and other livestock production based in historical evidence. The FAO’s 2013 report also highlighted how improved productivity, essentially getting other nations’ agricultural production closer to the efficiencies seen within the United States, could reduce carbon emissions without changing animal product output. For example, if global beef and dairy production could change their practices to be as productive as the top 10 percent of producers, in line with the United States, their emissions would be cut from 9 percent to 6 percent of global emissions while producing the same amount of beef and dairy products. As this example illustrates, great opportunity lies within production practices used on farms and ranches and within supply chains to reduce GHG emissions.
No free lunch exists when it comes to food production and greenhouse gas emissions. Beef and other animal products do tend to have higher carbon footprints than other foods, but they are also nutrient rich in comparison and beef can be raised on land that is not otherwise suitable to grow human-edible foods. Collectively we need to engage the full complexity of this topic when considering policies in the future. When it comes to food, climate change, and sustainability, we need to take holistic views and understand that evaluating our food system is far more complicated than individual food items’ carbon footprints. A beef carbon tax may fit on a bumper sticker, but it’s unlikely to help curb climate change.
Sara Place, Ph.D., is senior director, sustainable beef production research, at National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a contractor to the Beef Checkoff Program. She was previously assistant professor in the Department of Animal Science at Oklahoma State University. Raised on a dairy farm in Chenango County, N.Y., she received her Ph.D. in Animal Biology from the University of California, Davis, and her B.S. in Animal Science from Cornell University.
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