Blog Post 5

Many of the articles I’ve read on livestock farming and veganism so far only emphasized a few things: livestock farming is promoting rapid progress of climate change, veganism is a healthier diet, and soy production is causing deforestation. Majority of the articles I’ve read supported vegan diet with their fair share of reasons, but they seemed to neglect to mention new technologies and methods that could reduce carbon footprint emissions caused by livestock farming.

The biggest reason why livestock farming is looked down upon is because it takes up a big portion of carbon footprint emissions and is one of the biggest contributor to drought. Livestock farming is accountable for 8% of world wide water usage, and 18% of carbon footprint emissions.

It is well understood that livestock farming definitely is causing harm to the ecosystem by being one of the biggest contributors to climate change. But is there anything that can be done about it? According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) there are several ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions contributed by livestock farming. For land and crop management, farms can start draining water from wetland rice soils during the growing season to reduce methane emissions. In livestock management, farms can reduce the amount of methane produced and increase productivity through breeding by improving the pasture quality and increasing animal productivity. With manure management, farms can store manure in anaerobic containment areas to maximize methane production, capture the methane, then use the methane as an energy substitute for fossil fuels. These new technologies are very much realistic, however, it does come with a few compromises. For example, handling manure as a solid instead of storing it in a liquid-based system such as a lagoon can reduce methane emissions, but may increase nitrous oxide emissions, which is just as bad as methane gas emission.

Before my research on modern technologies that could actually help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from livestock, I thought the industry was hopeless and there was no other way to protect our ecosystem besides putting a halt to meat consumption. With this research, I feel a little more lenient on meat consumption (excluding animal cruelty), but I still stand strong on the side of living a plant-based lifestyle.