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Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Wayne Mayo, Betsy Johnson, Joe Corsiglia, President Trump, Henry Heimuller, VP Pence, Pat Robertson, Debi Corsiglia’s dog, or Claudia Eagle’s Cats. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone. See Standard Disclaimer.
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METHANE A cow does on overage release between 70 and 120 kg of Methane per year. Methane is a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide (CO2). ... grazing land and farm land is responsible for an extra 2.8 billion metric tons of CO2 emission per year. All those "cow farts" you’ve heard about? Are actually cow burps. Methane emissions from cattle get attention because methane is 28 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 100-year time frame. Furthermore, methane from cattle represents nearly half of the carbon footprint of U.S. A key misconception about methane emissions from cattle is how the animal’s diet can affect emissions. When cattle eat more food, or whole plants, that contain a lot of grass and hay, they tend to emit more methane gas. Cattle diets that include more grains, like those of most feedlot cattle in the United States, produce fewer methane emissions. Kind of like you when you eat broccoli vs whole grains. The percentage of greenhouse gas emissions attributed to beef varies from nation-to-nation due to differences in the number of cattle relative to the human population and the amount of fossil fuel-dependent energy consumed within a nation. Brazil, a country with more cattle than people and the second largest beef producing nation in the world, methane emissions from beef cattle accounted for 21 percent and transportation represented 20 percent of that nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. While the emissions in the US are about 2%. Worldwide beef production accounts for 6 percent of global emissions when feed production and land use change are included. In 1975 there were 132 million beef and dairy cattle in the United States, and we produced 24.9 billion pounds of beef. By 2016, we had a beef and dairy cattle herd of 92 million and produced 25.3 billion pounds of beef. Fewer cattle required to produce beef translates into fewer methane emissions, less feed required and less manure generated per pound of beef produced. Doing more with less has decreased U.S. beef’s emission concentration by 29 percent and total carbon emissions by 30 percent since 1975, we’ve circumvented about 2.3 gigatons of CO2 equivalent emissions since 1975 because of efficiency developments in U.S. beef production. While sizable improvements have been made by the people that raise beef, great prospects to further reduce beef’s emissions remain. Methods include targeting methane production in the cattle’s digestive system directly with state-of-the-art feed additives, using genetic selection methods to breed for animals or even microbiomes that require less feed for each pound of beef produced, and improving grazing management practices to enhance carbon sequestration mainly on land that has been degraded. While all this information sounds great, the readers must understand that in South America hundreds of thousands of acres of the rainforest has been cleared to raise beef, so what is the amount of CO2 that has increased because of the lost acres of forests. The information I am reporting is not complete with -out those numbers , I will research that information for a up- coming Tammy’s Take. People may not think that the cow issue is important, but reducing CO2 everywhere we can ,will make a collective difference that this world needs in reducing greenhouse gasses. Another way to help solve the cow emission issue is to use their poop and pee as fuel an that is being looked at.
Tammy
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