Reading the recent post by my colleague Carol Thiessen, where she shared the words of farmers around the world struggling to cope with climate change, I wanted to do something.
Sending them money will help them cope, but it won’t slow down the catastrophic climate change that my lifestyle is driving.
The problem is profound. And it seems that changing my light bulbs (or cutting out my occasional flights to visit my children) won’t solve it, either.
So what, then, can I do?
For me, the starting place is in buying locally produced meat. That might seem a bit of a surprising decision, but let me explain.
Farming has to change
I recently read a report called Wake Up Before It’s Too Late, published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
The title is a clanger, but it matches the tone of the last week’s alarming report on impacts and adaptation from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The overall theme of the report is that farming—the foundation of global civilization– has to change, and soon. After all, global agriculture tops transportation in contributing to climate change.
One theme in particular stood out: The contribution that globalized large scale meat production makes to the climate change.
The problem is not so much the raising animals for meat, milk and eggs. It’s the millions of ‘landless’ animals- – -animals whose food now comes not from nearby fields, but from distant farms some thousands of kilometers away.
Rather than eating grass and local grain, cattle and chickens now eat grain and soybeans that are produced elsewhere. That elsewhere is sometimes continents away. Brazil and Argentina have rapidly increased their production of animal feed for increasing numbers of animals in China and Europe.
It’s this separation of animals from their food source (and their growing numbers) that drive climate change.
Brazil and Argentina have had to import millions of tonnes of fertilizers to substitute for animal manure that is now produced by animals raised in Europe and China. Producing and using these synthetic fertilizers releases nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas, which is an important driver of climate change.
Meanwhile, the manure produced in huge quantities in large scale meat production causes disposal problems and represents a major loss of nutrients in the global food system.
The ruminant animals like cows and sheep also produce large amounts of methane, another potent greenhouse gas.
Taking the next step
But there’s some good news, as well. Methane disappears quite quickly from the atmosphere, unlike carbon dioxide.
So, if we reduce methane generation by reducing the number of cattle and sheep, the results in climate change will show up quickly. If we can go a step further and reconnect the manure produced with the production of animal feed we will kill two birds with one stone-–reduce the need for synthetic fertilizer and deal with a serious waste disposal issue.
In Canada, much of the animal feed is produced closer to animals. But, with some exceptions, the animals and their feed are no longer raised together.
So, one of the first steps I am going to take to adapt to climate change is to buy meat from local and locally- fed animals. It may cost a little more but I will simply eat less, which is also part of the solution.
