If you open the door of any given refrigerator in the United States today, there is a 98% chance that it will contain an animal-sourced food product.
That’s something Dr. Frank Mitloehner says livestock producers should be proud of, and at the same time need to work to protect. Mitloehner, who is a Professor and Air Quality Specialist at the University of California-Davis, recently discussed food animal sustainability on an episode of the Agri-Pulse Open Mic podcast..
“The anti-livestock activists have very loud voices,” he emphasized. “They don’t have great numbers, but they have loud voices.”
Mitloehner said farmers are often reluctant to talk to policymakers and the media, allowing activists the upper hand because they actively promote their messages in relatable, bite-sized communication packages. “So, the mass media gives them as much attention as the people who produce all that food,” he stated.
The CLEAR Center – which stands for “Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research” – is an entity at UC-Davis lead by Mitloehner to quiet to voices of anti-agriculture activists and deliver understandable, factual information to consumers and the media.
Among that messaging is the fact that about two-thirds of agricultural land in the United States is considered marginal. Its main “product” is grass. Humans cannot utilize cellulose in grass, but ruminant animals can, converting it to meat and milk that people can consume. “Without them [ruminant animals], we could not make use of this agricultural land to produce food,” noted Mitloehner.
Technological tools also are becoming more readily available to help livestock producers reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, of which methane makes up about 60%. Among them are feed additives, genetic selection, and vaccines. Ration adjustments also can help by manipulating roughage and fat levels. Mitloehner said methanogens thrive on roughage but can be modulated with the addition of fat.
In California, the burgeoning renewable natural gas (RNG) industry, fueled by anaerobic digesters that extract the energy from dairy manure, is making tremendous headway in achieving the state’s sustainability goals for the dairy sector. RNG alone is reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions from dairy by 4 million metric tons, which is over half of the state’s goal for dairy to reduce their total emissions by 7.2 million metric tons. In the near future, feed additives are expected to create an additional 1.5-2% reduction.
And yet, “there are people only waiting to shoot those things down,” warned Mitloehner. “They don’t really want to see lower emissions from dairy and beef operations. They just want fewer dairy and beef animals. We have to be careful in explaining how these things work, and what is being used and why.”
While a staunch advocate for agriculture and farmers, Mitloehner said producers also need to become more comfortable embracing and promoting sustainability issues and practices. “I think we can seriously become part of a solution, rather than being part of a problem,” he stated.
“We need to stop allowing those distractors to act as specialists, because they are not,” he declared. “We are the experts in this field. We need to be the voices that address the fear out there with fact-based information about how we grow food.”
