Farming — Andy Arthur.org

After my tiresome hike this weekend, I came back to my truck and opened the cooler got out a paper cup and poured myself a nice glass of milk. It was refreshing although maybe a little bit sticky on the lips. But I was super thirsty and that’s what I had.

I’ve always been a big milk drinker, typically buying two gallons of milk per week from Stewart’s. They have the best price and it’s right down the street from my apartment. I’ve always had an interest in the mostly docile large animals that make milk production a reality, how dairy farmers work their land to raise food for their cows and manage their production. They’re really is a lot that goes into a dairy.

YouTube has given me and the public at least a unique ability to see and learn much about the farm life from tractors to preparing the soil, planting and harvesting crops. It’s also shown the goings on in the tie stall barn from feeding to milking to raising and pulling calves. To artificial insemination and real bulls on ranches to preg testing cattle. Yeap, they have special plastic gloves for reaching up the anus and birth canal to check on the development of calves in the womb. I’ve learned more about the business decisions made every day and craft and science behind the milk business. Or even inside a milk processing plant that takes raw milk, processes it and pasteurizes it into many good products.

Really kind of fascinating stuff. Its interesting to know what’s going on in the field and in the barnyard as I travel the backcountry roads on my trips and travels. To make sense of smells of small town America to know what the various buildings on the farm represent. While I doubt I’ll ever get into the dairy business – my parents had dairy goats for a while, it’s interesting to learn more. While when I own my off grid cabin in the future I will likely do some homesteading, maybe so heritage hogs and chickens for meat, dairy is a tough thing to do with all the constant need to breed and bring the animals around for milking.

🐮 👣The other night I heard the tired old claim that beef is really bad for the environment as it has a high carbon footprint. How can that be? Cows don’t consume oil to stay alive although diesel is used in cattle trailers, tractors hauling feed, bailing hay and spreading manure.

But what the activist types are really saying is cows digest grass and dried grass in the form of hay and as part of the conversion of grass to energy they chew their cud and in part loose some of the material that escapes their mouths as methane. Some manure also breaks down as methane when in an oxygen deprived environment like a slurry tank.

Methane is a moderately powerful green house gas. It’s 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide although it lasts only about a decade in the atmosphere before hydroxyl radicals break it down into carbon dioxide. Far lower of an impact then much more powerful warming gases like common refrigerants such as the CFCs and their HFC replacements. At the same time new grass is being grown to feed cows, so they are absorbing the carbon dioxide at the same rate it’s being broke down by the methane. Ultimately, farming is a carbon neutral activity, bar fuel used in tractors or trucks.

The carbon footprint of beef and cattle more generally is grossly over estimated, because while methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas then carbon dioxide, ultimately most farming activity is carbon neutral, as crops absorb in the carbon that livestock exhale and methane they burp up. Moreover, many cattle get a significant portion of their feed from grazing pastures that requires minimal diesel-fired equipment work to maintain. Grazing might have an initially higher greenhouse output, as grass produces more methane when burped up compared to other feeds, but because grass is absorbing carbon constantly, it’s ultimately carbon neutral.

Beef and dairy might be more of a climate concern where new land is being developed, forests converted into crop land. But with the increasing efficiency of crop and livestock production, it’s rare that forests are being converted to farm or grazing land at least in the first world. But in contrast, farms are being replaced with housing and commercial use, that bring in more vehicles, more buildings to heat, and more wildlife habitat forever displaced. Burped methane from grass isn’t warming the planet, burning fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal is.

Farming 📍

Milk and the dairy business

Cows and carbon footprints 🐮 👣

The Nitrogen Cycle, Fixers, and Fertilizer

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