The IPCC and Red Ed are full of BS

The government's concern about bovine methane emissions is based on (yet) another IPCC lie (sorry, oversimplification).

Eco-zealots hate cattle farming. They point out that cattle emit methane, claim that this is a bad thing and demand that the UK’s cattle industry should be shut down. In response a company called Bovaer has invented a cattle feed additive that reduces bovine methane emissions by 27%. It’s being trialled on 30 farms and the greenwashers of the supermarket chains’ marketing departments are all over it. The Food Standard Agency has already said it’s safe. Hurrahs all round then.

Perhaps. Or maybe not.

According to the ONS, in 2023 the UK’s Agriculture sector emitted 49 million tons of CO₂ equivalent, some 10% of the UK’s total emissions. Of that some 27 million tons was methane. If Bovaer’s product works methane emissions will reduce to 18 million tons a year. That’s still a lot of methane. Bovaer sees a profit. Mad Ed Miliband no doubt sees an opportunity to justify turning all farms into solar parks.

I see an accounting error.

Cows eat grass. Like all plants, when grass grows it absorbs CO₂. Some of that goes into building the leaf that the cow eats, some goes into building the roots that stay in the ground. The latter is considered sequestered; it has been permanently removed from the atmosphere. The UK has almost 11 million hectares of permanent grassland, plus another 1.3 million hectares of pasture that is less than five years old. That a huge area, about four Belgiums, plus a Luxembourg and a Monaco. There’s a heck of a lot of British grass eating CO₂ .

How much CO₂ each hectare of grassland sequesters varies. According to the Irish Teagasc (the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority) the amount lies in the range 1.5 to 4 tonnes CO₂ per hectare per year. The Irish know a thing or two about grass – it’s not known as the Emerald Isle because of its jewel industry. Given Ireland’s proximity and similarity to the UK it’s reasonable to use their figures.

Teagasc also states that “… international accounting rules state that we can only include the additional sequestration that occurs due to management changes, the reported figures are much lower..” Read that again. International rules (presumably COP or the IPCC or some other collection of numbskulls) only counts the sequestration if the crop changes.

The whole point about permanent pasture is that it doesn’t change, but to the faceless and nameless international rule makers – of whom I suspect few have seen a farm, let alone delivered a calf – that doesn’t matter; CO₂ sequestered by permanent pasture doesn’t count. Taking the Irish figures and applying them to the UK’s permanent pasture area reveals that UK’s net agricultural emissions are overstated by some 16 to 43 million tons of CO₂ equivalent, i.e. by 30% to 90%. Livestock methane emissions may in fact be a net zero. This level of numeric falsehood makes Enron’s accounting frauds pale into insignificance. This is international government policy being deliberately misleading.

Cows are not destroying the planet; stupid and/or corrupt people are trying to destroy livestock agriculture.

Of course, if there were no cattle grass would still grow above and below ground. It wouldn’t be as well managed so the roots would be less vigorous and less CO₂ would be sequestered. If Mad Ed converted the pasture to a solar park the grass would receive much less sunlight and so grow more slowly, sequestering less CO₂. I bet that isn’t included in his CO₂ benefit calculations though.

Then there’s the British people’s nutrition. Every year the UK gets some 2.2 trillion calories (that is kcal) from beef and milk. People aren’t keen on starvation, so if cattle are abandoned those calories must be replaced from some other food source. If the replacement came from wheat only (for simplicity) UK farmers would need to produce an additional 910,000 tons. Growing that would require another 114,000 Ha of arable land.

Finding that land is not as straightforward as some might think. Broadly all the good agricultural land is already growing crops, so sub optimal land will have to be used. Quality is already challenging; wheat that is not up to the exacting standards required for human consumption goes into the livestock feed industry. In 2023 53% of wheat, 67% of barley and 39% of oats went to feed livestock. As livestock feed commands a lower price than human food farmers are out of pocket, yet despite the farmer’s best endeavours 53% of wheat wasn’t up to quality. Delivering a 10% increase in human quality grain will require rather more land than first thought.

Much of the permanent pasture is too steep or in fields that are too small, meaning that hedges would have to be ripped out, leading to a net release of CO₂ and wildlife habitat loss. Even simply returning some of the 1.3 million hectares of temporary grassland to cultivation comes with an environmental cost. Ploughing the grass in risks releasing at least some of the CO₂ that it has sequestered. It would also end (or massively reduce) its ability to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Of course, if a farmer is not being paid to graze cows he (or she) isn’t going to waste money on maintaining the pasture. That means it will not grow as much and won’t sequester as much CO₂. Sure, it will be de facto “rewilded”, but at the price of increasing the UK’s net emissions. That rewilding might not create the much hyped biodiversity either, as we’ll see.

First, let’s consider the non-methane agricultural emissions which total some 22 million tons of CO₂ equivalent. 12 million tons is nitrous oxide (N₂O). According to DEFRA https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/agri-climate-report-2023/agri-climate-report-2023 two thirds of N₂O emissions arise from the use of various fertilisers and the balance from burning agricultural wastes. The 5% increase in cultivated land necessary to deliver the extra calories to the UK will increase the use of fertiliser and therefore increase the N₂O emissions by 5%. N₂O is an even stronger greenhouse gas than methane, by a factor of ten.

The extra cultivation will also mean 5% more tractors, combines and the like, which will burn 5% more diesel and emit 5% more CO₂. The net emissions saving of eliminating cows is therefore compromised by increasing emissions and reducing the ability of pasture to sequester CO₂.

In the crazy concept of Net Zero there is a far simpler solution; import more grain. That makes sense as Net Zero only counts the emissions from the UK’s territory while ignoring the CO₂ content of what we consume. As ever, a solution that makes sense for the Net Zero nuts like Boris Johnson and Mad Ed Miliband doesn’t stack up in the real world.

There is generally no “spare” agricultural land anywhere and none is being made. Growing the grain to deliver the calories requires savannah, prairie or rainforest to be converted to arable land. Ending cattle farming in the UK will deplete some distant country of at least 115,000 hectares of virgin land. In 2023 rainforest loss totalled 3.7 million hectares. David Attenborough and the BBC won’t like it if the UK adds at least another 3% for no good reason - but that’s what the Net Zero nutters (and the vegans and veggies) want, even if they don’t realise it.

The smoke of slash and burn farming is the visible evidence of converting biodiverse habitat will be converted to atmospheric CO₂, NO_x and other pollutants. On top of that there is the CO₂ emitted in manufacturing yet more fertiliser and other agrichemicals and yet more CO₂ from shipping it to the back of beyond. Taking some of the best agricultural land on the planet out of service to satisfy eco-loons is decidedly environmentally unfriendly.

There’s an economic impact too – the value of the wheat (and shipping it to the UK) will be taken out of our economy every year. That’s not going to help Rachel Reeve’s desperate drive for growth, nor our food security. We’ll also lose the revenue from the meat and livestock that we export. Beyond that, British cattle genetics are world leading and much sought after. Destroying our cattle industry will remove that export income too.

It would not be good news for the UK’s soil either. Like many nations, decades of over production have damaged our soil’s health. The solution is straightforward, plough in more organic matter, primarily manure and sewage sludge. 80% of the livestock manure produced in the UK comes from cattle. The 67million tons of it dwarfs the 3.7 million tons of sewage sludge that is spread on fields. The UK needs healthy soil to grow cereals and that requires cattle. Without their manure the UK’s soil will yield less, meaning even more rainforest will have to be cleared to cover the falling production. Strangely the vegans, eco-loons and Net Zero nuts never mention that either.

Such debate as there has been on Net Zero and its implications has been dominated by green propaganda, disinformation and hectoring (now bullying) governments, including this benighted one. While this may have cowed the mainstream media and even organisations such as the NFU, the laws of biology, physics and thermodynamics don’t give a stuff and don’t negotiate. Eliminating cattle will exacerbate the environmental challenges we all face and reduce food production.

This government has already set us on a path to a dark and cold winter. It has already adopted policies that will destroy British agriculture. This latest lunacy from the green lobby simply speeds us on our journey to the day where there is not enough food.

As Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette found out the hard way, a hungry mob exacts its revenge on its rulers.

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