It is not often that I get a chance to commune with domesticated nature, but during the last few weeks I have been working at a 150 acre cattle ranch removing exotic vegetation out in Okeechobee County. An unexplainable sense of guilt waifs towards me as I drive into the methane gas abyss. Circumventing hungry cows and cow patties scattered like a drunk discus throwing match. I take cover under the shade of a cabbage palm tree to beat the afternoon heat.
Looking at the periphery of the ranch I start counting cabbage palms, stopping at about 1750, then I counted heads of cows, 49 were gnawing on grass.
Here is where the Moodoo Economics begin. A typical beef cow produces Approximately 5oo lbs. of beef for boneless steaks and ground beef. By regulation, a beef cow must be at least 21 months old before going to the slaughterhouse; let’s call it two years. A single cow produces 114 kilos of methane per year in eructations and flatulence, so over its likely lifetime, a beef cow produces 228 kilos of methane (not including the methane from its manure). Since a single kilo of methane is the equivalent of 23 kilos of carbon dioxide, a single beef cow produces 5244 kilos of CO2-equivalent kilograms of methane over its life. I figure its carbon foot print per year is approximately 3000 kilos. Side note, eructations is a fancy word for burping, I just learned that today.
More Moodoo Economics, on average a large tree will absorb approximately 20.3kgs of carbon dioxide per year over its 40 year lifespan.
So do the trees and the cows even out? 50 cows at 3000 methane kilos per cow released equals 150,000 kilos of carbon per year. 1750 trees at 20.3 carbon kilos per tree absorbed equals 35,000 kilos per year. So basically you would need 7500 trees or 50 trees per acre to offset the cows. Taking into consideration all the oak trees, maples, and cabbage palms I would say that this cattle ranch is pretty close to the number of trees needed to offset the cows.
Adding another twist to the Moodoo Economics some cattle farms harvest their cabbage palms to sell thru out the southeastern states for landscaping commercial and residential properties adding to the canopy and the absorption of carbon in our communities. Chances are the meat bought at the grocery store and the cabbage palms that accent the parking lot may have met before earlier in life.
So when your driving and you happen upon a pasture of cows take a look at the trees and try a little Moodoo Economics for yourself. You can’t get to upset with the cows as we put out an average of 18,000 kilos of carbon per person in the US about the same as a cow. Unlike the cow, our numbers are not computed using flatulence and eructations, our numbers are based on what we drive, how big our home is, etc. Added up like penalty points in a bad board game soon to be assimilated into to a new carbon tax.
We can argue carbon numbers to the cows come home, and debate breaking ice shelves and global warming. For now we should give the cattlemen a break because they are closer to sustainability than the average Joe and maybe his unexplainable guilt will waif away.
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Bart, this was really interesting and something substantial for the AR anti-beef people to put in their cap and smoke. I’ll be following your posts here with interest.
I don’t see how one can consider trees to counter the cow’s emissions. Yes, they absorb CO2 in their lifetime. But when they fall they decay, and re-emit that same CO2! That means that over the life cycle of trees they do not actually capture CO2. Cutting down a rain forrest does release CO2 during the transition, and growing a new forrest does capture. But not the static state of number of trees if it is held constant per acre.
So really this calculation is of the number of new trees that must be planted. One must increase the number of trees actively on the land by 50 trees per acre, EACH YEAR, in order to counter the effect of the cows. (That really doesn’t work, so in reality the cows contribute to global warming.)
Thanks G Elliot and Larkin for your comments, Great points made by G. I’m working on my counter point so stay tuned.
Bart
Let’s see if I’ve got this right, or even close to right: ?
Standing forests build about as much new growth (develop carbon storage) as the detritus they cast off (return carbon to earth for decomposition). Emerging forests will develop carbon storage in excess of the detritus cast off. Without interference, forest will naturally build to the limits of its given environment’s carrying capacity such as altitude tree line. Once the carrying capacity has been achieved, a standing forest’s carbon neutral capacity is achieved.
Cows prefer to feed on grasses more and palms less. Therefore the palms’ detritus that feeds the grasses is removed from the carbon storage in the earth and held in the cow to be released as a steak and methane flatulence. Adding trees to the environment is the only way to get ahead of this curve. But, once you have added trees to the pasture to the point that you have a developed, standing, forest, that has reached its environment’s limited carrying capacity you will no longer have a pasture, with grasses, to feed the cows.
The eight hundred pound Gorilla is methane in solution, not in cows but in the cold layers of the deep ocean. A small rise in ocean temperature brings this methane out of solution and in to the atmosphere to overload the carbon cycle and accelerate the heating cycle.
Here is a nice wikipedia link of the Carbon Cycle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Cycle
Google has links to illustrations of lots of associated cycles as well.
After readin this i think i’m gonna have me a big steak, take a big fart, ride around in my gas guzzling V8 hemi, and maybe plant a few sable causarium, or livistonia sarabus to offset my Carbon print.
Thanks for your comments, I for one walk away knowing more than I started with. Thanks G Elliot, Xnor, and Hope for your input. Today in the US we have 90 million head of cattle. At their peak we had estimates of over 60 million buffalo roaming the Western United States, something or someone is foot printing carbon, be it buffalo, cattle, SUV’s or volcanoes.
Steve,
I agree the saribus is a great palm.
thanks for the comparison of trees to cows. it is obviously difficult to make an accurate calculation of carbon and methane in an ecosystem.
we raise 60 calves a year on 60 momma cows.
the ones that go for beef eat grass and hay most of their lives. some get mostly corn (but some hay) the
last 100 days before market. the grass finished catlle are on eating grass before they are “finished”.
there is no law that says they must be 21 months old. i think you may be confusing some grading
standards, but i am not sure.
most importantly, to simplify the carbon equation (whether CO2 or methane), I like
to think of when the carbon is trapped and when it is released. Carbon that cows – I’ll say it- fart,
was captured from plants a few days or months ago. All told that can’t be changing the greenhouse affect that much. Carbon released from fossill fuels, however, had been bound up and out of the carbon cycle for millions of years. As long as we unlock millions of years worth of carbon deposits in a matter of minutes, with each mile we drive or watt we burn, we will never balance the carbon cycle.
by the way, our farm has thousands of trees. but we share those.
Thank you for your contribution Harmon. Those are great points.
Bart