Environmental advocates seek policy change to reduce effects of industrial ag on climate

Screenshot from YouTube video By Michael Johnson Today at 5:30 AM Listen Comments Share Share this article News Reporting News Reporting Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. The Trust Project What is this? Environmental advocates are focused on efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and are pointing their efforts on industrial agriculture's impact. That was the focus of a recent webinar led by the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy in late October. ADVERTISEMENT The conversation was led by MCEA’s Chief Impact Officer Leigh Currie. It centered around “industrial agriculture’s role in Minnesota’s accelerating climate crisis and what it will take to create change.” She made the point that the topic of a climate crisis cannot be discussed without also talking about industrial ag. “In Minnesota today, agriculture is the second biggest climate-polluting sector of our economy,” Currie said. “It trails just slightly behind transportation, and it is historically and notoriously hard to regulate.” She added that agriculture has become very polarized and thus has been difficult to make change from a political standpoint. Currie shared that sustainable agriculture practices are out there, but that state lawmakers need to make sure large-scale agricultural operators are using those practices. ADVERTISEMENT Talking on the subject were Matthew Sheets, a policy organizer for Land Stewardship Project, Jay Eidness, supervising attorney at MCEA, and Laura Fox, a clinical lecturer and research scholar at Yale Law School. Prompted by Currie, Sheets spoke about Minnesota’s shift toward industrial agriculture, specifically from his view from Morris, Minnesota, where he has helped organize against the permitting of the largest feedlot in the state, the recently approved Riverview LLP West River Dairy expansion, which is set to become the state’s largest dairy with around 19,000 head permitted. Environmental groups continue to challenge that project's future. Sheets used that dairy as an example, saying that when he first got started with Land Stewardship Project, they were using dairy data from 2018, when there were around 5,000 dairies in the state. He said that number fell off a cliff and now includes about 1,600 dairies. “So we’re losing farms at an incredibly fast rate,” Sheets said. ADVERTISEMENT At the same time, the number of dairy cows in the state is nearly unchanged. Sheets explained that what he sees happening is the majority of the economic power is going to fewer hands, and the livestock are more concentrated than ever. “It's a really important topic for us to be talking about like this, because it is having massive impacts on the land, the people and just the economy of our area,” Sheets said. Eidness touched on how he saw industrial agriculture contributing to the climate crisis. “Agriculture emits about a quarter of our state's greenhouse gases,” he said. That means agriculture emits more than it takes to generate all the electricity needed to power every home and business in Minnesota. This is more than just cow gas. Eidness broke it down further, explaining how livestock emit gases through the digestive process, but there are also greenhouse gas emissions associated with raising the crops to feed the livestock. Another area of concern is when land is cleared for farming or peat grounds are drained for farming to occur. ADVERTISEMENT “When we drain land, we expose a lot of the carbon sequestering ability of the landscape to oxygen, which then releases the greenhouse gas emissions,” Eidness said. “When we cut down trees to make way for arable land that too will lose the tree's ability to sequester the carbon and will create more greenhouse gases in that way,” Eidness said. While Eidness sees the agriculture industry failing to lower emissions, he said sectors like transportation have made significant drops. Read more Minnesota ag needs growth, not just stability 2h ago Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praises regenerative ag efforts at North Dakota event 3d ago Hot-button issues like data centers and property taxes expected at NDFB annual meeting 4d ago “And I don’t find that to be surprising because we really don’t have any measures in place to intentionally focus efforts to bring those greenhouse gas emissions down,” Eidness said. Fox said the big concern is that without change, the world is headed toward warming by 3 degrees Celsius this century. She warned that now is not a time to surrender to the warming. “The higher temperatures climb even by a fraction of a degree, the greater risk of extreme heat, flooding, drought, ecosystem collapse,” Fox said. ADVERTISEMENT Fox pointed at animal agriculture’s methane production as a major contributor of greenhouse gases, and reducing that methane is one of the most effective opportunities to reduce warming in the near term. While she considered methane reduction similar to “pulling the emergency brake on the climate crisis,” she explained that pulling that brake faces stiff opposition from a political standpoint. “One of the recurring findings is that industrial animal agriculture has largely escaped from climate accountability, even environmental accountability more broadly,” she said. While her research has shown increased scrutiny on fossil fuels, power plants, and transportation systems, the same scrutiny has not yet been applied to large industrial agriculture. Eidness said change needs to start from legislatively mandated greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. Fox said methods to control greenhouse gas emissions are already in place for other sectors and those same measures should be placed on animal agriculture, too. ADVERTISEMENT “We can't effectively regulate pollution that we're not adequately measuring,” Fox said. “And you know, large industrial livestock operations should be required to quantify and report their greenhouse gas emissions. And we need to account for their full climate footprint. Not just emissions, right, from the animals and manure but also emissions associated with growing feed, energy use, you know, other activities throughout the supply chain and lost carbon sequestration opportunities from land use changes, right?” Fox mentioned that this must be an approach taken by states. She gave California as an example of a state that has set a goal of reducing methane emissions by 40% by 2030. She said, in that case, incentives are in place to help producers achieve the goal. Fox gave another example of giving farmers pathways to help them transition. “We shouldn't be simply demanding farmers change practices, right, without creating viable economic pathways for them to do so,” she said. “And states can be helpful in providing those resources and incentivizing through the procurement it undertakes itself.” The entire conversation is available at youtube.com/watch?v=DyFlsxgWZh0. Comments Share Share this article News Reporting News Reporting Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. The Trust Project What is this? Tags Tags AGRICULTURE MINNESOTA ENVIRONMENT POLICY DAIRY POLLUTION By Michael Johnson Michael Johnson is the news editor for Agweek. He lives in rural Deer Creek, Minn., where he is starting to homestead with his two children and wife. You can reach Michael at [email protected] or 218-640-2312. Instagram Facebook Listen to this article Conversation ADVERTISEMENT What To Read Next Policy Democrats gain influence over trade agenda, but tariff repeals to hit Trump veto wall 3d ago · By David Lawder / Reuters Policy China says US farm purchases hinge on tariff-cut deal 3d ago · By Reuters staff reports Policy $22 million railroad grant supports grain movement in Minnesota 5d ago · By Michael Johnson ADVERTIS