Climate change? Cows are not the problem!

Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon Dear Editor,

I refer to your article on MEP Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan (Roscommon People, issue dated February 3rd 2023).

I wish to deal with the following statement regarding methane: “MEP Flanagan said that Ireland has massive problems with agricultural greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), mainly methane and nitrous oxide”.

This is a common misconception based on only counting the greenhouse gas put into the air by ruminants, and not counting the greenhouse gas pulled out of the air by ruminants. The story says that cows produce methane, and that’s true. Methane is a greenhouse gas, and that’s true. So, the natural conclusion is that cows are a big problem for climate change. This is simply not true.

Ruminant livestock’s methane emissions is virtually irrelevant as a greenhouse gas because it is part of the carbon cycle and no new carbon or methane is created. No cow, sheep, or goat has ever managed to create carbon from nothing. Methane from cattle is part of the biogenic carbon cycle, which has been around since life began. Grass growth pulls carbon dioxide from the air. The cow consumes the grass and some of the carbon is belched from the cow as methane. The methane is rapidly converted back into carbon dioxide and the cycle continues. The mainstream narrative consistently portray cows as pumping methane into the atmosphere. This is like saying every shower of rain that falls is new water and adds to the volume of water in the sea and that in time we are all going to drown.

The Intergovernmental Pennell on Climate Change (IPCC) report on ‘Climate Change and Land’ (August 2019) states that agriculture and forestry pulls out twice as much GHG from the air as it puts in. What if the pasture was wasted, just left to decompose?

It’s important to note that methane is not released by the cows themselves, but the bacteria in their gut.

Similar bacteria also exist in the environment and produce methane in wetlands, fens decomposing vegetation and landfills. The actual amount of methane released from a single blade of grass wouldn’t change if it wasted and was just left to decompose or if it was eaten by a cow and then digested by the bacteria in their gut.

Additionally, I wish to mention New South Wales grassland beef ranch Wilmot Cattle Co, who concluded a $0.5million deal to sell thousands of tons of sequestered carbon to Microsoft. Bill Gates is now the biggest private owner of farmland in the United States. Why? Possibly be- cause he sees an opportunity to sell carbon credits while at the same time anticipating an increase in agricultural productivity and revenue.

Grassland farming is a massive opportunity for Ireland, not a problem.

A cow will eat 5000 kg grass dry matter per year.

Grass is 45% carbon, therefore a cow pulls 2250kg of pure carbon out of the air each year. A cow exhales 1000kg carbon in the form of carbon dioxide per year and burps and excretes an additional 110 kg carbon in the form of methane, which makes a total of 1110 kg of carbon returned to the air. Thus a cow pulls 1150 kg of carbon out of the air each