Is Beef Becoming More or Less Environmentally Friendly?

Another report has surfaced, this time from a study in the British Medical Journal.  The study authors call for reduced meat consumption because, among other things, it would be “climate friendly.”  While reduced beef consumption might lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions, it is important to take a broader look at historical production trends.  There seems to be a bit of a romantic notion floating around that if we just turned back the clock 30 or 40 years, we would have more “sustainable” agriculture. 

Because much of the greenhouse gas emissions occur at the cow-level, it is useful to look at what has been happening to the number of cows in the US over time.  What you find when you look at the data is that this year, “U.S. cattle inventories fell to the lowest in 60 years.”  Fewer cows means fewer greenhouse gas emissions.  Why do we so rarely hear that in the news?

Another glossed-over fact of beef production in the US is the incredible gains in efficiency that have occurred in recent decades.  Below is a graph I complied using USDA data on the total US cow and calf inventory, total beef production, and US population.

Back in 1975, there were 0.61 cows per person in the US.  Today, that number is only 0.29.  That's more than a 100% reduction!  That reduction, which has the benefit of reduced greenhouse emissions, has been accomplished all while producing more beef.  Back in 1975 only about 179 lbs of beef were produced per cow in America.  Today, the figure is 288 lbs.  We’re getting 109 lbs more from each cow than we did back in the 1970s. 

Just something to think about when you hear about the environmental problems with beef production and our “sustainable” past.

How Likely is a Food Armageddon? Not Very.

​Everywhere I turn these days, I hear folks saying that our modern food production system is leading to some kind of environmental, health, or social Armageddon.  Just to give one example, Mark Bittman, food writer for the New York Times, began a 2007 TED talk showing a picture of a cow followed by a picture of an atomic bomb exploding.  The implication?  If we keep eating meat the way we are, we'll experience Hiroshima-like consequences.  

The answer to the problem?  We need to adopt ever-so-vague "sustainable" production systems.​  I'm all for sustaining our standard of living but I'm not so sure the typical set of prescriptions are going to do it.

The next time you hear such pronouncements of agricultural Armageddon, I encourage you to take a look at the article by Matt Ridley in Wired a few weeks ago​.  Here is an excerpt:

Predictions of global famine and the end of oil in the 1970s proved just as wrong as end-of-the-world forecasts from millennialist priests. Yet there is no sign that experts are becoming more cautious about apocalyptic promises. If anything, the rhetoric has ramped up in recent years.

and this:​

So far all of these specters have turned out to be exaggerated. True, we have encountered obstacles, public-health emergencies, and even mass tragedies. But the promised Armageddons—the thresholds that cannot be uncrossed, the tipping points that cannot be untipped, the existential threats to Life as We Know It—have consistently failed to materialize. To see the full depth of our apocaholism, and to understand why we keep getting it so wrong, we need to consult the past 50 years of history.

He concludes:

All these predictions failed to come true. Oil and gas production have continued to rise during the past 50 years. Gas reserves took an enormous leap upward after 2007, as engineers learned how to exploit abundant shale gas. In 2011 the International Energy Agency estimated that global gas resources would last 250 years. Although it seems likely that cheap sources of oil may indeed start to peter out in coming decades, gigantic quantities of shale oil and oil sands will remain available, at least at a price. Once again, obstacles have materialized, but the apocalypse has not. Ever since Thomas Robert Malthus, doomsayers have tended to underestimate the power of innovation. In reality, driven by price increases, people simply developed new technologies . . .

How Will Food Companies Respond to Prop 37?

Three recent economic analyses have been released on the potential effects of Prop 37 in California, which would require mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods if passed in November.

Two analyses are by different groups of economists at UC Davis (Alston and Sumner and Carter et al.) and another by a consulting firm.  Each suggest potentially high costs and less consumer choice - exactly the opposite of that predicted by proponents of Prop 37.

The prediction (that Prop 37 will lead to high prices and less choice,) is based on a key assumption made by the analysts.  The assumption is that processors and retailers in California will not actually label foods and will instead substitute toward non-genetically modified ingredients.  The assumption is stated explicitly in the report by the consulting firm:

Based on experience in other parts of the world, review of the literature, and discussions with academic and business experts, we believe the most likely means of compliance for food companies is to substitute other ingredients for GE ingredients in their products. This means that companies would change the way in which they source ingredients or manufacture their products in order to avoid labeling their products with a vague and potentially frightening warning that conveys little meaningful information. 

Thus, most of the cost increase predicted in the studies is projected to come about from retailers and manufacturers choosing to use more expensive ingredients to avoid the label.

Is this what retailers will actually do?  Here are the reasons I’m not so sure:

• Many of the biggest donors supporting Prop 37 are organic and natural food companies.  To fork over millions of dollars in donations supporting the proposition must mean they believe it will help their bottom line, which will only happen if food firms actually label their products as containing genetically modified ingredients.

• Prop 37 would imposes zero-tolerance for accidental presence of biotech in food.  No country in the world (even Europe) imposes a zero-tolerance limit for their mandatory labels of genetically modified food.  Achieving zero-tolerance is practically impossible and extraordinarily costly. Food firms facing the chance of costly lawsuits may very well simply decide to label.

• Part of the reason there are virtually no GMO-labeled products in Europe (even though they are allowed) is because of competition between food companies.  It is a type of prisoner’s dilemma problem.  Even though all firms could make more money using GM ingredients, they choose to avoid GM because they know they’ll lose relative market share to competitors who don’t label.  Thus, they all avoid GM and no one labels.  The situation in California is different because, as mentioned above, the costs of falsely labeling will be much higher due to the zero-tolerance rule.  Moreover, consumer demand for the absence of GMOs in food is lower in California than in Europe, as my research shows.  This means the incentives for the sort of prisoner’s dilemma outcome are lower.  None of this is to mention the differences in markets structure of US and European in food retailing (the use of private labels in Europe is much higher and the retailers there exert much more influence on the entire marketing chain).

I do not think the arguments in favor Prop 37 are particularly strong, but I’m not entirely sure that the assumptions used  to project the costs of Prop 37 will ultimately match what happens if it passes.

Add​endum:  In the post above, I mention a study by Carter et al. in a way that inadvertently implied they argued that passage of Prop 37 would lead to firms avoiding the label by switching to non-GM or organic.  Here's what they actually say in their report:

Prop 37 would result in many products on the food shelf carrying a GM label. It might get to the point where there are so many products with GM labels that most consumers would just ignore the labels because they would be everywhere.

They seem to agree with my point that it will be hard for firms to avoid GE labels given the zero tolerance limit.   

Scary-Sounding Food Ingredients Explained

Do long, scary-sounding ingredient names on food labels make you wonder what’s in your food and why? This resource provides the answers!

​The International Food Information Council has a new publication describing common ingredients found in food.

The Organic Food Subsidy Myth

Over at Reason.com, Balyen Linnekin offered a thoughtful response to the recent Stanford review showing little difference in the nutritional content of organic and non-organic food.  However, toward the end of the article Linnekin repeats a claim about organics that I’ve heard many times:

Finally, consider that organics critics like Cohen and Bailey attack the high cost of organic food while failing to mention that conventional food production—from soy and sugar to beef and dairy—is highly subsidized. Organic food production, on the other hand, is not.

First, for many, many food products including virtually all fruits and vegetables from tomatoes to spinach to oranges to apples, there are no regular government subsidy programs - organic or not.  Thus, government subsides cannot explain the high price of organic lettuce compared to non-organic lettuce. 

Here is a part of what I had to say about the issue in my forthcoming book, The Food Police (footnotes omitted):

We’re often told organics don’t get government subsidies, but that’s a fabrication.  In Europe, organic farmers are subsidized like all other farmers.  In the U.S., there are programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program that pay producers to transition from conventional to organic.  There are other programs that use federal monies to help organic farmers pay the cost of certification.  Organic farmers can receive government-subsidized crop insurance just like non-organic farmers.  Organic milk is subjected to many of the same complex price-support rules imposed by the government on non-organic milk. Hundreds of millions of tax dollars are spent on research and education into organics and on marketing and monitoring programs.  The food police tell us that the growth in organic food demand is the free market working at its best, while using the taxing power of the state to manipulate the market by subsidizing organic production, marketing, and research activities.  You can’t have your organic-is-libertarian cake and eat it too.