Reduced Meat Consumption and Environmental Impacts

It is often said by environmental groups and by many in the media that eating meat is one of the worst things one can do for the environment. 

Just to give a few examples, NPR ran a series of shows last year about this time about meat.  In one of these shows, it was said  that meat consumption has: 

more of an impact on the environment than any other food we eat.

and Dan Charles, the NPR correspondent wrote meat production:

It's one cause of deforestation, global warming, water pollution, a lot of environmental problems

To give another example, Bryan Walsh, writing for TIME magazine in 2008 said: 

It's true that giving up that average 176 lb. of meat a year is one of the greenest lifestyle changes you can make as an individual.

And, of course, one can find even more polemical arguments that make a similar case, such as Mark Bittman's TED talk.

One of the bases for these claims are the greenhouse gas emissions caused by livestock production.  Estimates widely vary, but one common stat cited from the UN FAO is that livestock are responsible for 18% of all global greenhouse has emissions (note, however, some mistakes in their calculations have come to light suggesting this figure is inflated).  Some environmental groups put the statistic much higher, saying livestock production is "tied to" 51% of global greenhouse emissions (a figure I don't find many credible scientists supporting).  But our own EPA estimates that within the US that ALL of agriculture only contributes 8% of total greenhouse gas emissions from 1990-2011, and only 6.9% in 2011.  Livestock, thus must be something less than this (it was estimated at around 3% by the EPA a few years ago).   

I mention all this because of several news reports I've heard in the past couple days, such as this one from the Washington Post, indicating:

Greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other industrial facilities declined by 4.5 percent from 2011 to 2012 as utilities continued to switch from coal to natural gas to generate electricity and produced slightly less power overall, the Environmental Protection Agency reported Wednesday.

Greenhouse gas emissions from these sources have declined by 10 percent in the two years since the EPA began compiling the data in 2010.

A 4.5% reduction in 1 year and a 10% reduction in two years is a sizable change. According to the EPA data, power plants account for 31% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions emissions.  Thus, a 10% decrease in power plant emissions results in a 3.1% decrease in total US emissions.  

How much would one have to cut livestock production to achieve this same 3.1% decrease in total US emissions resulting from a switch to natural gas (primary brought about, in part, by fracking technology)?  Well, simple math shows that it if you hold the share of greenhouse gas emissions by livestock constant, you'd have to reduce livestock production by more than 100% if you believe the EPA's figure (that 3% of all GHG emissions are from livestock) or 17.2% if you believe the UN FAO's number (that 18% of all GHG emissions are from livestock) to achieve the same outcome that we've actually witnessed in the last two years in part through fracking.   Yes, reducing livestock production might reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but it seems much more has been cut by a switch from coal to gas than we can probably ever expect by reducing meat consumption.  

It is also useful to add that technological change in has led to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in livestock production.  One study in the Journal of Animal Science by Jude Capper calculates technological change from 1997 to 2007 has reduced methane  emissions by about 23% and carbon emissions by about 20%.  Indeed, the executive summary from the EPA's report on changes in emissions indicates a major reduction in methane emissions has come from changes in livestock production (emphasis added):

CH4 emissions, which have decreased by 8.2 percent since 1990, resulted primarily from natural gas systems, enteric fermentation associated with domestic livestock, and decomposition of wastes in landfills.

Food vs. Cash on the Daily Show

Somehow I missed this segment on the Daily Show last month.  It features Chris Barrett from Cornell University, one of the brightest agricultural/development economists in the country.  I thought he handled himself brilliantly given the circumstances. 

You can see the video at this link or embedded below. 

Value of USDA Data

Today, the Council on Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics (C-FARE) released a report I lead authored on the value of USDA Data Products entitled From Farm Income to Food Consumption: Valuing USDA Data Products.

Frequent readers of this blog know my free-market orientation.  Provision of information is, however, one of those areas where the government (potentially) has a legitimate role to play  (the report itself discusses these motivations).  In the book Free to Choose, Milton and Rose Friedman, in their discussion of the proper role of government, use the analogy of government as umpire - not a player in the game or picking sides, but a facilitator and enforcer of the rules of the game.  Providing information on prices, production, etc. is, in my mind, an umpire-like role.  And a potentially useful one at that. 

Now that doesn't tell us anything about whether the government is providing too little or too much information, whether it is doing it cost effectively, or whether private companies might fill the gap if the government stopped providing information.  And these were the sorts of questions the report sought to provide insight into.  One of the things we learned is that we just don't know as much about those questions as we probably should.  

Interestingly (and perhaps ironically), the report was set to release the day the government shutdown occurred.  After the shutdown, the USDA blocked access to most of its online data sources, which I personally found annoying because it is hard to see how it requires any additional cost to run to servers that provide the data vs. the servers that put up pages blocking me from the data.  It came across as a show of power and blatant attempt to make the shutdown more difficult than it need be - hardly a way to make the public believe this is "our" government owned by "us" (admittedly, there may have been legal reasons of which I am unaware explaining why the data couldn't be displayed).  

In any event, the shutdown provided an interesting case study into the value of USDA to many agricultural sectors.  There was a lot of hand wringing, for example, in livestock industries because many cattle and hogs are priced on some formula based off of a USDA reported price (which went unreported during the shutdown).  However, there were several stories (e.g., here or here) of feedlots and packers quickly adjusting, and I suspect that if the shutdown would have continued longer, new institutions would have evolved to fill the role that the USDA data currently serves.  They may not have been as efficient or trustworthy (or they might be more so), we just don't know.  An aspiring researcher could use the government shutdown as one way to test how the provision of USDA data affects market performance.  

One of the key outputs of the C-FARE report is a strategy or approach for the USDA to use when prioritizing data products.  Regardless of one's view on the appropriate size of government, I think we would all agree that it is good that the government uses whatever resources it acquires most effectively.  In a climate of tightening budgets, that means thinking carefully and systematically about which data product eliminations (or which alterations in data products) are most efficient.  I hope the report can help, even if just a little, in that task.

Are Local Foods Good for the Economy?

I addressed that question, among others, in chapter 9 of the Food Police. For myriad conceptual reasons outlined in the chapter, on my blog, and elsewhere, I do not find this sort of argument to be very compelling. Today, a colleague forwarded an article in the Economic Development Quarterly by some agricultural economists (the lead author was a student in one of my courses at Purdue) which provided some empirical evidence on the issue.

Here are the authors on the motivation for the study:

Local markets are believed to provide farmers with a higher share of the food dollar, with money spent at a local farm and nonfarm businesses circulating within the community, creating a multiplier effect and providing greater local economic benefits (USDA, 2012). Furthermore, agritourism generates additional dollars in the local economy as visitors spend money in associated regional travel. As a result, CFA is seen as a potential contributor to local economic growth.

What did they find?

Using Census of Agriculture data, regional growth models are estimated on real personal income per capita change between 2002 and 2007. We find no association between community-focused agriculture and growth in total agricultural sales at the national level, but do in some regions of the United States. A $1 increase in farm sales led to an annualized increase of $0.04 in county personal income. With few exceptions, community-focused agriculture did not make significant contributions to economic growth in the time period analyzed.

Rather, one of the factors they find to have the biggest effect on growth in per capita income is how "tradable" a county is - as measured by the share of business establishments that are in tradable sectors. A 1% increase in the share of establishments in tradable sectors was associated with a $3,235 increase in per capita in county personal income.

I've said it time and time again, but trade (facilitated by comparative advantage and specialization) is what makes us wealthy. Do what you do well and trade with others for what they do well, and both are better off. Policies or movements that seek to deny that basic axiom, even when applied to local food production, have dubious economic merit.

Effects of Climate Change

Matt Ridley has an interesting piece in the Spectator on the effects of climate change.  He makes the rather unremarkable observation that we should count the benefits, not just the costs of climate change.  Unremarkable except that people almost exclusively focus on the costs.  

What are these benefits?  He writes: 

The chief benefits of global warming include: fewer winter deaths; lower energy costs; better agricultural yields; probably fewer droughts; maybe richer biodiversity.

and  

The greatest benefit from climate change comes not from temperature change but from carbon dioxide itself. It is not pollution, but the raw material from which plants make carbohydrates and thence proteins and fats.

Ridley reads the scientific research to suggest that the benefits will exceed the costs unless temperature rises too high - or until about 2080 - according to some projections.  He writes: 

You can choose not to believe the studies Prof Tol has collated. Or you can say the net benefit is small (which it is), you can argue that the benefits have accrued more to rich countries than poor countries (which is true) or you can emphasise that after 2080 climate change would probably do net harm to the world (which may also be true). You can even say you do not trust the models involved (though they have proved more reliable than the temperature models). But what you cannot do is deny that this is the current consensus. If you wish to accept the consensus on temperature models, then you should accept the consensus on economic benefit.

Overall, Prof Tol finds that climate change in the past century improved human welfare. By how much? He calculates by 1.4 per cent of global economic output, rising to 1.5 per cent by 2025. For some people, this means the difference between survival and starvation.

It will still be 1.2 per cent around 2050 and will not turn negative until around 2080. In short, my children will be very old before global warming stops benefiting the world. Note that if the world continues to grow at 3 per cent a year, then the average person will be about nine times as rich in 2080 as she is today. So low-lying Bangladesh will be able to afford the same kind of flood defences that the Dutch have today.