By Ian Spink, Sustainability Studies student
IU South Bend
Climate change is an issue that affects everyone on the planet. The symptoms of these weather shifts are undoubtedly a result of human activity. The major causes of these shifts are attributed to greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions come from a variety of source that people use every day. Obviously my car and the factory down the street release carbon dioxide and other chemicals, but are those the only sources? We seldom think that many of the smaller items that are purchased might be the real threat. In fact, food production and transportation are large contributors to the current climate situation. Farming is an energy intensive process. Production of animals compounds this because the livestock requires food of its own. Emissions are also produced by the animals and their waste. Ship all of this across the world, and the system is left with greenhouse gases from every step along the way. Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and water store heat when present as gases in the atmosphere in greater amounts than other chemicals normally present. The net effect is an increase in temperatures that ultimately alters weather patterns around the globe. Those poor bananas just do not know how much damage they are causing!
Chemicals store energy by a variety of means. Heat, however, is specifically embodied in a molecule through physical movement. The molecule itself can move, spin, or vibrate to store energy in the form of heat. The hotter a gas is, the more it moves around. The atmosphere is mostly comprised of smaller molecules that do not store as much heat. N2, O2, and Argon make up more than ninety-nine percent of the atmosphere, but since they are so simple, they do not store as much heat as gases that are bigger threats. Oxygen gas is also necessary for us to breathe, and nitrogen gas acts as a filler to keep the atmosphere from containing too much oxygen. Argon is less than a percent of the atmospheric volume, and is non-reactive. Water is a greenhouse gas, but is also necessary for life. Greenhouse gases are necessary. Without them, Earth would be a cold, hard rock. However, it is very easy to have too much of a good thing.
The biggest culprit is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide does not have the capacity to hold heat that other gases possess, but this is more than made up for with volume. The article A Real Climate Solution? outlines the scope of the issue. “… the current concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is above 382 parts per million of carbon dioxide, up from 278 ppm in pre-industrial times.” Carbon dioxide is produced throughout the food production chain. Large farms require large machinery to plant, harvest, and transport the food. Processing plants produce more CO2 from factories and additional transport. Finally, the consumer receives the food before driving home and producing more of the gas while cooking (or microwaving). The issue is plainly that too much fuel is burned along the way from field to feast. Carbon dioxide production could be prevented if food were grown closer to the folks eating it or if there were less processing steps. Does a tomato really need to be processed and shipped thousands of miles to be eaten?
A step up in the agriculture world from plants is livestock. In addition to much of the same processing and transportation, livestock need to eat. This food is grown in the same way as described above. Energy is lost along the way. One hundred bounds of animal feed will not produce one hundred pounds of beef. In a pre-industrial farm, animal waste would be used as fertilizer. In The Meat You Eat: How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America’s Food Supply, Ken Midkiff elaborates, “Today’s giant livestock operations don’t view manure as fertilizer but as a waste product, and they deal with it as a waste disposal problem akin to a toxic waste—which, in the volume it gets produced, it is.” Animal manure is deposited in large “lagoons” which produce greenhouse gases of their own. Normally, bacteria can break down waste in small amounts, but the manure lagoons are so large that the waste is digested anaerobically. In this process, more culprits are produced. In Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options, Henning Steinfeld states that livestock is responsible for 18 percent of the global warming effect. Food production, especially meat, is a large contributor to climate change.
Two other major problem chemicals are methane and nitrous oxide. Oran B. Hesterman points out the sources of these two greenhouse gases in Fair Food. “Much of the methane is a result of livestock digestion and anaerobic decomposition of manure…, while nitrogen fertilizer production and use is the greatest contributor of nitrous oxide.” Methane molecules contain five atoms. This makes it capable of containing large amounts of heat in vibrational forms. Nitrous oxide is dangerous in the atmosphere because it reacts with ozone. Both are more potent than carbon dioxide, but present in much smaller amounts. However, the cumulative effect of each gas is having a noticeable effect on the Earth’s climate. There are other chemicals that act as greenhouse gases, as well. More needs to be done to ensure that byproducts of industry are not creating additional problems.
Climate change is the sum of many contributing factors. There is a strong correlation between increases in global temperature and in industrial production. Industrializing our food system may have been a huge mistake. The amount of energy put into producing crops and animals for people to eat is also producing a huge problem. Greenhouse gases are necessary to keep this planet warm, but sharp increases are creating the root of the climate change problem. Too much fuel is spent putting food on plates around the globe. There must be a stern assessment of the food supply chain to help curb the increase in damaging chemicals in the atmosphere. The care of a food production system requires large amounts of resources. It is inevitable that this will produce greenhouse gases, but it does not mean that it is impossible to reduce the volume that is generated. It is possible for the ecosystem to recapture or remove much of these chemicals, but this is a process that takes time. It is necessary to only introduce harmful substances at a rate lower than which they can be removed.
Works Cited
Hesterman, Oran B. Fair Food. New York: PublicAffairs, 2012. Print.
Midkiff, Ken. The Meat You Eat: How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America’s Food Supply. New York: St Martin’s Press. 2004.
Scherr, Sara J. and Sajal Sthapit. “A Real Climate Solution?” Mitigating Climate Change through Food and Land Use. Worldwatch Report 179 Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute. 2009. p.25-32.
Steinfeld, Henning, et al. Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2006
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