4 ms·
Can this study be done with the cow feed just being plain old grass? There’s lots of anecdotal evidence showing grass fed cows don’t produce much methane, there
by shanev 8y ago
Can this study be done with the cow feed just being plain old grass? There’s lots of anecdotal evidence showing grass fed cows don’t produce much methane, thereby making pasture raised meat environmentally friendly. Yet there doesn’t appear to be many studies on it for whatever reason. Everything is focused on corn-based cow feed.
- __alias 8y agoI don't think that's true at all.
- lasc4r 8y agoI believe grass fed cattle produce more methane actually.
- adenta 8y agoSource?
- justwalt 8y agoHere’s one that I found: https://www.carbonbrief.org/grass-fed-beef-will-not-help-tackle-climate-change https://www.carbonbrief.org/grass-fed-beef-will-not-help-tac...
- lucideer 8y agoThat article says the study found that grazed beef release more carbon than the carbon offset by soil sequestration. It doesn't say it releases more carbon then grain-fed, and actually, while I haven't read the source study, the general implication in the article seems to lean toward grazed beef releasing less than grain-fed (just not, according to the researchers, enough less to be carbon-neutral).
- BenjiWiebe 8y agoI live on a dairy. Totally not a controlled study, but the cows digestive systems can't handle grazing as well as they can handle a nutritionist-controlled diet. Their manure gets bubbly with gas when eating grass.
- _nothing 8y agoOne study [1] compared two different types of grasses vs grain feed. The cows that ate grass produced more methane per kJ consumed than those that ate the grain feed. There are a bit stranger numbers preceding these figures, where the cows that ate one grass type actually produced less methane overall than all the other cows, but apparently because they were consuming considerably less (all cows were allowed to eat freely). Mind you, this was a study of 6 cows. [1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c726/1bccd1f76d5060913b56cc13180eefafb78b.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c726/1bccd1f76d5060913b56cc...