Farmscape for December 3, 2020

A Professor with the University of California Davis is encouraging the public to recognise the contributions of livestock agriculture to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
"Livestock’s Path to Climate Neutrality" will be discussed this afternoon as part of the final session of Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2020.
Dr. Frank Mitloehner, a Professor and Air Quality Extension Specialist with the University of California Davis, says North America is a role model when it comes to reducing the environmental footprint of livestock production.

Clip-Dr. Frank Mitloehner-University of California Davis:
The most pressing need that those countries and regions have in the world that are currently not efficient in producing animal sourced food is food security, but that objective can be met while, at the same time, minimising the carbon footprint.
By being more efficient in how we produce livestock, we also decrease the environmental footprint.
For example many people out in society don't really understand this link between efficiencies and emissions.
You sometimes have to use an analogy.
For example, fuel efficiency of a car and emissions.
They will understand that a car that they drive today is way more fuel efficient than the car their parents drove or their grandparents.
More fuel efficient cars mean that they also drive from A to B like their grandparents’ car did nut they use a third or so of the gas to do it and burning less gas means fewer emissions and the same is true for livestock.
Our pigs today are three times or more efficient than pigs were 40 to 50 years ago.
That means, with a given amount of input, you produce way more output.
The same is true for cattle.
The same is true for poultry.
We have a remarkable story to tell and it really is time to tell it.

Dr. Mitloehner says, while agriculture and forestry contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, they have the ability to contribute to greenhouse gas reductions, but the latter is seldom discussed in the media.
For more visit Farmscape.Ca.
Bruce Cochrane.

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