Animal husbandry practices and global warming
Animal husbandry refers to the practices involved in raising livestock for nutritional and economic needs, ranging from small-scale family farms to large commercial operations. This sector plays a significant role in global agriculture, with billions of livestock and vast tracts of land allocated for grazing and feed crop production. However, animal husbandry is intricately linked to global warming, contributing a substantial portion of greenhouse gas emissions. Reports indicate that livestock generate approximately 11 to 18 percent of global greenhouse gases, with significant emissions of methane and carbon dioxide from cattle and other livestock.
The environmental impact of these practices is profound, as land clearing for grazing contributes to deforestation, soil erosion, and changes in local ecosystems. Climate change further complicates animal husbandry, with droughts and extreme weather conditions disrupting traditional grazing patterns and water availability. Indigenous livestock breeds, which may be more resilient to changing climates, are at risk of extinction as industrial practices dominate. Additionally, climate-related challenges are increasingly affecting pastoral communities, leading to resource conflicts and heightened vulnerability. Understanding the relationship between animal husbandry and climate change is crucial for developing sustainable practices that mitigate environmental impacts while supporting the livelihoods of those dependent on livestock.
Subject Terms
Animal husbandry practices and global warming
Definition
Humans raise livestock to meet individual and community nutritional and commercial demands for animal products. Livestock farmers range from individuals, who may raise a few animals to supply their families with protein sources or earn income in local markets, to commercial agriculturists who invest in industrial methods to manage numerous livestock simultaneously. Animal husbandry practices reflect diverse human cultures and types of livestock, from nomadic peoples in developing countries who tend herds of indigenous livestock that migrate to water and forage resources to farmers in developed countries who often rely on technology to mass-produce genetically standardized animals at centralized locations. Animal husbandry intersects with climate change in many, often interconnected, ways, with different effects depending on the specific practices involved.
Significance for Climate Change
Climate issues associated with animals worldwide caused the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations to assess livestock’s environmental impact. In the mid-twenty-first century, several billion livestock, including bovines, goats, sheep, swine, and poultry, inhabited the Earth. Nearly half of all habitable land was used for agriculture. Of that land, 77 percent was used for grazing and growing livestock feed crops. An estimated 1.3 billion people participated in animal husbandry-related work. Annual meat production totaled more than 300 million metric tons in 2024 and milk production was 930 million metric tons in 2022, with experts projecting that those amounts would double in fifty years to meet increasing food demands.
By spring 2001, UN representatives determined that livestock produced 18 percent of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) associated with global warming, noting that, at the time, those emissions exceeded the amounts produced collectively by land and air transportation vehicles. This figure dropped to an estimated 14.5 percent in a 2022 report from Texas A & M University and to 11 percent by 2024. Media referred to the “carbon hoofprint” when discussing livestock’s contribution to global warming. Animal husbandry was found to be responsible for 6,343 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions annually, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2022. In addition, each individual beef cow emitted approximately 80 kilograms of methane yearly and each dairy cow emitted 150 kilograms. The European Union (EU) suggested that farmers cull their herds to limit emissions. By 2008, New Zealand became the world’s first nation to consider taxing farmers whose livestock emitted more GHGs than legislated allowances. The Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium investigated scientific ways to manage livestock emissions.
Animal husbandry practices include clearing land for grazing livestock and planting grain crops to sustain them. Deforestation to establish ranches results in greater amounts of CO2 reaching the atmosphere. Approximately 80 percent of Amazon rainforests have been cleared to maintain livestock, which often harm fields by stripping them of vegetation, causing exposed soil to become eroded or compacted. Subterranean storage of precipitation is disrupted, sometimes initiating desertification. Clearing land for livestock occasionally involves draining wetlands.
The loss of trees and vegetation due to farmers transforming forests into fields reduces albedo (the proportion of incident radiation reflected by Earth’s surface). Bared ground absorbs rather than reflects sunlight and heat, intensifying global warming. Although Earth’s Arctic ice is distant from most animal husbandry procedures (except for reindeer farming in northern latitudes), the conversion of ice to seawater due to decreasing albedo affects livestock globally. In some areas, extreme heat associated with lower albedo frequently dries up water resources used for animal husbandry. Elsewhere, rising water levels due to increased ice melting displaces livestock.
Excess CO2detrimentally affects indigenous plant growth, particularly that of native forages stifled by GHGs. Woody shrubs exotic to prairies thrive when exposed to CO2. Weeds, some toxic to livestock, spread and often deprive soil of moisture. Climate change can motivate livestock to seek new food and water sources, and these migrating livestock transport seeds from plants and parasites to new locations when they travel, carrying them in fur, hooves, and intestinal tracts, further altering ecosystems by expanding the reach of these non-native organisms.
Veterinary professionals report cases of livestock diseases previously unknown in specific geographical areas, attributing their spread to changed climates. In 2006, bluetongue, an insect-transmitted viral disease usually confined to southern France, was detected in several thousand northern European livestock, necessitating quarantines. Warm temperatures enable insect populations, including tsetse flies and mosquitoes, to extend into locations where usually cooler climates would have inhibited them. When frosts are infrequent, lungworm larvae survive in grasses, causing respiratory disease in livestock.
An FAO report has estimated that one livestock breed becomes extinct each month during the early twenty-first century. Industrial animal husbandry practices limit production to selected western breeds, which replace many native livestock in developing countries. By 2002, only one-fourth of sows in Vietnam were indigenous breeds. The FAO promoted preserving genetic material from indigenous livestock breeds that possessed such resilient traits as heat tolerance and drought hardiness, which might be crucial to future animal husbandry as global warming alters climatic conditions.
In November 2006, a UN climate conference at Nairobi, Kenya, discussed how global warming threatened nomadic livestock herders in Africa. Early twenty-first century droughts caused an estimated 500,000 nomads to cease raising livestock, as deserts began overtaking fields, disrupting the normal four seasons that herders need to raise livestock. Violence resulted, as herders battled for water and pasture resources limited by climate changes. According to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGA) in 2022, in northern Tanzania, 50 percent of Masaai pastoralists of about 100,000 have been classified as poor due to droughts caused by climate change, and about 70 percent suffer from acute hunger. The United Nations (UN) contended that Indigenous peoples such as the Masaai have invaluable knowledge about the sustainable management of natural resources, but climate change is harming them and causing conflict over dwindling resources. It urged world leaders to come up with solutions to contain heatwaves and severe droughts that are negatively affecting them and doing away with fossil fuels as an energy source.
Bibliography
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Seo, Sungno Niggol, and Robert Mendelsohn. “Climate Change Impacts on Animal Husbandry in Africa: A Ricardian Analysis.” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4261. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007. Print.
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Watson, Paul. “New Zealand Aims for Greener Pastures: Officials Ruminate on How to Curb Methane from the Nation’s Livestock, a Culprit in Global Warming.” Los Angeles Times, 8 June 2008: A-6. Print.