From the USDA, via Eurekalert. The goal was quantifying the moo. Next step, regulation. Hello $10/gallon milk.
In the first detailed study on emissions from large-scale dairies, ARS researchers found that a commercial dairy with 10,000 milk cows generated an average of 3,575 pounds of ammonia, 33,092 pounds of methane, and 409 pounds of nitrous oxide every day>
How Dairy Farms Contribute to Greenhouse Gas Emissions
By Ann Perry
July 19, 2011
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have produced the first detailed data on how large-scale dairy facilities contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases. This research was conducted by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists at the ARS Northwest Irrigation and Soils Research Laboratory in Kimberly, Idaho.
ARS is USDA’s principal intramural scientific research agency, and these studies support the USDA priority of responding to climate change.
ARS soil scientist April Leytem led the year-long project, which involved monitoring the emissions of ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide from a commercial dairy with 10,000 milk cows in southern Idaho. The facility had 20 open-lot pens, two milking parlors, a hospital barn, a maternity barn, a manure solid separator, a 25-acre wastewater storage pond and a 25-acre compost yard.
Concentration data was collected continuously for two to three days each month, along with air temperature, barometric pressure, wind direction and wind speed. After this data was collected, Leytem’s team calculated the average daily emissions for each source area for each month.
The results indicated that, on average, the facility generated 3,575 pounds of ammonia, 33,092 pounds of methane and 409 pounds of nitrous oxide every day. The open lot areas generated 78 percent of the facility’s ammonia, 57 percent of its nitrous oxide and 74 percent of the facility’s methane emissions during the spring.
In general, the emission of ammonia and nitrous oxide from the open lots were lower during the late evening and early morning, and then increased throughout the day to peak late in the day. These daily fluctuations paralleled patterns in wind speed, air temperature and livestock activity, all of which generally increased during the day. Emissions of ammonia and methane from the wastewater pond and the compost were also lower in the late evening and early morning and increased during the day.
Results from the study were published in the Journal of Environmental Quality.
Read more about this work in the July 2011 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
One wonders how one would quantify the contributions the many herds of tens of millions of American bison had on the environment before we killed them all. We should post-date our carbon credits in this fashion, use our previous hunt-to-extinction activities as evidence of green behavior.
Left to its own devices, what would be generated from the feed the cow eats if the cow doesn’t eat it? Seems to me that is the source of all this bovine abundance. So to the point, what is the delta between the contribution feed (ultimately sourced to grasses) makes without the cow, and that contributed by the feed and the post-processing contributed by the cow?
What is the economical and climate change consequence of finding other food sources than rib-eye?
That’s an emission rate of about 2% body mass. Did they at all consider that the cattle were incorporating a lot more mass into body weight, as in growing, and into their milk?
WIthout these considerations, this study is meaningless, let alone the fact that “greenhouse” gases are irrelevant to the climate. This minor source can be ignored.
Having al lot of anything makes for big numbers. It’s a great way to spread alarm.
Forgive the BAD pun, but I think we are looking at a lot of Bull ____ here!
One third of a pound of ammonia per cow per day? One pound of methane per cow per day? I don’t think these number pass the sniff test 🙂 Anyway, most of the ammonia would pretty rapidly get converted to nitrate.
The ship is sinking. Solution: hysteria.
I didnt realize that the USDA’s “priority” was now climate change…silly me…I thought the Dept of Agriculture’s “priority” was to ensure consistent production of agricultural products for the United States…
Will the next environmental attack be on milk?
USDA’s new environmental mission: destroy american jobs and spread climate alarmism at the rate of 10,000 pages of BS per day.
It doesn’t work in the USA but, when pronounced, ARS is the homophone in the UK of a word which encapsulates this project.
The solution to the bovine methane “problem” is simple and straightforward; afterburners. I envision environmentally benign, jaw-powered, piezoelectric igniters and KABOOM! Problem solved. Add extension-cord-cow-leashes and stern-mounted, turbo-expander/generators and you’ve got yourself some serious “revenue enhancement”.
Since if the vegetation is not fed to the livestock, it will be eaten either by wild herbivores such as the long-gone Great Northern Herd), or be eaten by bacteria, and turned into co2 and methane just the same. The only solution would be to spray the whole continent in Round-up, then manually kill the resistant plants. Eventually, after the soil organics are all converted into co2 and methane, no more will be produced from the land, and the long-dead ecofascists can rejoice. The real issue here is they don’t like the idea of anyone eating meat.
Speaking of bison, the millions of tons of bison flesh roaming the pre-settlement Great Plains is in the ballpark of the tonnage of the present-day level of bovine flesh. So, all these emissions are not new to the environment. They just come from a different ungulate.
(But this matters because pre-settlement bison and the indigenous peoples who hunted them are presumed to be at-one with nature, a pure and pristine metaphor for Utopia, while cattle and those balding fat white men who exploit them are real threats to the environment.)
The pasture the dairy cows are feeding on would be sequestering CO2 each year equivalent to about half of the methane the cows generate. This is never taken into account (and one would think USDA soil scientists would at least net that off – who funded the grant – are they trying to ruin agriculture?).
The USDA recently had it’s budget cut, and they have been looking for more income. Anything that might bring in some milk money is worth trying.
I remember when I did the Clemson surfacestation survey at the LaMaster Dairy Center (http://www.clemson.edu/public/researchfarms/lamaster_dairy/index.html#LaMaster%20Dairy%20Center). The sensor was less then 500 ft away from the livestock housing, iirc, and there was a very distinct livestock odor in the air as I photographed the station (I noted this in the report). It might be interesting to compare raw temps from this station to, say, Walhalla and Anderson, SC just for giggles.
Many of our relatives are dairy farmers. They do make a good living but all of them together don’t have 10,000 cows. That is a seriously large herd, used by the researchers, no doubt, to get big numbers. Another meaningless study on our nickle. As noted by those above, net change in GHG=0, even if it were relevent to climate. I suppose beef cattle feeding operations are next. Sounds to me like some PETA folks grinding their axes. These people all want to starve in the dark if they don’t freeze to death first.
@ur momisugly DesertYote
Actually a third of a pound of ammonia and a pound of methane per cow/day sounds about right to me.
That’s why I’m glad the farm cross the road from my dad’s place only had 20 to 30 head. And were usually downwind. 😉
A year long study and what we find is that cows pee, poop and fart. Get 10,000 cows and that’s a lot of … stuff. Other than that it’s a total waste (pun intended).
Mike
The facility didn’t generate anything…..
…it’s just recycling it
….these studies support the USDA priority of responding to climate change.
What, I thought the US Dept. of Agriculture’s jobe was Islamic Outreach, like NASA.
@Steve “The real issue here is they don’t like the idea of anyone eating meat.”
Steve, this is a DAIRY farm.
PETA is fully behind this I am sure. They are the main anti-meat, anti-milk group around and have their tentacles firmly entrenched in the US federal bureaucracy. Not to mention they are a large watermelon group politically.
I have never understood why the containment ponds aren’t designed to capture that methane, clean it and use it to power generators and heat water for sanitizing the milk equipment. Seems like a waste of a valuable resource once one gets past the smell.
Bill Illis says:
July 19, 2011 at 9:36 am
“…who funded the grant…”
The U.S. taxpayers, of course…
Well then, the USDA’s US Forest Service must be helping with carbon sequestration and
atmospheric albedo by their thinly disguised let burn policy…