Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the New Zealand government, so long as farmers continue productivity improvements, increasing the meat content per head of cattle, it should be possible to maintain current meat production with a substantially reduced cattle head count.
Electric cars, fewer cows in New Zealand’s climate change plan
Sun, 31 January 2021, 1:46 pm
New Zealand unveiled a blueprint Sunday to phase out petrol-powered cars while its dairy industry, a key pillar of the economy, must slash cow numbers under the ambitious plan to be carbon neutral by 2050.
The changes are among a raft of recommendations presented to the government by the Climate Change Commission on steps New Zealand must take to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change.
…
To reduce methane gas levels, the report said farmers needed to improve animal performance while reducing stock numbers by around 15 percent from 2018 levels by 2030.
“If farmers can continue to achieve productivity improvements in line with historic trends, these outcomes could be achieved while maintaining total production at a similar level to today,” the report said.
…
Read more: https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/electric-cars-fewer-cows-zealands-034639470.html
The draft report is available here.
A plan to breed fast growing, larger cattle allows bureaucrats to tick the climate friendly cattle head count reduction box, without actually impacting meat production and consumption.
Yeah, that’s the ticket! Breed larger cattle that suffer more broken legs, who get stuck in the mud more often, that won’t fit in current vaccination chutes, and who die more often while giving birth.!
This sounds like another hare-brained idea from PETA.
Hare-brained, yes, but any animal slavery is anathema to PETA-ites. I wonder if they consider pet ownership to be heresy.
I’ll just tell them this is my emotional support cow.
People for the Euthanasia of Throwaway Animals. Only the unPlanned Pets, and only as a leverage game for profit.
Yes, PETA hates the very concept of pets. Slavery probably.
I have been waiting for PETA to charge wolves, foxes, and other common carnivores with cross-species murder.
Absolutely. It is also a known fact that the larger the animal, the less meat to bone ratio.
The larger the animal the larger the pile of sh*t.
Of course the key phrase is…
Problem is, Demand will not be similar to today in 2030. Fundamental increases in demand will occur relative to population increases
You are right.
Wouldn’t it be better to start a new breeding programme with imported stock and have an ‘elephant beef’ farm?
A bit like that other touted suggestion of farming weka and Kiwi. Novel ideas do not necessarily produce the desired results – like most of Cindy’s ideas!
Eat the Socialists in New Zealand. Once ground up like hamburger and barbecued should taste fine. No more Socialists, less global warming and more for the rest of us. Need to fatten up Jacinda Ahern, the PM.
Bill Gates mate, Bill is buying up agriculture,huge shares purchase recently in Monsanto, USA agriculture mainstay.
I fear such a plan is doomed from the start. It has been known for at least 3 generations that socialists are full of sh*t, so any food products derived from them are likely to be tainted. Preferably we just start a selective breeding program to end them before birth.
Indeed – many will be vegans so far too much linoleic acid in them to be as healthy as grass-fed beef.
Eat Socialists?
Soylent Red!!!
But, eat a Chinese and 3 hours later you’re hungry for another
Yep, purchased some Angus and Charolais last spring to ‘fatten up’ for fall, couldn’t get into the butcher until this coming spring (everyone had the same idea) the Charolais are now two hands taller than the Angus steers, I’ll need another chest freezer. There is current not a market for big steers, the buyers are looking for uniformity of size, the size of Angus steers. For individuals that just want meat the Charolais breed are the way to go.
Yes the biggest breed is too big for the usual crush, race, fencing and loading – tagging, drenching – all heavy duty with the Charolais.How are you going with the yards issue? They holding up?
“New Zealand must take to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change.”
And New Zealand agriculture and livestock has what part of global GHG emissions or even compared to China which has no UNFCC Paris COP declared GHG emission caps?
Two charts tells you that even if New Zealand zero’d out its entire agricultural-sector GHG emissions, it wouldn’t even be a rounding error on China’s upward annual GHG increase.
First chart NZ. Second chart China (if the upload occurs in correct order).
New Zealand GHG
New Zealand? What’s that? A hamlet in China?
China 9.6 million Km², New Zealand 268,021 Km².
Canada 9.98m/sqkm with 2.6% of their population
We are 1.6% CO2 emissions
They are 33
We are supposed to reduce by 2030 an amount that China is allow to increase 30 times
And people wonder why I don’t believe CO2 is a problem???
Anything NZ does would be an un-measurable noise against China’s emissions.
It really is a total waste of time and money for the sake of mindless virtue seeking.,
It’s a Holiday Island for the Chinese who want to escape CO2 :/
Dumb assed Kiwis could do whatever they wanted and it would not make a fart of a difference.
It’s all about virtue signalling and playing an insignificant “leading role” so that they can feel self satisfied and preach to other nations ( who don’t give a damn BTW ).
….. and, speaking of farts, bovine farts are renewable and sustainable. Do these nitwits ever get out? Also, have any of these mental midgets ever actually done even rudimentary maths on what impact their juvenile, clown-like behavior would ever have on “climate”. Some of them must know. I guess they’re the dangerous ones. Of course, our resident nitwits here don’t want to do the maths on here. Come on loydo and griff. How about we give you an ECS of 10C, coupled with climate warrior Kerry and pen-swishing Biden. Show us the impact, or stay in the dunce corner with the dunce caps on.
Actually if it was 10C as opposed to the “never been shown to be other than 0C”, it would have competent people dealing with the problem
they(the farts) are also irrelevant since if the grass isn’t eaten it dies, decays, and produces methane anyway.
As I have said many times…..
Cows, in fact all animals are CARBON NEUTRAL.
Over their life time they CANNOT put out more carbon than they take in.
If New Zealand was to be abandoned by all humans and left to revert to nature, the planet wouldn’t even notice any reduction in CO2. Angsting over the CO2 output of New Zealand is the height of hubris. They’re unimportant and need to stop virtue signalling.
Great government solution: Continue the trends from 1990 into the future and you will get less of the current miniscule methane emissions. The problem? No increase in the projected amount of meat.
There are so many levels of wrong going on here – I’ve covered them all in previous ravings. No more. for now
Luv you Kevin A. I’ve turned to mush here
I used to keep, pretty well exclusively Angus and Charolais
No Kev, I don’t think they want the Angus for ‘uniformity’
People want Angus because it is slow-growing ad thus = Tasty and Good To Eat
And it IS ‘Tasty and Good To Eat’ because of the fat that’s intrinsic to the meat.
‘Marbling’ I think it’s called. Angus meat has marbling, Charolais not so much. Any in fact.
Brings me to my gripe about this story – New Zealand and the Complete Brain Deads that seem to be running it.
As they say, it is an economy witha big dependance on Agriculture, especially livestock.
The cows & sheep love it because of the fertile soil (not so old volcanic dirt courtesy of Ring of Fire) but also the Maritime Climate. Rain basically & lots of it.
Right up there with my old haunt, Cumbria in NW England, it has got to be, is, one of the best places evah for growing grass.
(Cumbria was more of a ‘Glacial Till’ sort of place – not esp noted for Vulcanism)
Timothy. Meadow grass, Clover. Yorkshire Fog. Perennial Ryegrass.
Now there’s a thing, perennial?
High Albedo Green – all the time
Wonder if that might affect The Climate?
How do the muppets, the ones patently now in charge of New Zealand, seemingly have No Idea of how (livestock) farming and food actually works?
Their Most Significant Industry good grief, yet they are clueless about it!
Sounds like an opportunity,some mild genetic engineering..
I am given to guess that the big dinosaurs grew really fast and might taste like chicken..
Or revive the Moa.
What could go wrong?
Funny how the methane breathers,I mean the concerned ones, cannot make up their minds,I thought they said the future was Insects?
Or was it guinea pigs?
Being NZ ,cannibalism is always a cultural solution.
Puha and Pakeha can make a come back .
Vegetarians could become real popular.
But then the everloving worms infesting their government would have to make public apology and cash payments to the people banished to the Chatham Islands back in the day..
Such choices..What to do?
These First World problems,they really do occupy the time and energy of so-called educated people?
So they’re assuming that the methane/animal stays the same as they grow larger? That large cows eat more, digest more, but they don’t fart more? LOL.
Cows don’t fart, they belch.
I’m am pretty sure there is an occasional fart.
I don’t get it. Do they really believe that bigger cows won’t just produce bigger farts?
When encountering a vegan/green/left loser who brings up the environmental damage associated with cattle, I have two additional discussion points.
1. India’s Sacred Cows
New Zealand has about 12m cattle.
India has about 300m cattle.
But aren’t Indians vegetarians?
India uses it’s 300m cattle which include buffalo for:-
Dairy
Meat ( only allowed in some states)
Beast of burden on very small farms.
Religious purposes.
There are millions of old cows wandering around India for religious reasons.
Clearly, vegans must mount a campaign to get rid of theses religious cows.
2. Agricultural indulgence
Locally, here in Melbourne the market gardens and livestock farms in the outer suburbs are nearly all gone.
We still have:-
Vineyards
Horse studs
Nurseries
Vegans/ greens/lefties should campaign against the above three uses if they think climate change is important.
I’m not sure we have any party here in NZ to vote for that properly opposes this bullshit. Some carbon zero bill passed a while back with almost unanimous support.
James Shaw has promised us all some rude shocks in an effort to fix the climate. He’s not joking.
This whole thing just stems from a vocal minority of fringe cranks that want the whole world to tell them they were right to be vegetarians/vegans. If they were really serious about animal methane emissions then they’d go after the termites.
start here:
https://agronomag.com/biggest-cows-world/
“That ain’t no woman, it’s a man, man” – as Austin Powers (The International Man of Mystery) once said.
Perspective playing a critical roll in the picture.
If the rancher stepped up even with the steer, his head would be at the same level as the bovine head. Still a large animal but not as large as depicted
Breeding a cow as big as a Stegosaurus would really give those New Zealanders something to Virtue-Signal about at last.
I got a real beef with this plan.
Interesting that Lomborg tells us that NZ is the only country to honestly estimate NET ZERO cost by 2050 to 2100.
He and his expert team agree with their sums of 5 trillion $ and NZ co2 emissions are just 0.1% of global emissions.
Therefore Aussies co2 emissions of 1.1 % would cost 55 T $ , USA 13.8% would cost 690 T $ , EU about 540 T $, China about 1500 T $ etc. Anyone not see a problem with this lunacy?
And of course this would be electoral poison, but would also deliver no measurable change to climate, temp, SLR , extreme weather events, rainfall, snow, polar bears, penguins, the coming cool phase AMO in NH , etc,etc. When will the Biden Donkey + DEMS etc WAKE UP?
Lomborg is correct their NET ZERO is a GUARANTEED LOSER for every country.
https://nypost.com/2019/12/08/reality-check-drive-for-rapid-net-zero-emissions-a-guaranteed-loser/
BTW for those clueless donkeys who BELIEVE in the dilute,dirty, toxic environment destroying S&W disaster, this 5 minute video should wake you up.
Then again we know that the left wing con merchants/fantasists just love their BS and fra-d. OH and they hate data/evidence with a vengeance.
Breeding animals (rabbits, frogs, mice or even cattle) under controlled conditions involves a bit of numerology, and involves a constant called the ‘Feigenbaum constant’.
Any numerologists here?
Feigenbaum constant is thought to be an independent natural constant as is pi etc..It is to do with fractals and such things, and it is a limes (limit) number of a function.
Feigenbaum constant = 4.669201609…..
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feigenbaum_constants
This is ‘settled science’
As usual I would say science may not be settled with certainty.
However the above might not be correct at all and that the ‘Feigenbaum constant’ might be a very simple derivation from Euler’s number (Napier’s constant) e.
Therefore approximate Feigenbaum constant derived from e would be
Fc*= e ( e – 1) = 4.67077427047140…..
I suspect that there are not two independent natural constants with base related ratio of 0.99966……
Great piece on what it is but how exactly does it fit in with breeding animals?
It would work for large free range farming of USA Argentina or Australia, in principle of the preindustrial human population, also used in physics and chemistry. I looked for an easy explanation and came across this if link works
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DETrYE4MdoLQ&ved=2ahUKEwiFuZG0osjuAhWaO-wKHWhvAYUQwqsBMAB6BAgDEAg&usg=AOvVaw3kggcuLt2F7AZoo4cTavhs
Got it now. That was the bit I needed to complete the puzzle. I hadn’t heard of it before but seeing that equation to model population over time, now I understand a bit more and see how it fits in. I think!
So the natural world loves fractals – I always wondered if climate cycles could be expressed as fractals – day/night cycles up to seasonal cycles then cold/warm oscillations up to ice age/interglacial cycles. Perhaps not as crazy an idea as I first thought? Thanks for that Vuk.
don’t know about climate, but looks like the (covid) virus multiplies in similar manner
http://virtualmathmuseum.org/Fractal/feigenbaum_tree/i/Feigenbaum_Tree_0.74_1.png
the clear bit at far end might be when a heard immunity is reached, but virus is still around, it mutates and then takes off again when old immunity is not good any longer, e.g. flu virus.
Well a virus is still a living organism per se so should work in the same way as other living organisms.
there are number of more advanced applications just google
‘Feigenbaum constant you tube’
or for real nerds
Mitchell J. Feigenbaum, a pioneer in the field of mathematical physics known as chaos, died on June 30, 2019 in Manhattan. He was 74.
I get it! Bigger cows means more bullshit!
This is so stupid that I suspect that a joke has been taken seriously
Okay, but let’s hope it does not lead to a research arms race with the US and EU to advance the idea.
When they also suggest 3 legged chickens, fear the worst!
I’d prefer 3 breasts… I mean chicken breasts, of course.
The graph implies that meat per animal has doubled, and stock nearly halved, since 1990. This just doesn’t pass the smell test, animal improvement is nowhere near that quick, and there are still plenty of cattle on NZ farmland. I’d love to see the actual figures behind this, I smell a rat!
“I smell a rat” , more likely BS
The plan will produce a massive bureaucracy, countless rules and regulations, conflicting demands, a maasive economic shock, slashed incomes all for no gain. Imagine the inspector arriving to check if your BBQ is still using gas. Bureaucrats wandering around farms counting trees. Monthly reports by companies on their wrapping paper use.
In a country where the only problems are “first world problems”, the government has to make up problems to justify their own existence.
Anything New Zealand does about “climate change” is like spitting in the ocean (pardon the awkward sea level rise analogy). But if it makes them feel “woke” so be it.
Frankenhoof
Uruk-Hai cows
The anti-GMO masses won’t mind if the right green ad teams go to work on the problem.
I reckon Kiwis were in happier times when it was only their sheep that were getting shafted.
Now it’s the citizens as well.
They certainly know how to set off a farm spending arms race. That’s how the ethanol mandate got started.
I won’t bother running down the link but in May 2019, the ABC in Australia ran a story about a NZ scientist who was developing a plan for a feeding process for NZ cows to produce 10% less methane in their daily diet.
This was said to be imperative because about 50% of New Zealand’s man made (or animal) emissions came from its agriculture.
I am sure someone whose time is not taken up with designing larger cows is still beavering away on that project.
The New York Times TV Reviewer has noted that with the departure of President Trump “Saturday Night Live” is failing badly with its satiric reviews.
This should provide some welcome material for SNL.
There’s already at least one study that indicates NZ beef and lamb might already be net zero.
So if that sector makes up 50% of our total, doesn’t that mean our total is also zero?
Wow, our work is done!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.farminguk.com/news/amp/nz-beef-and-lamb-farms-well-on-the-way-to-net-zero_56702.html
Chris,
Thanks for the link.
I can’t follow your mathematics but I like the thought.
It means that about 26 million sheep and some 6 million NZ cattle and countless pigs are no longer on death row.
NZ had excused or deferred agriculture from its carbon emissions regime until 2025 instead of being included in July last.
Maybe the farmers get a free pass now that they are effectively net zero!
NEW ZEALAND LEADS THE WORLD….AS GOES NEW ZEALAND, SO GOES THE WORLD. There are smart people in NZ but they are not in the government…..like many other places.
I am sure that New Zealand’s breeding larger cattle will solve all of our climate problems for now and for all time. Way to go New Zealand! Now the rest of the world no longer needs to waste any more money regarding climate change. Of course I thought the climate problem had already been solved by the burning of wood in a Danish power plant.
The bCharolais breed from Switzerland is one such beast – huge, they have good day meat ratio, and they’re the gentle giant pulling the plough in old images.
I have farmed here in NZ over all of this period. I concur with the graph. But some things need to be understood – the production increase is because with a lower stocking rate a lower percentage of the food goes into day to day maintenance of the animal’s liveweight and more into weight increase. But note that the stock numbers are already half way to zero – the production is not going to be sustained if we have a further decrease in numbers. And also note the contribution (by lowering stock numbers) NZ drystock farmers have already given to the environment. Funny how you don’t hear the acknowledgement of that. And as a side, while the powers that be continue to refuse to acknowledge the zeroing effect of the fact that methane decomposes then I continue to know that the methane argument is BS.
What was that great big British cow that seems to have been killed off by us horrible humans a few thousand years back. Jacinda needs to get them rebooted from DNA. And Kiwis need to stop voting for fools in government.
auroch.
But everyone is missing the bigger picture.
We need to breed smaller people. That way there would be less demand for everything (and the cows could stay the same size)… less leather for shoes, oil for clothing, we could make smaller airplanes, smaller cars, smaller houses with smaller doors, etc.
We need to start with little women; and then a PR program to encourage the importance small children; then declare a health emergency and hand out bumper stickers that say “no fat chicks”.
I suggest a brand new human breeding and then education program to reduce the number people fixated on bad science and mythological weather effects. This will solve the problem of believing in any negative outcomes from CO2. New Zealand is seriously in line for some sort of reeducation program. They’re getting loonier by the week.
No we are not loonier than the rest of the world. The problem is we are a small nation who’s wealth arises from exporting food to the rest of the world. We can not afford to compromise this production by taking a stand against what the rest of the world is doing.
I was responding to this heading. Any government or people who make or even believe such a statement are demonstrably “loonie”. Your comment to me is a non sequitur. Such a proposition [above] has absolutely no scientific foundation.
Well the heading wasn’t part of the document – it was Eric’s contribution. The document is about increasing per head productivity while decreasing the overall stock numbers. As the graph show – we have achieved this up to now. Given that we have halved our stock numbers it is unlikely for this to be a successful strategy from here on. But it was nothing to do about breeding larger stock as in genetics and so Eric’s headline is a little misleading.
“The Relationship Between Cow Size and Productivity” …
As you probably guessed already, nothing is as simple as some government employee wants to have you believe. The formula between feed, carcass weight and profitability is far more complex than you might assume.
https://www.beefmagazine.com/cow-calf/relationship-between-cow-size-production
The article was about New Zealand sheep and beef production. In NZ this production is almost exclusively from pasture. Each farm has a finite amount of pasture available and this quantity varies with the season. So our production criteria is based on stocking rate per acre with seasonal adjustment due to having less grass available in the winter. As you can see our production has stayed static despite going down in numbers. This is because as I said above a lower percentage of the food is required to maintain the animal so more can be put into production. One of the reasons we have dropped stock numbers is because we are placing less emphasis on wool which unfortunately appears to be a sunset industry. With wool production – very generally speaking – the more stock you can run per acre equals more wool production. If our wool production was included in this graph it would show a dramatic reduction.
I truly have no idea what you’re trying to get across. It’s another non sequitur. New Zealand, under its current leadership is a pathetic joke. Learn some science.
Wow – can’t beat that intellect!!
Can to ….
See my comment above
Ideally, breed one BIG cow, and cut bits off when necessary. In a PETA-approved way, of course…
I suppose such a cow would need to be bred in a zero-gravity state, in orbit. Perhaps we could keep herds of somewhat smaller ones on the Moon, where the requirement for spacesuits would make capturing the methane a comparatively simple business…
What if bigger cows don’t have just guns, but howitzers and flamethrowers as well?
guess Aus will corner markets in black n red angus then?
lol
The ranking, in decreasing importance, of greenhouse gases by their direct contribution to Earth’s overall greenhouse effect is: water – CO2 – methane (ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas ).
It seems logical that one would want to tackle the two most important causes of “greenhouse gas warming” (assuming CO2’s effect is not already saturated; ref. Wijngaarden and Happer 2020 pre-print) before spending untold $billions on the third-place suspect.
But that’s just me.
Our main crop is grass which we convert to dairy products via a cow. A huge percentage of our national income is dairy and timber (pinus radiata).
Cattle for eating is a small part of our agriculture. The Please Eat Tasty Animals crowd don’t want any domesticated animals so larger, lower methane cows won’t help.
The bizarre thing is that (Professor) Rod Carr (EV?!) who has grown a beard to create green credentials, has said in his report that we should stop planting pinus radiata (35 years to 700mm dia and then carbon locked by being used for building long lasting products). He proposes in the alternative to plant more native trees. These take 5 times as long to grow, can’t be harvested and will eventually fall and rot releasing all their carbon as carbon dioxide. And this twisted logic is meant to reduce our ‘carbon emissions? A pure sop to greenies with a negative benefit to the carbon religion and a huge loss to a major export earner. (30 million cubic metres a year)
Apologies for the idiotic virtue signalling from newzild but be assured we have many sane people who are trying to (slowly) point out the ‘odd facts’ in the latest climate pronouncement like the promise that energy costs to households will be lower (than the 22 us cents per kWh I currently pay)!
I eat a near carnivore diet now. There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. I dropped my BMI from 30 to 25 and my labs are great. Eat meat fat to lose weight and eat meat protein to build muscle.
Plants defend themselves by making toxins; animals don’t. Even microtoxins can cause major inflammation. And of course carbs cause insulin resistance, then metabolic syndrome, obesity and diabetes.
My favorite video, from a biochemistry point of view, explaining why carnivore is so much healthier than vegan and other plant diets. The title, Debunking the Carnivore Diet, is facetious. Given by an MD, author of a book called the Carnivore Code.