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My last episode with Frank Mitloehner, PhD was so popular I wanted to have him back on the show to give us an update on what’s going on in the world of beef. Frank is a professor and air quality specialist in cooperative extension in the Department of Animal Science at UC Davis. He is also the director of the CLEAR Center.

For those unfamiliar with the CLEAR Center, their work is dedicated to helping the animal agriculture sector operate more efficiently to meet global demands for food while lessoning environmental impact.

This episode is short but it is packed with information. Frank and I discuss:

• How California has reduced its methane by almost 30% 
• The carrot vs stick approach when it comes to reducing methane
• The problem with territorial emissions
• The difference in the environmental impact of methane and CO2
• Frank’s predictions on where the plant-based industry is headed
• The impacts of the war in Ukraine on the food supply
• How food production is more than calories and should turn the focus to nutrients

 

Resources:

CLEAR Center

Sustainable Dish Episode 83: Frank Mitloehner, PhD

Sustainable Dish Episode 160: Frank Mitloehner, PhD

Sustainable Dish Episode 179: Ty Beal, PhD

Sustainable Dish Episode 201: Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

CLEAR Center Explainer on Manure Management

 

Connect with Frank:

Website: Frank Mitloehner, PhD – UC Davis

Twitter: @GHGGuru 

 

Episode Credits:

Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connelly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Patreon supporters, and listeners.

If you’re ready to take your support for a nutritious, sustainable, and equitable food system to the next level, join my Global Food Justice Alliance community on Patreon. You will have access to ad-free podcasts, exclusive videos, and a discussion community plus so much more. Go to sustainabledish.com/join to support my work.

 

Quotes:

“So methane, in my opinion, is only a liability if you don’t manage it. However, if you do manage it, then it can be an asset.”  – Frank Mitloehner, PhD

 

“So why is the world not talking about plastics and gasoline and so on? Because that’s very inconvenient.”  – Frank Mitloehner, PhD

 

Transcript:

Diana Rodgers, RD  00:01

Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connelly who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance an initiative, advocating for the inclusion of animal source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now on to our show. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  0:39  

Welcome back to the podcast everyone. My previous podcast with Frank Mitloehner was so popular that I wanted to have Frank back again, because we were recently together at a conference about methane in Sao Paulo and a few things came up. There’s been a few kind of new developments in the in the world since the last time we chatted. And so I just thought we’d have a quick talk. So welcome, Frank. 

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  1:05  

Hi there. How are you, Diana?

Diana Rodgers, RD  1:06  

I’m great. So yeah, why don’t you just kind of give like an overview of like, what’s been going on in the world and the carbon emissions focus on livestock looks different in every different country. And so I thought maybe we could just briefly talk especially about, you know, what’s going on in Brazil, maybe what’s going on in Ireland a little bit, and some other places in the world? Because you and I both have been traveling so much, just talking about livestock emissions lately. So

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  1:35  

So, yeah, it’s interesting. The public policy around livestock and carbon is very different throughout different places in the world. So I started with California, where I live here, the government has decided to use a carrot approach of financially incentivizing farmers to reduce methane. And so there’s now a carbon market here, and you can sell your carbon credits. So if you reduce your methane, for example, and if you reduce it by a lot, then you can take that to the market. For example, if you cover your lagoon, and therefore the gases that are generated from the manure underneath, are now not just going into the air, but they are trapped. And then you convert that resulting biogas into fuel, then you receive a very lucrative credit for that. It’s called the low carbon fuel standard credit that can amount to half of the amount you get for the milk per cow.

Diana Rodgers, RD  2:33  

Yeah. Could you talk a little bit about the advances that have been going on in California dairy and also a lot of people when they see manure lagoons, they think feedlot beef, but that’s not the case with dairy.

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  2:42  

No, no, no, beef feedlots don’t have a lagoon. Beef feedlots do not have a lagoon. Their manure is falling off the animal it’s accumulating in a dry way. But on the dairy side, many dairies do put their manure into what’s called a lagoon that’s 98%, water, 2% is the solids, and the solids can produce and will produce methane gas. Now, methane gas is considered by many as a liability, as a problem. But I actually view it differently. I view methane gas as an opportunity. And the reason for this is that methane is really energy, okay. So you can burn methane and make power from it all, you can take methane and make it into a fuel type for semi-trucks, buses, and so on. So methane, in my opinion, is only a liability, a problem, if you don’t manage it. However, if you do manage it, then it can be an asset. It’s much like your doors and windows in the winter, okay? They can be a liability if you leave them open. But if you shut them, then you keep the heat inside your house. And so that’s what we need to do with our livestock operations. We need to think about where do they produce methane? And where do we have opportunities to reduce that gas? And if we reduce methane, then we reduce warming. Okay, so that’s a big deal. As a result, here in the state of California, the policy is such that we want to reduce 40% of methane to zero by the year 2030. And we are now almost at 30%. And we just started it a few years back through incentivizing technologies to reduce methane. And so to me, that’s a real success story. Okay. Again, I call it the carrot approach. Now, let’s look across the Pacific, New Zealand has just decided to go use the cane approach of taxing methane and nitrous oxide from livestock operations. I don’t know how the different parties agreed upon that and why that would be advantageous over the carrot approach. But that’s the approach that they had chosen. And so we will have to see over the next few years how that plays out in general. And to my knowledge, a taxation approach always disadvantages relatively small producers, because they don’t have the financial means of dealing with that. And the large producers just feel like okay, as long as the playing field is leveled, we have no problem with that. But the small ones do have a problem with that.

Diana Rodgers, RD  5:09  

And are they doing? Are they also covering their lagoons in New Zealand? Or will? Are they looking to do that? I mean, if they’re just getting taxed, what’s the incentive to actually use the methane in a productive way?

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  5:20  

Well, what the good thing is about what they are planning in New Zealand is that the money that the taxation generates will go back into research for technologies that reduce greenhouse gases, and go back to farmers to help them put in technology. So the money does not leave the dairy industry, the livestock industry and go into transportation, but it stays in the agricultural sector. So that’s a good thing. Okay. So that’s the approach. And how that will play out, we will see. I’m not sure yet, I’m not sure at all. Then another example is Ireland. And here, I’m quite concerned because there are strong voices that just want to get rid of cattle. Okay, they say, the best way of reducing emissions, greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock sector is to shrink the herd. And I think that that is not a smart approach because the vast majority of what Ireland produces similarly to New Zealand, is going to export. Okay, there are many export markets throughout the world that desire Irish dairy products, and they will consider to require dairy products for their markets, whether that be Germany or Portugal, or, you know, you name it, there are many places that buy dairy from Ireland today. So if the Irish government were to say, let’s get rid of a third of our cows to reduce our carbon footprint in Ireland, then what would happen? Ireland would lose a third of its dairy sector, and the dairy cows would go someplace else. And with it, the emissions would go someplace else, because some other country would pick up the slack and fill the void that is generated by the reduction of dairy cows of Ireland. The demand is not going down. Okay. And that means the cows will simply just be someplace else emitting there. So that, to me makes absolutely no sense. It’s a process called leakage. And something that we have known for a long time is not really helping us to reduce emissions. What helps us to reduce emissions, is what we’ve seen happening in California, where an industry without shrinking just reduces 30%. Very soon 40% of its methane. And the strong reductions of methane lead to a strong reduction of warming. And that is what it’s all about. So I think globally, we really should think about what is the goalpost here? To move the goalposts is to minimize additional warming, or to stop additional warming altogether, like the Paris Climate Accord is asking for. So now the question is, how do we achieve that, and here we will see which policy tool will turn out to be the most successful in the years to come, I will place my bets on the carrot approach and not on the cane approach.

Diana Rodgers, RD  8:08  

I mean, those of us who have kids know that can be a pretty powerful motivator. And we’ve seen that play out economically in so many other ways as well. So I’m on your team with that one.

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  8:22  

Yeah. And you know, there are many issues in international carbon trading that a sub-optimal or even unfair, you know, there’s, for example, the issue of territorial emissions, you know. That means that emissions are always blamed to the place where they occur. Okay. So in the case of agriculture, the emissions occur on the farm. And so the country that generates the food is the country where the emissions are generated. And even if those products are exported, the emissions are still blamed to the place where they’re produced in the case of agricultural emissions, for example. But let’s look at a country like Norway. Norway is a major exporter of fossil fuels. And they produce about Norway about 50 million metric tons of greenhouse gases annually in Norway. But they are exporting 450 million metric tons of greenhouse gases because they’re exporting all their fossil fuels, which are then burned elsewhere. But the territorial emissions accounting means that they will not be blamed for all the emissions that are generated elsewhere through use of their products. So they look really great in the statistics, okay, because they’re just shipping it elsewhere. And these other countries that now burn that stuff, they’re taking the full blame. And so to me, I have to study this further as to how this plays out for agriculture in detail. But on the fossil fuel side, I know it is, in my opinion, totally unfair, that countries that extract a lot of fossil fuels make a killing of the profits. And then they are pretty much exporting these emissions elsewhere. And then whoever burns them is gets the blame. I need to figure out how exactly that pencils out for agriculture because I have a hunch that if a country exports the majority of its agricultural goods, that country will still be blamed with emissions associated with it and not the ones that are importing it. And they’re not having to produce it themselves.

Diana Rodgers, RD  10:34  

Yeah, it seems incredibly unfair.

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  10:37  

Yeah, I mean it’s… I mean, every international trading system has to have some kind of principle. But I think it is very important for us to estimate whether or not these trading schemes are appropriate and whether they get us to where we need them to go. And you can imagine exporting countries like New Zealand, or Ireland, or Uruguay also, they have a great interest in figuring out who’s to be blamed for the agricultural emissions. Because currently, when you just look at the animal inventories, and related emissions, it looks daunting to them as to what the livestock sector does with respect to total emissions, when indeed the majority of what they produce goes elsewhere.

Diana Rodgers, RD  11:21  

And lately, it just seems like there’s been such a hyper-focus on livestock emissions, like out in last two years, in particular, at least in my lens, I don’t know, what are you seeing in some other countries? Why isn’t the shift? Why aren’t people looking at oil and gas and, you know, overall consumerism, and you know, our consumption of plastics? Why isn’t that something people are focusing on? And why is the lens so strongly on something that globally is only 5% of greenhouse gas emissions, and even that number might be questionable. So?

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  12:02  

Well, as we know, there are a lot of activist groups who have really always been anti-livestock. And they view this carbon angle as the most effective one in swaying people to stop eating animal source foods. All the early attempts of using animal welfare, animal rights and so on, have not gained the momentum that they were seeking. But the warming angle has. And here, the greatest culprits of warming within the livestock sector are ruminants because they have bugs in their digestive system that produce methane in these animals, and then belch out that methane. They do not, these activist groups, either do not understand or don’t want to understand and communicate that methane, in particular, the gas in question has a very different impact on warming compared to other greenhouse gases. And that is due to the fact that this gas methane is not just produced, but it’s also destroyed, naturally destroyed. And that has a very different impact on warming. I’m not diminishing the importance of methane, it is a potent greenhouse gas, but it has a lifespan of a little over a decade, whereas CO2 has a lifespan of over 1000 years. So now every time we burn fossil fuels, we produce carbon, we produce CO2, put it into the atmosphere, which accumulates there. It builds up over time, okay, so what we blow out today is in addition to what we put out yesterday, and the day before, the week, before the year before, the decade before, and so on, it stays there pretty much forever. On the methane side, the amount of methane produced by a constant herd of cattle, for example, the amount that’s produced almost equals the amount that’s destroyed through a natural process called oxidation, hydroxyl oxidation. So what we don’t want to do is grow numbers of livestock because then we increase methane over time. But if we hold methane, in other words, cattle herds livestock herd stable, then we hold methane stable, and then we hold warming stable. But ideally, we want to reduce methane. And we can do that even without reducing cattle numbers and livestock numbers. We can reduce methane, for example, through use of these covered lagoons that I talked about earlier a year, happening in California, where you now trap that gas and you convert it into fuel type, and then replace diesel or we can use feed additives that are applied to the base diet of animals. And they are known to reduce enteric methane, the methane that is belched out by those cattle. So we are very bullish, no pun intended, in asserting that within the next 10 years, we will reduce 30 to 40% of methane from our livestock herds in most of the developed world. And we can do even more in developing countries, because they’re, in addition to technologies, they are a very low hanging fruit. One of them is reproduction. The reproductive rates are dismal in many developing countries, meaning the rates are less than 50%, the rates of successfully getting a female pregnant. And that means many open females, meaning females that don’t have a calf or don’t have offspring means that they are pretty much not productive in producing food. Yet they eat and excrete, but are not really helping us with adding to our food supply. And so these reproductive rates are very low, the productive rates are very low. And I’m not saying that we need to replicate what we did in many developed countries, and have CAFOs everywhere. But what I’m saying is, we can drastically improve the output of these livestock systems. And by doing so we incredibly shrink the environmental footprint,

(Patreon Ad) Diana Rodgers, RD  12:08  

Ready to take your support for a nutritious, sustainable, and equitable food system to the next level? Join my Global Food Justice Alliance community on Patreon and have access to ad-free podcasts, exclusive videos, and a discussion community plus so much more. Go to sustainable dish.com/join to support my work, and thank you.

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  16:19  

So why is the world not talking about plastics and gasoline and so on? Because that’s very inconvenient. And you know, if you do so then you are reminded of the fact that if you point your finger at others, three fingers pointing back at you.

Diana Rodgers, RD  16:35  

Exactly, exactly. And we’ve seen, you know, ridiculous bills trying to get passed to like, ban all slaughterhouses on the fact that… What was that one in Oregon? It was just absolutely crazy. I can’t believe it even made it to how far it made it. But that’s how far these groups are going to try to absolutely eliminate livestock. And when we look at this, you know, all this money getting pumped into Silicon Valley startups for these companies? I mean, that’s another question I have for you. Do you see it as a bubble that’s just going to absolutely burst? Because I do. 

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  17:13  

Yeah, absolutely. I have no doubt in my mind. I have watched all of those companies that were hyped so much, going into phases, varying phases of distress, and the stock market is punishing them. I mean, the rates, the stock prices are going down so fast. I have looked at plant-based milk alternatives such as Oatly. I’ve looked at things like Beyond Meat and other vegan meat alternatives. And I have seen incredible reductions on the stock market happening over the course of the year. I do think that they had a great journey from a super low base to a low base, and they gained maybe 20% or so. But the pace was so low that these gains looked incredible. But if you compare where they are versus where the original animal source foods are, it is not a David against Goliath. This is a… it looks like a rounding error. Okay, when you look at all the plant-based alternatives combined, they make up a number that would be a rounding error on the meat side.

Diana Rodgers, RD  18:26  

What opportunities do you see coming for the meat sector moving forward? Like for the beef sector? What are some of the exciting you know, I don’t know, new products? Like one thing I saw when I was in Brazil that I thought was really cool, is I went to Swift, and they sell only frozen meats. And I saw some frozen ground meat, but it was like almost like ground granola. But it was meat only. So you could just like shake it into the pan. Which I thought was a nice way to sell frozen ground beef. Because currently when I get frozen ground beef, it’s a block I have to thaw the whole thing. It gets soggy in my fridge. It’s just kind of like not awesome. What’s going on that you’re excited about in beef?

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  19:12  

Well, I have to say I’m not really… I’m an avid consumer of beef and other animal source foods, but I’m not an expert of specialty products. I really do love to go to my butcher and buy a tomahawk or something. And my whole family goes wild when I barbecue a tomahawk over mesquite coal over the weekend. And it’s just hard to beat. You know those other products. I mean, I try sometimes, and yeah, they’re interesting, but not so much interesting to me. What I can tell you though, is that I see some major changes happening right now worldwide, and they are partly caused by what’s going on in Ukraine with this war there. We see not just a third of the global growth grain market being gone. But the grain supply, but also a third of the global synthetic fertilizers are disappearing. Okay. So Belarus and Ukraine and Russia produce a third of all global synthetic fertilizers. And that has led to shock waves in our food supply chain and with a drastic increase in product prices, in particular for meat. Okay, I hear reports from family and friends in Europe that they really have to worry about, you know, can we buy? Can we afford animal-source foods? I think that the consumption of animal-source foods will go down due to price due to inflation, due to war. I also think that this whole conflict scenario will have a profound impact on the priorities people place toward food security, food availability versus other externalities around food, such as the climate impact. People will wonder, wonder and worry about, what can I still afford? How much of what can I still afford, rather than a wonder if the carbon footprint of this product is lower than that product? I think these things will drastically change within the foreseeable future. I already see it in different places of the world that I’m that I’m visiting frequently. So rather than which product is the best from a marketing perspective, I think that the world food supply is about to be shaken drastically. I mean, really shaken up drastically.

Diana Rodgers, RD  21:36  

Yes, I was on a call about COP 27. And a lot of my colleagues were talking about potential, you know, food riots happening in Africa. And that’s super scary. And we something that we really have never seen.

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  21:54  

Yeah, Lebanon has two more weeks of wheat, of weed supply, and then they’re done. And the same is true for Syria. And the same is true for Egypt and all these other North African Middle Eastern countries absolutely dependent upon wheat, okay. That’s what they need to make their breads and so on. And they’re about to run out. And it doesn’t look like anybody in the world is ready to substitute what normally comes from Ukraine and Russia. And so this is a huge, huge problem. And we will see it, I mean, don’t think that because we live in the United States or in certain European countries, we’ll be free from the risk of food insecurity. I mean, will we run out of calories? No, we won’t. But we will run out of food products, and others will become extremely expensive. And meats among those that will become extremely expensive. And meat in particular, beef and pork.

Diana Rodgers, RD  22:54  

Yes. And I was hearing that in places in Greece, they’re really short on food for livestock. And so a lot of the dairies are just shutting down completely because they have nothing to feed the cattle.

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  23:06  

Yep. Yeah, I mean, we just don’t have enough marginal land to feed all those animals on nothing other than grasses. And so a lot of the livestock sector does require feeds to being produced and being brought to the animals. And that very bit is about to change. So in places like California, where we feed about half of all feed to our dairy cows, as co-products and by-products from crop production. So that’s almond hulls and cotton seeds and citrus pulp. And so that stuff is produced no matter what, but we are feeding half of the diet of California dairy cows is co-products and byproducts. So that is not as much a problem. And the farms themselves grow corn or cereal silages to make silage so, they chopped the whole plant into small particles and then preserve it as silage. You know, glorified sauerkraut if you wish. And so places like California are not as vulnerable but other places are that traditionally feed mainly grains or grain byproducts and co-products I think we will see a shift. I think the world will view food differently in the months, in the years to come. And people will be reminded what it means to have a strong food-growing sector. When I see the United Kingdom right now, up until recently I heard everybody they’re talking about re-wildering agricultural land. I would bet any kind of money that in a year nobody will talk about re-wildering agricultural land. They will say, boys let’s go back into production. We need to produce food, more food because we are seeing shortages. Mark my words.

Diana Rodgers, RD  25:03  

You’re totally right. And that’s interesting because next week I’ll be at Groundswell. And George Monbiot is actually going to be there to do a talk, doing a book signing just a couple of hours after my book signing. And it’s just amazing. And I hope at least something that might come out of… this could be a more of a focus on nutrient, you know, growing nutrients, right, like the importance of protein over, you know, just calories.

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  25:35  

To me, the question is not how do we produce enough calories? Again, neither in the developed nor in much of the developing world, people are calorie deprived, they are nutrient deprived. Okay, and I’m not saying protein, I’m saying nutrient-deprived, right? Because animal source foods, yes, is protein-rich, not just the amount, but also the quality of the protein is very good. But that’s not all. As you will know, these animals, those foods, whether it’s an egg, or glass of milk, or cheese, or meat, they come with a bunch of other essential nutrients, such as iron and vitamin B12, and selenium and so many things, not just do they complement those high-quality proteins very well. But they make it into a package, into a nutrient package. You eat one item or two, and you take on a combination of essential nutrients. That is more than just high-value protein. So I don’t like the discussion of replacing nutrients with proteins. I would say, let’s replace the discussion of having a calorie focus to have an essential nutrient focus.

Diana Rodgers, RD  26:50  

Yes, and for anyone who’s interested in this, I did a podcast with Gabrielle Lyon, where we talked about this, and also with Ty Beal. Do you know Ty Beal? 

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  27:00  

Oh, yeah. I know him well. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  27:01  

So he’s got this amazing study that we actually did a video podcast. And we showed some of it where he showed, you know, what foods do we need to combat global nutrient deficiencies? And it was all animal source foods. Yeah, it was, you know, liver, beef, eggs, you know, all of that. And so all of these ridiculous planetary diets that are calling for the, you know, drastic, dramatic reduction in animal source foods, absolutely can’t meet the nutrient requirements of the world. And hopefully, you know, I haven’t read the Eat Lancet 2.0. yet, but hopefully, there’s a little more focus on that. I don’t know. Maybe you have? And I’ll have to do another podcast on that. But thank you so much for your time. You know, I’m sure I’ll see you. You know, we’re both doing so much work all over the place, trying to talk about the importance of livestock. And so where can folks find you?

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  27:54  

So first of all, you’re most welcome, Diana, thank you for having me. And I appreciate you and appreciate the important work that you do. And I hope that our paths crossed often. You’ll find me here at UC Davis. I’m the director of the Clear center. Clear.uc davis.edu is our webpage. And my Twitter handle is GHGguru.

Diana Rodgers, RD  28:18  

GHGguru. I’m a frequent re-tweeter of your tweets. So keep it up. Thank you so much. And we’ll speak again soon. Thank you.

Frank Mitloehner, PhD  28:28  

Thank you Take care.

Diana Rodgers, RD  28:30  

Thanks so much for listening to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. If you liked the show, please leave a review on iTunes. And if you’d like to support the work I’m doing on Patreon please visit sustainabledish.com/join. As a Patreon subscriber, you’ll get access to ad-free podcasts, plus exclusive video podcasts, never before seen interviews, and a discussion community. Go to sustainabledish.com/join and thank you for your support.