World Ark Magazine - May/June 2008 - (Page 31)

Math on the Range Bruce Gellerman, host of the radio program “Living on Earth,” recently spoke with animal science professor David Tisch to crunch the numbers on grass-fed versus grain-fed beef. GELLERMAN: And what’s the relationship between grain and CO2 emissions? 1 Buy less, waste less. Make a conscious choice to reduce the amount of food you buy each week and serve smaller portion sizes, and don’t make enough for leftovers if they’re not popular in your house. Besides being a dead loss of all the energy that went into growing, transporting and preparing it, organic matter that is thrown away creates methane gas in landfills. Compost if you can. TISCH: Well, grasses are perennials. And that means that they grow back year after year and there’s not a lot of fuel used to produce the grasses. Grains, however--when you feed animals grain you really mean you’re feeding them corn and corn is an annual. And that means every year you have to plow, plant, fertilize, spray, harvest it, dry it and grind it. There’s a lot of inputs when you’re producing grain for grain-fed beef. But, the reality is that it’s cheaper now to produce grain-fed animals than grass-fed. GELLERMAN: So, let’s do a hypothetical. Say you’ve got in stall number one, animal ‘A.’ This animal was grain-fed and it was eaten in let’s say in Fort Collins, Colorado, where it was raised. What’s the CO2 footprint of that animal? TISCH:The grain-fed animal with no transportation would result in about 1.6 pounds of CO2 emissions per 12-ounce steak. GELLERMAN: So more CO2 is produced than the steak itself? TISCH: That’s right. More CO2 is produced during the production when it’s grain-fed than it would be actually for transportation if you didn’t use grain. GELLERMAN: Okay, then. Behind stall number two we’ve got animal ‘B.’ And this one was not grain-fed but it was shipped from say Fort Collins, Colorado, to me, here in Boston. What’s the CO2 footprint of that one? TISCH: That one’s CO2 is about 0.3 pounds of carbon dioxide. GELLERMAN: Whoa! Big difference. TISCH: There really is a big difference. © 2008 “Living on Earth.” Used with permission of “Living on Earth” and World Media Foundation. www.loe.org “Living on Earth” is the weekly environmental news and information program distributed by PRI. Avoid air-freighted and hothouse-grown foods. your food shouldn’t get more frequent flier miles than you do. Hothouse tomatoes in winter seem more natural and less polluting than tomatoes trucked from far away. In fact, neither tomato is a good choice. Seasonal varieties of other produce, or tomatoes canned in season, are significantly better choices. 2 4 3 www.heifer.org Eat less meat. While a vegetarian diet will contribute less to climate change, a more practical option for most people is to reduce the amount of meat and cheese they consume. Making a conscious choice to eat less meat is a step in the right direction. Learn more. As part of its Low Carbon Diet Program, announced in April 2007, Bon Appètit Management Company Foundation developed an online calculator as a public service to help people make informed food decisions. Play with your food choices and see what a difference it can make at www.eatlowcarbon.org. May/June 2008 | WOrlD Ark 31 http://www.eatlowcarbon.org http://www.loe.org http://www.heifer.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of World Ark Magazine - May/June 2008

World Ark Magazine - May/June 2008 Contents Letters For the Record The Good Life Asked & Answered Why Water Matters The Carbon Hoofprint From Farm to Table Healing History Mixed Media Heifer Spirit Heifer Bulletin World Ark Market Calendar First Person

World Ark Magazine - May/June 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.