Pre-print. Letter to editor. Is livestock in agriculture an issue for climate? The case for disjunctive reasoning

Abstract. Some scholars keep pushing the factoid that animal source food is harming the climate - a five-factor complex few people know much about. Since the Cambrian period, Earth has gone through a multitude of climate changes. For the past million years, our ancestors have relied on an animal source diet to guarantee the >30 micronutrients they needed to survive with sustained brain development. That includes the mind's capacity for acceptance of viewpoint diversity, entrepreneurial exploratory thinking forward in time, epistemic vigilance, and metacognitive sensitivity in disjunctive reasoning.

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In the special issue called Northern Agriculture in Changing Climate, the editor’s introduction states:

“Agricultural production has an ambivalent role with regards to climate change. It is both a source and a sink of greenhouse gases”.

Tiainen et al. (2020) wrote:

“Agriculture and especially cattle farming is under keen societal focus because of its significant role in soil carbon losses, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and biodiversity preservation”.

Ollikainen et al. (2020) wrote:

“Of all agricultural direct non-CO2 emissions, 80% are from livestock, with ruminants accounting for more than 80% of the total livestock emissions”.

Ferris et al. (2020) claimed that:

“Agriculture makes a significant contribution to global GHG emissions, with ruminant livestock systems known to be a significant source of emissions”

and concludes that there is little variation in CH4-emission between two dairy cow genotypes.

Climate is a systemic phenomenon explained by a complex interplay between atmospheric, hydrospheric, cryospheric, lithospheric, and biospheric components (IPCC, 2013). Since the Cambrian period, Earth has gone through a multitude of climate changes. For example, 2.6 Mya when the Pliocene epoch changed to Pleistocene, our ancestors relied on an animal source diet to guarantee the 30 micronutrients they needed to survive with sustained brain development (Aiello and Wheeler 1995, Mann 2018, Pobiner 2013, Pringle 2016, Thompson et al. 2018).

Archaeological findings show that after the introduction of agriculture, people who relied on a plant-based diet lost up to 15 cm in height (Koehler et al. 2017, Mummert et al. 2011). This phenomenon is still prevalent in some provinces in India and on the African continent (Adesogan et al. 2019, India, Country brief. 2020).

For the past 540 million years, a significant amount of atmospheric CO2 has been stored in the oceans, bedrock, and forests. Now, this CO2 is being released on a rapid scale. Globally livestock contributes 14.5% of global emissions (FAO). However, emissions from livestock in Finland only constitute 5% of the country’s total emissions (Nylund 2019) and this percentage is similar in all Nordic countries. Even so, taking animal source food of the plate will have no significant effect on the reduction of CO2 (White and Hall 2017).

CH4 (methane) is a significantly more potent GHG than CO2, but most CH4 released into the atmosphere is recycled into atmospheric CO2 within one decade. The carbon contained in biogenic methane is not new (or additional) to the atmosphere, but it cycles between CO2 and CH4 during processes of photosynthesis and hydroxyl oxidation - a process referred to as the Biogenic Carbon cycle (Global Carbon Project, Werth 2019).

Viewpoint diversity is important for the purpose of supporting entrepreneurial exploratory thinking forward in time (Kuratko 2017, Lerner and Tetlock 2002, Österberg 2012, Ploum et al. 2017). However, in order for prospects to be accurate, epistemic vigilance and metacognitive sensitivity in disjunctive reasoning are paramount (Koplak and Stanovich 2002, Pinker 2011, Sperber et al. 2010, Szpunar et al. 2014). This also holds true in science when dealing with issues such as the interplay between agriculture and climate. Also read: Frankelius (2020). Agriculture – a climate villain? Maybe not!

A proposal to rethink agriculture in the climate calculations (Journal of Agronomy).

Back to the root causes of war: food shortages, correspondence to Lancet.

Phelan, S. (2020). Oxford professor [Myles Allen] calls on EU to change methane calculation definition. Agriland.

Farmer Georgie (2020). One Scientist’s Ambitious Plan to Achieve Global Cooling With Cattle

The post was originally posted on the University of Helsinki blog for my research project (2018-2021).

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References

Adesogan, A.T., Havelaar, A.H., McKune, S.L., Eilittä, M. & Dahla, G.D. 2019. Animal source foods: Sustainability problem or malnutrition and sustainability solution? Perspective matters. Global Food Security, 25.

Aiello L.C. & Wheeler P. April 1995. The expensive-tissue hypothesis: the brain and the digestive system in human and primate evolution. Current Anthropology 36, 199–221.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). 2020. Tackling climate change through livestock.

Global Methan Budget 2016. Global Carbon Project.

India, Country brief. 2020. World Food Programme.

IPCC. 2013: Annex III: Glossary [Planton, S. (ed.)]. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

Kohler, T., Smith, M.,  & Bogaard, A. et al. 2017. Greater post-Neolithic wealth disparities in Eurasia than in North America and Mesoamerica. Nature, 551, 619–622.

Koplak & Stanovich. 2002. The Domain Specificity and Generality of Disjunctive Reasoning: Searching for a Generalizable Critical Thinking Skills. Journal of Educational Psychology 94, 197–209. 68.

Kuratko, D.F. 2017. Entrepreneurship (10th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Lerner, S. & Tetlock, P.E. 2002. Bridging Individual, Interpersonal and Institutional Approaches to Judgment and Decision Making: The Impact of Accountability on Cognitive Bias. In S.L. Schneider and James Shantau (eds.) Emerging Perspectives on Judgment, and Decision Research, pp. 432-457. Cambridge University Press.

Mann, N.J. 2017. A Brief History of Meat in the Human Diet and Current Health Implications. Meat Science, 144, 169-179.

Mummert, A., Esche, E., Robinson, J. & Armelagos, G.J. 2011. Stature and robusticity during the agricultural transition: Evidence from the bioarchaeological record. Economics & Human Biology, 9, 284-301.

Nylund, M. 2019. Desinformation om maten. HBL.

Österberg, P. 2012. Generative learning management – A dual-role leadership model for creativity in organizations. Doctoral thesis, Department of Psychology, Lund University.

Pinker, S. 2011. Taming the devil within us. Nature, 478, 309–311.

Ploum., L. Blok, V., Lans, T. & Omta, O. 2017. Toward a Validated Competence Framework for Sustainable Entrepreneurship. Organization & Environment, 31, 113–132.

Pobiner, B. 2013. Evidence for Meat-Eating by Early Humans. Nature Education Knowledge, 4, 1. 

Pringle, H. 2016. The Origins of Creativity - New evidence of ancient ingenuity forces scientists to reconsider when our ancestors started thinking outside the box. Scientific American, Mind.

Thompson, J.C., Carvalho, S. & Marean, C.W. 2019. Origins of the Human Predatory Pattern: The 

Transition to Large-Animal Exploitation by Early Hominins. Current Anthropology, 60, 1-23.

Saunois, M., R B Jackson, R.B., Bousquet, P. Poulter, B & Canadell, J. G. 2016. The growing role of methane in anthropogenic climate change. Environmental Research Letters. 11, 1-5.

Sperber, D. Clement, F., Heintz, C., Mascaro, O., Mercier, H., Origgi, G. & Wilson, D. 2010. Epistemic Vigilance. Mind & Language, 25, 359–393.

Szpunar, K.K., Spren, N. & Schacter, D.L. 2014. A taxonomy of prospection: Introducing an organizational framework for future-oriented cognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111, 18414-18421.

Werth S. 2020. Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research at UC Davis: The Biogenic Carbon Cycle. Clear Center, February 19.

White & Hall. 2017. Nutritional and greenhouse gas impacts of removing animals from US agriculture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114, E10301-E10308.