‘ELECTING’ TO IGNORE: Meat has a big carbon footprint, but the Inflation Reduction Act ignores it
The food system accounts for 11% of US greenhouse gas emissions, but just 5% of the IRA’s spending is allocated to changing farming practices. And that spending ignores agriculture’s biggest climate culprit: meat and dairy production.
KENNY TORRELLA: The historic Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into law by President Joe Biden… is the most ambitious climate legislation ever enacted in the US. But the law will do little to cut emissions from agriculture, one of the most neglected sources of the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide.
Our food system accounts for 11 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, but just a little over 5 percent of the IRA’s spending is allocated to changing farming practices, according to the Congressional Research Service. And that spending ignores agriculture’s biggest climate culprit: meat and dairy production.
Most of the money allocated for agriculture will pay farmers to employ what the USDA has dubbed “climate-smart” farming practices. But according to NYU environmental studies professor Matthew Hayek and Harvard Law policy fellow Jan Dutkiewicz, those supported practices may not be all that climate-smart, as they’re unlikely to make much of a dent in emissions.
Those measures include improving soil health, reducing water contamination, and protecting pollinators and native plants. They’re good, commonsense practices, to be sure,… but they won’t meaningfully reduce agriculture emissions. Food waste is another major source of agricultural emissions, but the law does not address it.
The IRA will also incentivize farmers to produce even more crops for biofuels, an inefficient way to reduce carbon emissions that takes up land that could be used for food (or just left alone to sequester carbon)…
Agriculture emissions aren’t a sideshow: Climate researchers say that even if we stopped using fossil fuels tomorrow, we won’t be able to meet the Paris climate agreement’s targets without shrinking food’s carbon footprint too…
Americans have come to expect cheap meat and lots of it. And that meat is so cheap because there’s little regulation — and weak regulatory enforcement — of the industry’s emissions, mistreatment of animals, air and water pollution, and labor violations…
It’s why Alex Smith at the technology-focused environmental group the Breakthrough Institute has called meat “the third rail of climate politics.” But he says there may be a way out, and it’s through the meat vortex…
The Good Food Institute (GFI), an organization that advocates for plant-based and cell-cultured meat, has a plan to take us through the vortex. It starts with the National Science Foundation and the USDA awarding $1 billion in R&D grants to researchers — for context, that amount would be equivalent to just 5 percent of the IRA’s agriculture spending…
The organization also has a lot of ideas on how that money could be spent to improve plant-based meat, such as breeding higher protein crops and improving the fat profile of plants. And there’s no shortage of research to conduct around cell-cultured meat: meat made by growing animal cells in bioreactors, which is still in its infancy.
They’d also like to see $1 billion go to funding a network of alternative protein centers at universities, not unlike the land-grant university system that helped build today’s hyperefficient (though incredibly destructive) agriculture industry over decades by funding research and training the agricultural workforce…
Chloe Waterman at the environmental group Friends of the Earth says the government could also wield its multibillion-dollar food budget for good. One place to start is in schools, where USDA policy strongly favors animal products. Schools are mandated to offer cow’s milk, and in 2019, over two-thirds of the $1.3 billion spent on school food through the USDA Foods program went toward animal products, accounting for virtually all of the program’s emissions.
Schools are making those orders, Waterman says, but there are few plant-based options for them to choose from. When schools do want to serve more plant-based food, there are a host of technical, financial, and regulatory barriers in their way… Some cafeterias at federal institutions, like hospitals, prisons, and military bases, have taken recent interest in serving more plant-based food.
Against the enormity of pollution and suffering wrought by American factory farming, money for R&D and more variety in school meals feels woefully insufficient. And it is. But for the foreseeable future, these kinds of “quiet climate policy” measures, as Smith describes them, are probably the best we could expect from Congress. SOURCE…
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