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Livestock And Sustainable Food Systems | Earth Wise

February 10, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Animal-based agriculture has endured a great deal of criticism with regard to its contributions to climate change and its other environmental impacts. But its contributions to a sustainable food system are by no means all bad. In fact, livestock play important roles in sustainable, regenerative agro-food systems.

Animals’ natural biological processes enable them to consume plant and food residues that are either indigestible by humans, unpalatable to people, or are no longer sellable for various reasons, all referred to as IUUB biomass. There are many examples.

One dairy farm receives daily deliveries of apple waste from a processing facility that supplies apple slices for school lunches. Another local dairy gets three truckloads of vegetable and fruit discards, along with expired bread products, each week. No longer useful for consumers, these foodstuffs become feed for cattle rather than going to a landfill. Even the booming market for plant-based foods like artificial meat for consumers has generated a surge of processing byproducts that can be consumed by livestock.

On a national scale, livestock are consuming millions of pounds of otherwise unusable IUUB created in the production of products like soybean and canola oils, orange juice, ethanol, and more.

While the livestock industry needs to keep working to minimize its environmental impact and there are many reasons to eat less meat, livestock farming is an integral part of our agro-food systems. Farmers are embracing techniques to produce meat, milk and eggs as efficiently and sustainably as possible, minimizing agriculture’s climate-contributing footprint in the process.

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Amazing Cows Hold Promise in Pioneering Sustainable Food Systems

Photo, posted May 11, 2019, courtesy of Theo Stikkelman via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Cities And Monarch Butterflies

August 13, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Monarchs are some of the most well-known butterflies in the U.S. It is well-known that populations of the iconic orange-and-black butterflies have been in a steep decline for the last 20 years. In fact, the Monarch population has declined by 80% over that period.

Milkweed, the only plant that Monarchs can lay their eggs on, continues to disappear across the United States and with it, the butterflies can disappear too.

Two new studies published in the journal Frontiers of Ecology and Evolution show that one of the most important things that can be done to save the Monarchs is to plant milkweed in cities.

We tend to think of cities as being the enemy of nature. But metropolitan areas actually matter for wildlife conservation and that is especially true for pollinators like butterflies that can actually survive with very small patches of habitat.

The new study estimates the amount of habitat in cities that is available to Monarchs and other pollinators and how much more can potentially be added. It looked at cities from the Monarch’s point of view by identifying the best places and most effective ways to engage land owners to transform low-quality green space – such as lawns – into high-quality homes for butterflies and other wildlife.

Just because urban dwellers can plant milkweed doesn’t always mean that they will. There has to be a public perception that milkweed and other native flowers are acceptable and beautiful elements in home landscaping. It will require some shifting of societal norms of what is desirable in neighborhood gardens in order for cities to be able to do their part in protecting butterflies and other species struggling in the modern world.

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