Affection of Livestock Farming to Global Environmental Burdens and Greenhouse Effect. In the Case of Cattle.

NISHIGAMI Yasuko, YANAGISAWA Yukio

doi:10.11353/sesj1988.8.129

The number of cattle has increased rapidly according to the increase of the population and the meat's demand. From old time, cattle have eaten grass and crop wastes, offered beef, milk, hides, manure and fuel energy, and worked as beasts of burden. In modern days, overgrazing of cattle has caused range degradation and ranchers have converted much tropical forest to cattle pasture. Especially in the developed countries, livestock producers have adopted feed grain faming in feedlots. Much animal waste from large livestock facilities has polluted rivers and groundwater.We research into global environmental burdens on livestock farming. Moreover we study the extent of cattle's contribution to global emissions of greenhouse gases(GHG). For example there are emissions of methane from rumina and CO₂ from breath. Decrease of CO₂ absorption comes from rangeland degradation and deforestation. N₂O is discharged from fertilizer use on cropland for feed. In the total we estimate 25% in CO₂, 19% in methane and 18%(with uncertainty) in N₂O as contribution of anthropogenic GHG emissions, taking the above vegetative degradation into account. The required menthane's reduction rate to stabilize concentration is 10% to all anthropogenic emission because of short life in troposphere. Therefore we can conclude catte's contribution to methane emission is great. On the other hand, reduction rates of CO₂ and N₂O are required to be more than 60% and 7080% respectively. So we can not solve the problem of the global warming even if cattle farming is stopped in the world.

Affection of Livestock Farming to Global Environmental Burdens and Greenhouse Effect. In the Case of Cattle.

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