Farmers struggle to deal with the effects of climate change

It’s extraordinarily potent, flammable, and dangerous. It’s a precursor to toxic pollutants, a contributor to crop and livestock losses, a cause of economic deficits by fueling heat waves and — for the pinnacle — its lifespan is around 12 years.
It’s also a few trillion times smaller than you.

Methane, made from one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms, is the second-most prominent pollutant, right behind CO2 — yet 80 times stronger than the latter greenhouse gas.
“Greenhouse gasses help keep the temperature on earth hospitable for life,” Carmella Whaley, Upper School Biology and Environmental Science teacher, said. “But too much methane, or other greenhouse gasses, can cause the sun’s rays to bounce around too much in our atmosphere, leading to an overall heating of the planet.” But what’s producing all this methane?

Agriculture, according to the Climate & Clean Air Coalition, is responsible for 40% of all methane emissions, with fossil fuels coming in at a close 35%.
“Plant farming also releases a lot of greenhouse gasses,” Ilsa Lemke, a MA senior and aspiring plant farmer, said. “and specifically with the use of the machines that release fossil fuels and carbon dioxide into the air.”
But how can a cow, or a plant, for that matter, cause this much damage? Well. Cows, and some of their other livestock counterparts (buffalo, sheep, cattle, camels), have a step in the digestive process called enteric fermentation. This term is exactly what it sounds like — the digestive tract decomposes and ferments the food, simultaneously creating methane. This methane produced in the excrementation process comes from billions of livestock everyday. And with westernization spreading and therefore more meat, and more plant-based foods demanded, agriculture, coupled with fossil fuels, are causing methane gasses and subsequently the Earth’s temperature to rise rapidly. According to the Global Methane Assessment, a study by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), reducing methane emissions by 45 percent would possibly prevent 260,000 premature deaths, 775,000 asthma-related hospital visits, 73 billion hours of lost labour from extreme heat, and 25 million tonnes of crop losses annually.
Not only does methane have air-related casualties, its groundwork is additionally devastating. Methane, released in manure, which is often recycled to fertilizer, is reused in an initially thoughtful way — by getting rid of the methane by recycling the manure into fertilizer.
“One of the biggest fertilizers uses nitrogen,” Lemke said, “Which is good for the plants, and helps us provide enough food for the world. Without using it, half of the world’s population would not be alive.”

However, fertilizer runoff into water sources can be equally damaging by affecting water quality.
“That causes that body of water to not be hospitable for other aquatic life,” Whaley said. And it’s not just the methane in the fertilizer. “I know that a high nitrogen or high phosphorus fertilizer that would run off could cause an over abundance of things like algae in the water, and then the overabundance of algae taking in sunlight and C02 from the water can then grow too much and consume all the oxygen in the water.”

Additionally, fertilizer can damage soil makeup, which can hurt creatures underground, too.
“So certainly, there are organisms that can encounter those chemicals,” Whaley said, “that are not in the proper natural abundance that they’re acclimated to, so that could harm wildlife for microbial life in the soil in that way.”
So, cows and their other livestock counterparts aren’t just contributing to a methane problem — they’re adding to the potential destructiveness of fertilizer. And, with the growing demand for meat from various sources around the world, the more cows are needed. And the more cows are needed, the more manure is produced. And the more manure is produced, the more methane and potentially harmful fertilizer are created.

So — methane. It has devastating implications for the future of our environment; air and ground related, and is continuing to increase daily.
But how does that affect the farmers involved? Well, if farmers want to help limit greenhouse gas emissions, they’ll have to change up their routine.
“Unfortunately, for no matter what type of farming, the practices that are being used — whether in dairy farming or in plant farming — without those practices a lot of people would be starving,” Lemke said.
Additionally, changing up a farmers’ job description isn’t exactly easy.
“Switching to those practices is incredibly expensive,” Lemke said, “and because of how volatile the market is, it’s just really hard for them to switch.”

Changing a farmers’ technique may involve a change in machinery to digest and process the manure differently, or providing a different feed for the various livestock — both of which being very expensive.
“I’ve heard about different diets to give cows that can help mitigate the amount of methane that they’re releasing through their digestion,” Whaley said. “I think you would start there, right with diet, because it just seems like what goes in is going to come out.”
So, yes — there are ways. But changing the farming processes would involve engineering, research, funding, and strong community support. Few people are willing to try; but luckily, Lemke is one of them.
“So hopefully, in my aspirational career,” Lemke said, “I can take methods that are being developed and make them cheaper for farmers to implement.”