The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FOA) wants a global livestock tax to reduce the contribution their flatulence makes to greenhouse gas emissions reports Rural News. The FAO says urgent investments, major agricultural research efforts and robust governance are required to ensure the world's livestock sector responds to a growing demand for animal products and at the same time contributes to poverty reduction, food security, environmental sustainability and human health. "The sector is consuming a large share of the world's resources and is contributing a significant portion of global greenhouse gases emissions," the FAO's State of Food and Agriculture report says. A recent article in TIME magazine described how producing grass-fed beef might save the planet. It reinforces what many farmers here and in Australia having been trying to tell our respective Government authorities for the past two years "“ that grazing meat animals on pasture can cause the sequestration of significant amounts of atmospheric carbon in topsoil, whereas feedlot feeding results in carbon loss reports Rural News. I hope the politicians and bureaucrats in Wellington read the article because they seem to have a mental block when it comes to CO2 and farming in this country. Despite some very good indications that careful pasture management locks away carbon, reduces methane production and more than offsets greenhouse gas losses from farming operations, they base their judgements on old data and are not interested in funding any experimentation to find out what is really happening.
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