News

FAO: Dairy accounts for 4% of GHG emissions

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has issued a new report that claims the dairy sector accounts for around four percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

That figure includes emissions associated with the production, processing and transportation of milk products, as well as emissions related to meat produced from animals originating from the dairy system.  If meat production is excluded, the figure drops to two-point-seven percent.

The FAO report covers all milk production systems, from nomadic herds to intensified dairy operations.  It includes all inputs used to produce milk, including the fertilizer and chemicals used to grow crops on dairy farms. 

The U.N.’s credibility on the subject of climate change has recently been called into question. Earlier this year, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admitted it was wrong in claiming the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 25 years.  And in March, one of the authors of a controversial 2006 U.N. report on livestock production and greenhouse gases admitted that the report was exaggerated.  That report claimed that livestock production contributed 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases.