Does rice milk or milk from grain-fed cows emit less methane?

[The Grand Nudger]

From a purely environmental standpoint, oat milk is probably the winner. That's in a vacuum, ofc, lab conditions, not field or local conditions. Add field and local conditions and, as I would, alternative production models - and you'd probably find that you can't determine a best milk™ because the numbers wouldn't hold from place to place.

[Paleophyte]

So, a few days ago, I made a new video about vegetarianism. I won't link to it, as that seems to be against the rules. In the video, I mentioned the methane argument for vegetarianism. However, does anybody here know for sure, does rice milk actually emit less methane than cow's milk? Has there been some actual study about that? I know some studies that show oat milk emits less methane than cow's milk, but I know no such studies about rice milk. I know the production of rice emits some methane, so I think it's a reasonable question whether rice milk or milk from grain-fed cows (that most milk comes from today, which also emits far less methane than milk from grass-fed cows) emits less methane.

This depends entirely on how you produce both types of "milk". There are a variety of different agricultural practices that change the amount of methane produced. The old practice of flooding rice paddies is notoriously bad for producing methane. More modern irrigation techniques can significantly reduce that, along with overall water and nutrient use. And cattle can be fed diets that reduce methane production and kept in methane capturing facilities.

[FlatAssembler]

https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making...ustainable

Nothing about rice milk in that, but the addition of seaweed to feed reducing methane output is surprising. Good article!

Also, rice milk appears to be one of the worst offenders regarding methane emissions (although it’s still better than dairy milk):

https://ideas.ted.com/which-plant-based-...he-planet/



Boru

I don't think it's a high-quality article. It seems to assume that "organic" means "no pesticide", which is dead wrong.

[FlatAssembler]

That... er... doesn't address the question at all.

And you are surprised because...

I am not surprised. I am just a bit disappointed. But it's still an Internet forum, so I was not expecting a lot.

[FlatAssembler]

Rice is the single largest emitter of methane in conventional ag. Yes, more than cattle as a single source, while less than livestock overall. That's just a tiny sliver of the picture, though. Rice is also water hungry and co2 intensive as well. It's more productive than either corn or wheat - has fewer uses, and a narrow land capacity profile.

Rice milk would have worse numbers than rice - processing. As a product, it's likely to have shit numbers with respect to cows milk in a full comparison because a dairy doesn't have the same numbers as a feedlot to begin with and ultimately makes many more products than just the milk, the environmental cost distributed across them.

Are you saying chickens also emit a lot of methane? That's new to me.

Anyway, where are you getting your information from?

[arewethereyet]

Rice is the single largest emitter of methane in conventional ag.  Yes, more than cattle as a single source, while less than livestock overall.  That's just a tiny sliver of the picture, though.  Rice is also water hungry and co2 intensive as well.  It's more productive than either corn or wheat - has fewer uses, and a narrow land capacity profile.

Rice milk would have worse numbers than rice - processing.  As a product, it's likely to have shit numbers with respect to cows milk in a full comparison because a dairy doesn't have the same numbers as a feedlot to begin with and ultimately makes many more products than just the milk, the environmental cost distributed across them.

Are you saying chickens also emit a lot of methane? That's new to me.

Anyway, where are you getting your information from?

Have you not figured out yet that Nudger farms?

[Jackalope]

You'd have to really not be paying attention.

[Silver]

I wasn't aware Nudgie farms. Is it poppy?

[The Grand Nudger]

Are you saying chickens also emit a lot of methane? That's new to me.

Anyway, where are you getting your information from?

OFC they do.  What you've been focusing on is methane from enteric fermentation in the stock, and ruminants like cattle, elk, bison, sheep and deer certainly produce more of that.  I'll give you some envelope numbers for lifetime methane emissions in cattle, pigs, and chickens.  200, 10, .5 respectively.  Then you have to consider density.  1/10/500.  Then...and largely because we've included chickens in this comparison, you have to measure their lives.  Meatbirds are slaughtered at eight weeks, you get, on average, three runs per season.  Pigs, 6 months - so two, or thereabouts.  Cattle, one and a half to two years.  So, from enteric fermentation in the guts of each alone you could assume that an acre of cattle will produce 200lb of methane, and acre of swine will produce 100-200lb of methane, and an acre of poultry will produce 250-750lb of methane..per year  This is determined by putting animals in respiration chambers for some part, or all, of their life cycles.  You'll see why that qualification is important in a minute.  

The majority of the methane released by swine and poultry, however, isn't from enteric fermentation, as large as those numbers may seem.  It's from manure management.  Litter piles and effluent pools.  The latter sets up the same issue as rice patties, btw, just supercharged.  Then...there are..ofc, all sorts of other waste products from each type of op and all of the specific and individual inputs.  Some feeds and some feed producers (and retailers) are better than others, and this is variable by region and the size of the producers wallet.  Ultimately, this is why the method selected has the biggest effect on all byproduct production.  It's also why it's practically impossible to give a set of numbers for each that will hold on every op.  Differences in methods combine with differences in local conditions to wildly skew any of these numbers.  

Just looking at the envelope math you might, for example, ask yourself how cattle emit more methane overall than chickens even though an acre of chickens is easily capable of producing more and much more methane just from respiration than an acre of cattle.  That comes down to season and day length as well as land use and land use capacity.  Basically, cattle and pigs can more easily overwinter so they have a wider geographic range, and they grow to marketable weight slower, so fewer production runs are squeezed in even where local conditions are amenable to all three.  Then, on the accounting end (ie, as a consumer - you) the totals are based on something called dressed weight and dwr - which is different between locations, different between species, different between breeds within species, and different even when all these things are equal between producers.

In general, comparisons between them coming from a point of advocacy make hostile assumptions about the species or breed or producers or regions they wish to see reduced or eliminated, and generous assumptions about the breed or species or producers or regions they wish to see promoted.  In the process, all of these extremely relevant factors are ignored.  This allows us to say that...hypothetically, some versions of producing some crop or some livestock could be better than another, but we shouldn't believe or take that to mean that this is what we'd actually find if we hauled our own asses down to the farm and checked those numbers against the reality of production as is.  

In general, and hypothetically, you'll get the best numbers -specifically with respect to environmental concerns- out of combing all three in an aggressive mob grazing scheme.  The benefits here are largely not in any reduction to the methane from enteric fermentation (you can see an increase on that front) but in doing away with manure storage, the efficiency of land and input use, the reduction of pests and disease, decrease in labor and machine work, and increase in soil health, fertility, water retention, and vegetative mass.  Combined with no till grain and pasture management it's one of the only reliably profitable ecological farming loops - especially at scale.   

(I do grow poppies btw, they're called Jimi Hendrix. We do fish, poultry, mixed veg, herbs, and cut flowers - if they'd hurry up and legalize it I'd probably abandon all of that and grow weed. I certainly -do not- currently grow weed....officer. We're surrounded by tobacco, hay, grain, cattle..and, ofc, thoroughbred race horse nonsense.)

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't think it's a high-quality article. It seems to assume that "organic" means "no pesticide", which is dead wrong.

Ish.  What "organic" means in the us, for example, actually can be reduced to a weird (and wholly disingenuous) "no pesticides" scheme.  It's a set of marketing standards more than anything else. In truth, organic farms use the same and very often more of the same pesticides employed in conventional production.  Conventionals have the benefit of additional allowable pesticides which are more effective, longer lasting, and can be applied more sparingly.  

This was something I spent the first three years of our operation (back in fl) trying to navigate with the customer.  I wanted to provide consistent high quality produce that was environmentally sound and financially advantageous to me and to them.  We went for sustainable over organic. Organic did not fit that bill - but it's increased it's market share since then and customers have (apparently) given up on getting a good deal..so we eventually decided to seek accreditation for our field ops.  The hydro was uncertifiable (but not for any reason other than administrative) until recently. We're looking to move again, and next time I won't bother with organic or sustainable marketing (at least, not at our scale - I'll rethink if I find 500 acres of premo cropland at a reasonable price with a wholesaler nearby, lol). We'll still -do- it, but nowadays it doesn't give you the edge over the supermarket like it did when we started - and I just cannot stand losing crops and livestock because some beady eyed fuck in East Libvillage has a pet cause. One of our biggest money makers has always been agritourism (because flowers)....just imagine how many times I've had to smile patiently and nod in approval as a retiree tells -me- all about farming on the one hour he spends out in my fields a year. We actually had to have a little talk to a lawyer about a particular phrase that never failed to fall from the lips of our customers. "What I love is how you do all this without pesticides and fertilizer". First rule of interacting with customers is you never disagree, but is agreement or assent of any kind legally actionable? Turns out..no. Them saying they love x, and you nodding your head, is just you agreeing that they love an idea, not a legally actionable claim on your part. Wasn't all bad, we once had two busloads of s american strawberry growers out to see a thing we were doing in partnership with the land grant sys and those guys didn't say a word - they were taking notes. If I told them we were grinding up babies to achieve our yields and that pesticide applications inside of rei and chi are a flavor enhancer...they'd have bolded and underlined that part for use back home.

So, you know, keep that in mind when you inevitably suggest, as you've already begun doing, that you have a better grasp on this shit than I do, better than land grant colleges do, better than the fucking usda does.... because you read a pro-plant milk article online. FWIW, I'm absolutely certain that rice milk (just like organics) has some valid and useful application somewhere, for some producers and some consumers. Wherever and whatever that is, it certainly isn't in effect around here or anywhere else I've ever farmed. It would be environmentally and economically disastrous, and yes, even compared to cattle, in much of the worlds productive space. You'd have to be a raving lunatic to tear up The Bluegrass and get rid of the grazers to make a play for terraced rice. I can't imagine why (or even how) dairies in wisconsin could or would be employed for rice. Much of the us is patently unsuitable for rice production of any kind. Which is probably why rice production is limited to a small area down in arkansas and louisiana - where it's a serious ecological concern in it's own right even given those conditions.