Methane (CH4) is a colorless, odorless gas with powerful heat-trapping properties. It accounts for roughly 30 percent of the rise in global temperatures experienced since the industrial revolution. There are many sources of methane, but roughly one-third of all human-induced emissions come from domestic ruminant food animals, especially beef and dairy cattle. These emissions increased by more than half between 1961 and 2018. The animals burp out methane due to a fermentation process in their extra stomach (their rumen), with a single cow in the United States belching out 220 pounds of methane a year, equal to 4,620 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents. This is roughly 40 percent of the annual emissions from an average gasoline-powered vehicle.
This methane threat forces us to reexamine an important climate change assumption. Most emissions of CO2 come from today’s rich countries, but that is not the case for methane from livestock. The rich Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries produce 73 percent of the world’s milk, and the United States is the world’s largest producer of beef, but the Global South is the source of most methane emissions from beef and dairy cattle. As of 2022, according to Food and Agriculture Organization data, 71 percent of all dairy emissions and 77 percent of beef emissions originated in the non-OECD world. South Asia is now the leading regional source of methane from dairy, with 27 percent of the global total, more than either Europe or North America. This is a 147 percent increase compared to 1980, and India by itself accounts for 17 percent of the global total, up from just 8 percent in 1980. For beef, Brazil stands out as the leading methane emitter, responsible for 21 percent of the global total, up from just 12 percent in 1980.
Why the Global South?
The Global South has overtaken the Global North as a livestock methane threat for two reasons. The first is continued population and income growth, which has increased consumer demand for beef and dairy products. The second reason is less obvious but far more important, especially when looking for a remedy. The Global South lags badly in the modernization of its livestock production systems. Too many unimproved breeds of cattle are being fed on low quality pastures. In the Global North over the past half-century livestock producers have gained from scientific animal breeding, improved feeds, and housing systems that bring feed to the animals instead of the other way around. These upgrades reduced production costs and increased producer income, but they also significantly reduced methane emissions per unit of output. The cattle devoted more of the energy they took in to weight gain and milk production, and less to simply staying alive, reducing the quantity of methane emitted relative to total milk and meat production. It also reduced the number of animals needed to satisfy consumer demand.
More Product, Fewer Animals
Cattle herds in the Global South are rapidly expanding to keep up with consumer demand, but they have been shrinking in the Global North. In 1944, the United States was milking 26 million dairy cows. That number has fallen today to only 9 million cows, even as total milk production continued increasing. The OECD countries together still provide 73 percent of global milk production, but they are now home to only 20 percent of the world’s dairy cows. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. methane emissions from enteric fermentation in dairy cattle dropped 26 percent relative to milk output between 1990 and 2022. For beef production, cattle numbers in the United States have declined by one-third since 1975, while enteric methane emissions from beef fell by 32 percent.
These declines in methane emissions from cattle in the Global North have been achieved through improved animal genetics plus a replacement of most pasture feeding with feeds delivered to the animals under controlled conditions. These conditions are far more humane than the concentrated feeding operations used for raising pigs, broiler chickens, and egg-laying hens. Beef cattle in the United States spend their first 6–12 months unconfined outdoors, feeding first on mother’s milk and then pasture. Only later do they enter a feedlot—which is still outdoors—for a final six months of fattening (“finishing”) on high energy feeds. Dairy cows in the United States also live most of their life minimally confined, walking daily from covered dry lots or temperature-controlled buildings to milking parlors.
In the Global South, most cattle are still unimproved by modern breeding and poorly fed on low-quality forage from thin or degraded pastures. Some of these animals receive supplemental feeds, a valuable first step toward higher productivity and lower methane intensity, yet the North-South gap in methane intensity remains wide. For dairy cows in South Asia, enteric emissions per pound of milk in 2015 were nearly four times as high as in North America and western Europe. In sub-Saharan Africa they are 8.7 times as high. In beef production, cattle systems in Latin America and the Caribbean produce roughly 30 percent higher methane emissions per unit of output compared to North America; in sub-Saharan Africa emissions are 60 percent higher; and in South Asia, they are 130 percent higher.
Pastures and the CO2 Connection
Beef and dairy production systems also impact CO2 in several ways. Pasture-based systems remove CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, taking it underground through the roots of the grass. Yet these pasture-based systems also require far more land area compared to growing feed crops like corn and soybeans. This can come at the expense of forests, which sequester far more carbon than grass. Soil carbon sequestration potential partly depends on location. On dry lands in Australia, pasture systems may not diminish opportunities to sequester carbon in forests, because forests cannot be grown, but in humid climates like Brazil, using land for pasture instead of forest brings a significant climate penalty. On the other hand, producing crops for feed entails fossil fuel use and usually adds another greenhouse gas to the atmosphere—nitrous oxide—from fertilizer use. When we consider all of these factors together, is there still a climate-protecting benefit from adopting modern cattle feeding methods?
The answer is yes. A 2023 study by Blaustein-Rejto, et al., concluded that the total carbon footprint of pasture-finished beef production—dominant in the Global South—averages 42 percent higher than for grain-finished systems dominant in Global North countries. This study concluded, “pasture-finished systems have a substantially larger carbon footprint than grain-finished systems, and there is a strong positive relationship between land use intensity and carbon footprint.” A 2017 study in Food Climate Research found that soil carbon sequestration from grazing can only offset 20–60 percent of annual ruminant emissions from grazing.
Brazil’s reliance on pastured beef production has led to the cutting and burning of more trees at the forest margin, releasing significant quantities of CO2. In the Brazilian Amazon between 1985 and 2020, over 31 billion tons of CO2 equivalent was emitted into the atmosphere from deforestation activities. Only 10 percent of the area cleared for agriculture was used for crop production; the rest went to low-productivity cattle ranching. Total pasture area in the Amazon increased from 13.7 million hectares in 1985 to 57.7 million hectares by 2022.
Misguided Advocacy
Given the forest protection and methane-reducing benefits that would come from modernizing livestock systems in the Global South, it is discouraging to see so many civil society organizations campaigning against such a move. One recent example is an open letter to “the private banking sector” signed by 105 advocacy organizations in September 2024, urgently calling on global private banks to “address their role in financing industrial livestock production.” The letter said this funding “accelerates climate change, drives catastrophic biodiversity loss, exacerbates food insecurity, and damages animal welfare and human rights.” The letter ended by suggesting the best way to bring down emissions was to “reduce the number of animals in global supply chains.” Animal numbers are falling today in the Global North, as noted above, but this is thanks to modern production systems.
Climate-concerned critics also call for reductions in beef and dairy consumption on human health grounds, mostly in the Global North. In 2019, an international EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, and Health conceded that North America’s red meat consumption was already declining, but asserted it would have to fall by an additional 84 percent to remain within “planetary health” boundaries, and Europeans would have to cut their red meat consumption by 77 percent. How to make this happen was not addressed. It might be attempted through taxes, regulations, and government health warnings, the policy tools that reduced cigarette smoking, but the tobacco analogy is badly flawed. Unlike cigarette smoking, moderate beef and dairy consumption can actually be good for human health. Also, a majority of adults in the Global North never smoked cigarettes, but consumption of beef and dairy products remains widespread. Politicians frequently tax “sinful” consumer products, but they have never included meat or milk. Climate-linked taxes on beef and dairy producers are becoming more thinkable in Europe, but only at a low level—to raise revenue—not at a level high enough to reduce consumption. In June 2024, Denmark passed a $17 per ton tax on livestock emissions (about $100 per cow per year), but implementation was postponed until 2030.
Beef and dairy consumption in the Global North is no longer increasing because a saturation level for consumer demand has already been met. By contrast, consumer demand in the Global South is far from being met. Income elasticities of demand for beef in South Asia and Africa remain high, ranging from 0.7–0.8, meaning every 1 percent increase in income will lead to an almost equivalent 0.7–0.8 percent increase in consumer demand. Market models based on regional elasticities of demand for red meat, poultry, dairy milk, and eggs suggest global demand could increase by 14 percent per person between 2020 and 2050. When projected population growth is added to the calculation, the demand increase could be 38 percent in total, with a 49 percent increase in South Asia and 55 percent in sub-Saharan Africa. This will make a government effort to restrict consumer access to animal products a difficult project in the Global South, even for authoritarian states. In 2016 China’s health ministry published new dietary guidelines recommending a 50 percent cut in per capita meat consumption, but consumers paid little attention and per capita beef consumption continued to increase in the years that followed.
Feed Additives?
Some who are reluctant to modernize livestock systems in the Global South might suggest protecting the climate by giving the animals methane-reducing feed additives, such as red seaweed, or a new product named Bovaer, recently patented by the Swiss firm DSM-Firmenich. This company has claimed that only one-fourth teaspoon of Bovaer added to a cow’s daily feed ration can reduce methane emissions from dairy cattle by 30 percent on average, and for beef cattle by as much as 45 percent. The catch is that feed additive strategies can only be adopted in controlled feeding systems. This becomes just one more reason to move away from pastured cattle systems in the Global South.
Robert Paarlberg is senior associate (non-resident) of the Global Food and Water Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
