In swine production, maximizing growth rate while minimizing inputs (efficiency) is a top aim of most farmers. This helps an operation become more profitable, but it also has positive environmental benefits in that the amount of water, feed, or energy needed to produce each pound of pork is reduced. This results in fewer greenhouse gases emitted per pound of pork. …
What Is an Environmental Foot Print? (Ecological Footprint)
The Cambridge dictionary defines environmental footprint as:
the effect that a person, company, activity, etc. has on the environment, for example the amount of natural resources that they use and the amount of harmful gases that they produce
Also referred to as an ecological footprint, this is a measure that attempts to consider multiple impacts of an activity rather than …
Carbon Footprint, Life Cycle Assessment and the Pork Industry
Animal agriculture in the U.S. contributes approximately 3.5% of all man-made greenhouse gases (GHGs). If you look at pork production, it accounts for just 0.34% of all emissions. (Source: U.S. EPA Greenhouse Gas Inventory released April, 2015).
When you total up all the GHG emissions from a particular activity or process, it is called a carbon footprint. The procedure used …
Do We Know the Carbon Footprint of the Pork Industry?
A carbon footprint is a total of all the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from a process or industry. A life cycle assessment (LCA) is the process used to figure out what GHG emissions will be included in the footprint. More technically, it is systematic way of looking at a product’s complete life cycle and calculating a “footprint”. In addition to …
Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Livestock & Poultry
Agriculture is both a source and sink for greenhouse gases (GHG). A source is a net contribution to the atmosphere, while a sink is a net withdrawal of greenhouse gases. In the United States, agriculture is a relatively small contributor, with approximately 8% of the total greenhouse gas emissions, as seen below. Most agricultural emissions originate from soil management, enteric …