DAIRY: A DETRIMENT TO
THE ENVIRONMENT
Dairy production has a huge detrimental effect on the environment, particularly climate change due to emissions of greenhouse gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide.
By and large, methane is the most troubling GHG (green house gas) produced by dairy cattle as it has the ability to trap up to 100 times more heat into the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Over half of the GHGs produced by dairy is methane. With a typical dairy factory farm of 700 cows, it is estimated the cows produce up to 325,500 pounds of methane pumped into the atmosphere every day.
Dairy operations consume large volumes of water to grow feed, water cows, manage manure and process products. Additionally, manure and fertilizer runoff from dairy farms can pollute water resources. When you add up the water used for food, watering the cows and cleaning the facility the average dairy cow uses almost 5,000 gallons of water per day. When you multiply that to account for the 700 cows on a typical dairy factory farm that is 3.4 million gallons of water used EVERY DAY. Accounting for the nine million dairy cows there are in the U.S. that number is astronomical.
It is Estimated That You Could Save 50,033 Gallons of Water a Year by NOT Consuming Dairy!
THE NUMBER OF GALLONS OF WATER USED TO GROW FEED
FOR COWS TO PRODUCE DAIRY:
- 1 cup of yogurt – 35 gallons
- 1 scoop of ice cream – 42 gallons
- 2 slices of cheese – 50 gallons
- 1 cup of greek yogurt – 90 gallons
- 1 stick of butter – 109 gallons
In comparison, it takes only nine gallons of water
to produce one glass of soy milk.
HABITAT
Currently over two-thirds of the world’s agricultural land is used for maintaining livestock, including beef and dairy cows. One-third of the world’s land suffers desertification due, in large part, to deforestation, overgrazing and poor agricultural practices.
Livestock farming is one of the main contributors to soil erosion around the world. Turning forests into pasture or feed crop production areas, overgrazing and soil impaction from cattle’s hooves can lead to extreme loss of topsoil and organic matter that could take decades or centuries to replace.
