Not everyone is on board with these initiatives, however. For one thing, it can be difficult for smaller farmers to take advantage of them. The methane digester at Savage View Farm isn’t cost-effective for dairy herds with fewer than about 200 cows, for example.
Also, scientists worry that the climate benefits are overstated, and that further subsidizing farms — especially those with methane-producing livestock — might actually increase the greenhouse gases coming from the sector overall.
“Farming in general, especially if it’s meat and dairy, has higher emissions than it sequesters,” said Matthew Hayek, an assistant professor at the New York University department of environmental studies. “The more money you put into agriculture, the more agriculture that’s going to happen.”
That middle.one is the big one.
We’re throwing billions to corpo farms for stuff that we legitimately don’t even know will work to help fight climate change, but throwing the money at it is going to grow an unsustainable industry that cause climate change…
And since it provides more benefits to large operations, it’s just going to let them expand more and buy out the small farms they claim to be trying to help.
This is terrible policy if you actually think about it.
I’m happy the article managed to include it even tho it’s buried at the end where some people might not get to.
Is it really green to regulate local farms into non-existence and then just import food from countries with no environmental regulations?
That’s not what is happening though; the US is a massive net calorie exporter.
And yet industrial farms still need to rely on literal modern day slavery.
“need” is a bit of a weasel word; they profit more when they do that.
