Sustainable Dairying, India Style
(Meanest Indian image. Note the dung patties drying on the wall.)
Because of religious restrictions, cattle in India are raised primarily for dairy, a far more efficient use of cows than meat. But because everything is so scarce in India, dairy production doesn't look much like it does here. Most often, a family keeps a cow, milks it daily, and perhaps sells some of that milk (or the cheese made from it) to their neighbors. This creates certain environmental benefits compared with industrial dairying.
Dairy cows in the U.S. are typically kept in confined areas, and fed hay and grain that is grown on dedicated cropland and trucked in from some distance. Feed production and trucking both have an environmental cost. Cows in India, in contrast, wander the streets and eat garbage. Thus, India uses virtually no land area for feed production— cows eat waste food and vegetable matter that would otherwise decompose in garbage heaps, creating methane. Yes, it creates methane in a cow's stomach, too— but they get milk as a byproduct instead of just trash.
Manure in the U.S. is typically slurried by large dairy operations, where it generates methane. Smaller dairies are more likely to compost, which creates CO2 instead, a better environmental choice. But in India, manure is made into cakes, typically dried is the sun, and sold as fuel. Yes, it creates CO2 when burned— but it offsets wood or fossil fuel that would otherwise be used for heat and cooking.
Globalization is pressuring India to grow commercial livestock feed (much of which it exports to other livestock producing nations), and in some areas local production is giving way to industrialization, along with its inherent environmental costs. But the traditional Indian approach to dairying is about as environmentally friendly as it is possible to get. And it's low tech.
you've got to defeat the WorldBank, IMF, and the globalists.
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They're certainly counterproductive in a lot of ways. Yet as climate change measures get implemented, globalization will become less prevalent.
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yes. the only sensible solution are traditional american tariffs.
The only hope for developing countries are also traditional tariffs and trade regulation.
we go to war over oil, not how much smoke china produces stocking our retailers.
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