A cap on Canadian livestock would reduce emissions. Is it worth it?

Capping greenhouse gas emissions from Canada's cows, pigs, chickens and other farm animals, while bolstering support for plant-based food, could help the country reach its climate goals, a new analysis has found. But experts question whether the approach would encourage factory farming, infuriate farmers and further annoy a cash-strapped public. 

The study, commissioned by animal rights group World Animal Protection, compared the effectiveness of reducing harmful emissions of Canada's carbon tax and clean fuel regulations against a cap on emissions or livestock production. 

Where they’ve been tried in the past, politics and economics made policies like these fail in spectacular fashion.

Farming is responsible for about 12 per cent of Canada's emissions, well over half of which are generated by animals or fertilizers used on feed crops. Livestock counts have remained relatively stable in recent years, except for poultry, which has seen considerable growth.  

Capping emissions is the cheapest and most efficient way for Canada to mitigate the climate impact of farms, followed by a cap on total animals raised. Aggressively bolstering the consumption of plant-based foods, without limiting animal production, was found to be the least effective and most expensive option. 

"We need to reduce our climate emissions. Everyone knows that, and the Canadian agriculture sector is not doing its part," said Lynn Kavanagh, farming campaign manager for World Animal Protection. She cited a recent federal Commissioner of the Environment report that found the government doesn't have a plan to reduce the sector's emissions.   

Capping how much Canada's livestock and dairy sectors can emit and implementing a 50 per cent reduction compared to 2005 levels by 2050 would in practice reduce the number of animals by about half, the research found. It would also push farmers and agribusinesses to invest more in emission-reduction technologies like biodigesters, electric heating and vehicles.

But experts question if the approach is even desirable – or politically feasible. 

In 2022, New Zealand became the first country in the world to propose capping emissions from livestock. The backlash was swift, with some observers linking the policy to the country's political swing to the right. In the Netherlands, a proposal for the government to buy out livestock farmers, as part of an emissions-reduction plan, generated years of protest and fuelled authoritarian conspiracies there and abroad. 

In Canada, a 2022 federal proposal for a voluntary plan to reduce emissions linked to fertilizers led to swift political backlash. Conservatives accused the government of attacking farmers, with conspiracy theorists going even further to falsely claim on social media the proposal was part of an authoritarian plot. (It is not.) 

"It is tricky, it is challenging, and there's going to be probably pushback for sure," Kavanagh acknowledged. "We don't want to leave farmers out of the equation." 

She said the group "would recommend" that any effort to create an agricultural emissions cap be rejoined by a slew of programs to ease the transition cost to farmers. Canada has a suite of programs designed to help farmers reduce emissions, from improving the carbon stored in farmland to adopting more sustainable farm technologies. 

Ryan Katz-Rosene, a political economist at the University of Ottawa and farmer, echoed those concerns. 

"The big red herring here is feasibility," he said, because devising policies to enact this kind of rule would be difficult. There are only a handful of oil and gas producers and facilities in Canada, making it relatively easy to measure their emissions and ensure they don't breach an emissions cap. But Canada has thousands of farms, and devising a strategy to measure and cap their emissions would be technically challenging. 

Another problem is ensuring that rangeland currently devoted to raising cattle wouldn't be used for more emissions-intensive purposes than before, said Darrin Qualman, director of climate crisis policy and action for the National Farmers Union. Cattle ranching can help protect grasslands from being dug up and turned into fields for crops, which themselves can generate greenhouse gas emissions if they are over-fertilized with nitrogen. 

A cap on livestock emissions or production would only work well if rejoined by measures that encourage farmers and ranchers to ensure that land previously used for livestock would be stewarded to sequester carbon in the soil, he explained. 

Katz-Rosene echoed similar concerns, adding that an emissions cap might actually bolster factory farms and feedlots. If the only metric is emissions reductions, raising livestock in feedlots emits fewer harmful greenhouse gases than growing them on pasture because the animals grow faster and live shorter lives. But the approach comes with a host of environmental and animal welfare problems, he said. 

But he warned the biggest hurdle is convincing Canadians – and politicians – that efforts to regulate livestock emissions are worth it. 

"We're in a context where there's so much working against [climate action] in our current political climate that the idea of intentionally hampering the cost of food, or access to meat and animal products – it's so politically fraught," he said