Here's another example of the sort of muddle minded nonsense discussed in Fish Wrap. this time from the CGIAR Climate Exchange: Livestock Crucial for Coping with Climate Change

A major global asset, livestock systems occupy 45 percent of the earth’s surface, employ at least 1.3 billion people, and are valued at about US$1.4 trillion. They provide 17 percent of the calories and a third of the protein we consume. . .

These statistics, however, hide stark regional differences in how livestock are raised. In poor countries, livestock are raised primarily on small farms or herded by pastoralists. Throughout their (usually long) natural lives, they survive largely on grass and other vegetation, including the stalks, leaves and other “wastes” that remain after food crops have been been harvested.

In contrast, livestock in wealthy countries are mostly “factory-farmed.” Using industrial processes, farmers quickly fatten the animals, which in their short lives consume vast quantities of maize and other grains – food that might instead have fed people.

Livestock contribute about 18 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity. In Africa, where livestock have proven to be a crucial coping mechanism for poor people trying to survive in difficult environmental conditions, all of the continent’s ruminants combined account for only 3 percent of the total global methane emissions.

The emissions cited in that nonsensical UN report are not a result of livestock, they are the result of field crops that are fed to livestock. If you feed those crops to people instead then the emissions will be as large or larger but the people will have poorer diets, a loss of 1/3 the protein that they consume replaced with empty calories from grain that are already too abundant, to the detriment of human health.

Most farmers in developing countries practice either a mix of crop and livestock farming or pastoral production on rangelands. These smallholders and herders leave relatively tiny environmental footprints. Even so, investments that increase their efficiency and productivity in breeding and feeding their animals could remove millions of tons of methane and carbon emissions from the atmosphere.

Trillions of tons of methane come from leaking natural gas pipelines and leaking coal mines. The emissions that could be avoided in livestock operations are chump change compared to the real problems of fossil fuels, but would cost as much to achieve. It's just easier to bad mouth and bully farmers than fuel companies, especially since the majority of them on a world wide basis are nationalized. The numbers can be fudged too when oppressing farmers since there will be no actual climate benefit. It's all for political show.

Scientists believe that climate change will be particularly harmful to producers of livestock and other food in Africa. The productivity of rainfed cropping systems is likely to drop, in some areas dramatically; water shortages will become more common; and important human, livestock and crop diseases will probably spread to new regions and become more severe.

More sensible and modern agronomic methods produce many times more food with the same land and water as subsistence farmers do with their medieval methods. If there is expected to be less water available then it is even more important to do smarter farming.

When negotiators meet at Copenhagen in December to finalize the global climate pact, they must pay attention to the many small farmers and herders who are already feeding most of the world’s poor. African negotiators in particular need to champion small-scale animal agriculture, which remains the backbone of their nations’ economies.

Copenhagen is a farce. Political rent seeking by the elites of impoverished nations won't do squat about either the climate or the hungry hordes back home. If any of these intellectually bankrupt wankers had an ethical bone in their bodies they would be moving mountains to improve those medieval agronomic systems rather than using them as a bargaining chip.