Cows Produce a LOT of Methane! 

Depending on where you live in Ontario, your community may look drastically different from those of other students your age around the province. 

If you have ever taken a drive through the countryside, you will have undoubtedly seen examples of agriculture and farming industry at work in our province. Perhaps you even live on a farm yourself. Horticultural crops (e.g., fruits and vegetables, honey or maple syrup), field crops (e.g., corn, soybeans, wheat, etc.) and livestock farming (e.g., cattle, pigs, sheep, etc.) are a few examples you may have noticed in your travels. All are important to the health and wellbeing of our residents. 

In this activity, we are going to focus specifically on livestock farming. We will investigate the issue of greenhouse gases caused by raising cattle, the primary producers of methane and unwitting culprits in the important issue of global warming.

Cow Farts and Climate Change

How Do Greenhouse Gases Work?

Watch this video to better understand greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect.

One thing shown here is the way in which the greenhouse effect is essential to life on Earth.

This is because greenhouse gases absorb, keep and re-emit radiation (heat). The greenhouse effect is actually a natural process that allows us to survive on Earth. Without these gases in the atmosphere, the Earth would be extremely hot during the day and extremely cold at night, making it impossible to sustain life. 

The energy from the sun gets absorbed by the Earth or reflected and emitted back into space. Some radiation is also absorbed and re-emitted back toward Earth's surface, which in turn heats up our atmosphere.

Anthropogenic Greenhouse Effect

While the natural greenhouse effect makes life possible on Earth, human activity can cause increased amounts of greenhouses gases to be produced in our atmosphere, resulting in a greenhouse effect. We refer to this as the anthropogenic (anthro means human, so this word means human-caused) greenhouse effect, which can be seen in the diagram above.  

The rate at which we are releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is steadily increasing, with the effect of warming the atmosphere faster than ever and causing an overall increase in global temperatures.

Sometimes, the greenhouse effect is used effectively to benefit humans, such as with growing food in a greenhouse. For example, in some parts of Canada, there is only a very short season in which farmers are able to grow crops outdoors. In communities like Inuvik in the Northwest Territories, they are able to produce fresh food only in greenhouses.