Minnesota advocates seek climate rules for large livestock farms

By Grace Kim

Agriculture accounts for about 25% of Minnesota’s greenhouse-gas emissions, according to Jay Eidness, supervising attorney at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, who spoke at a late-October MCEA webinar.

The session, led by MCEA Chief Impact Officer Leigh Currie, focused on industrial agriculture’s climate effects and the policy changes needed in Minnesota. She said political polarization has made change difficult.

Currie said: “In Minnesota today, agriculture is the second biggest climate-polluting sector of our economy. It trails just slightly behind transportation, and it is historically and notoriously hard to regulate.”

The webinar did not identify the inventory year or calculation behind Eidness’s 25% estimate. The share and comparison with electricity generation should be checked against Minnesota’s latest emissions inventory before policymakers rely on them.

Currie said sustainable agricultural practices already exist, but state lawmakers should ensure large-scale operators use them.

Matthew Sheets, a policy organizer for Land Stewardship Project; Eidness; and Laura Fox, a clinical lecturer and research scholar at Yale Law School, joined Currie.

How much has Minnesota’s dairy sector consolidated?

From Morris, Sheets has helped organize against the permit for what he called Minnesota’s largest feedlot, the recently approved Riverview LLP West River Dairy expansion. Environmental groups continue to challenge the project’s future.

The project could become the state’s largest dairy, with around 19,000 head permitted. That figure is a permit ceiling. It is not a current herd count.

When he joined LSP, the organization used 2018 dairy data showing about 5,000 dairies statewide. He said the count now stands at about 1,600, while the dairy cow population remains nearly unchanged.

The comparison uses 2018 figures and a current count without a stated reference date, so the totals should be checked against the same state inventory definition.

Sheets said the shift concentrates livestock and economic power among fewer hands. He also cited major effects on land, residents and the regional economy.

Minnesota’s milk production is increasingly concentrated in fewer herds and businesses.

Which emissions are the speakers targeting?

Eidness said agriculture emits more than the emissions associated with generating all electricity needed to power every home and business in Minnesota.

His accounting includes methane released through livestock digestion, emissions from growing feed crops, and carbon released when farmers clear land or drain peat.

Draining soil exposes carbon-storing ground to oxygen and releases greenhouse gases, Eidness said. Clearing trees for arable land removes their ability to sequester carbon.

He contrasted agriculture’s limited progress with significant transportation emissions declines, attributing the difference to the absence of deliberate reduction measures.

Fox said animal agriculture’s methane is a major contributor and that cutting it offers one of the most effective near-term ways to limit warming. She compared the action to pulling an emergency brake on the climate crisis, while warning that political resistance to measures for large livestock operations remains stiff.

She cited research showing greater accountability for fossil fuels, power plants and transportation systems than for industrial animal agriculture, which she said has largely escaped climate and broader environmental scrutiny.

Without change, Fox said, the world is headed toward 3 degrees Celsius of warming this century. Each additional fraction of a degree raises the risk of extreme heat, flooding, drought and ecosystem collapse, she said.

The proposed targets center on measurable livestock methane and the land carbon released by feed production and expansion.

What rules would close the accountability gap?

Eidness and Fox said Minnesota needs legislatively mandated greenhouse-gas reduction goals and should apply the measurement and control systems already used in other sectors to animal agriculture.

“We can’t effectively regulate pollution that we’re not adequately measuring,” Fox said.

Her proposed reporting would cover emissions from animals and manure, feed production, energy use, other supply-chain activities and land-use changes that eliminate carbon sequestration.

Fox said states must carry that mandate, pointing to California’s goal of cutting methane emissions 40% by 2030. California uses incentives to help producers meet the goal, she said.

The webinar did not estimate compliance costs or effects on input costs, including feed, crop basis or farm margins. Fox instead said states should provide viable economic pathways, including transition resources and incentives tied to state procurement.

The full conversation is available at youtube.com/watch?v=DyFlsxgWZh0.

If Minnesota adopts livestock-specific goals, the next test will be whether producers receive transition resources and incentives rather than compliance demands alone.