Returning to progress on the hypothesis that increased prevalence of CO2 in the atmosphere leads to the reduction of useful nutrients in food, Harvest Public Media (via NPR) has a report on the possible impact it’s having on one of our favorite American foods – beef:
“Somewhere on the order of 50,000 cow pies got shipped to Texas for this study,” says [researcher Joe] Craine, who co-owns Boulder, Colorado-based Jonah Ventures.
What he’s found is a trend in the nutritional quality of grasses that grass-fed cattle (and young cattle destined for grain-heavy feedlots) are eating. Since the mid-90s, levels of crude protein in the plants, which cattle need to grow, have dropped by nearly 20 percent.
“If we were still back at the forage quality that we would’ve had 25 years ago, no less 100 years ago, our animals would be gaining a lot more weight,” Craine says.
Craine thinks part of the problem may be related to moving cattle to feedlots. When cattle are taken from the prairie, their manure, which delivers nutrients into the soil, is removed.
But he has a sneaking suspicion that rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are contributing as well. Increased CO2 levels have been linked to fewer nutrients in plants like rice, wheat and potatoes.
And this may break public support for spewers of CO2:
“Pretty soon you’re at the point where the protein concentrations are too low for too long a period for the animals to gain any weight,” Craine says.
Seeing as this is focused on grass-fed beef, which is only a small part of the total beef market, perhaps I hyperbolize when it comes to the impact on public attitudes towards CO2 production. Still, it’s another chip from the boulder of public opinion – and beef is important to the American psyche.
And that’s not nearly as important as the question of the overall impact of increased CO2 on our food system. If it’s causing us to pack on the pounds, increase diabetes, stress our overloaded health system – well, I suppose the deniers can encompass those topics as well. But the basic fact that CO2 levels are rising is undeniable – it’s just a matter of measurement – and then the argument is whether the plants are actually changing their nutritional content due to the change in gas composition of our atmosphere.
I wonder which institution is out front with a set of greenhouses, each with an unique gas composition in which CO2 is varied, and getting ready to measure the nutritional value of each crop grown? Probably no one, but I predict that as more of these results come in, someone’s going to sit down and do it. And then we’ll see more studies on how just such changes to the food supply affect our health.
And then the frantic denials and stony-faced pursuit of profits will be just like the nightmarish tobacco industry dishonorable debacle.
BTW, just how IS that CO2 measurement from Mauna Loa doing? Hmmmmm. Looks like it’s still tooling right along – upwards trend.
