The Biopolitics of Cattle Methane Emissions Reduction: Governing Life in a Time of Climate Change

McGregor, Andrew; Rickards, Lauren; Houston, Donna; Goodman, Michael K.; Bojovic, Milena

doi:10.1111/anti.12714

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Finally, as McGregor et al (2021) argue in their analysis of the biopolitics of cattle methane emissions reduction, this probiotic biopolitics also affirms an individualised 'green governmentality' centred on the consumer-citizen, who must be engaged and empowered to make rational, ecological decisions, and economically secure enough to act on them. This is also the case with no-cow Big Veganism (Sexton et al, 2022).…”

Section: A Probiotic Model Of Bovine Biopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Green rebranding: Regenerative agriculture, future‐pasts, and the naturalisation of livestock

Cusworth

Lorimer

Brice

et al. 2022

Trans Inst British Geog

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Anxieties around the relationship between livestock agriculture and the environmental crisis are driving sustained discussions about the place of beef and dairy farming in a sustainable food system. Proposed solutions range from ‘clean‐cow’ sustainable intensification to ‘no‐cow’, animal free futures, both of which encourage a disruptive break with past practice. This paper reviews the alternative proposition of regenerative agriculture that naturalises beef and dairy production by invoking the past to justify future, nature‐based solutions. Drawing on fieldwork in the UK, it first introduces two of the most prominent strands to this green rebranding of cattle: the naturalisation of ruminant methane emissions and the optimisation of soil carbon sequestration via the use of ruminant grazing animals. Subsequent thematic analysis outlines the three political strategies of post‐pastoral storytelling, political ecological baselining and a probiotic model of bovine biopolitics that perform this naturalisation. The conclusion assesses the potential and the risks of this approach to grounding the geographies and the temporalities of agricultural transition in the Anthropocene: an epoch in which time is out of joint and natures are multiple and non‐analogue, such that they provide slippery and contested grounds for political solutions.

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Section: A Probiotic Model Of Bovine Biopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Green rebranding: Regenerative agriculture, future‐pasts, and the naturalisation of livestock

Cusworth

Lorimer

Brice

et al. 2022

Trans Inst British Geog

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“…The livestock industry was already smarting from what it believes to be a sustained and inaccurate representation of its emissions profile. As McGregor et al (2021) note, a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Livestock’s Long Shadow ( FAO, 2006 ) features heavily in the story the sector tells of this misrepresentation. The report equated emissions from the livestock and transport sectors – inconsistently using a full life-cycle analysis to calculate livestock emissions and only tailpipe emissions for the transport sector.…”

Section: Reflexive Performativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

When you wish upon a (GWP) star: Environmental governance and the reflexive performativity of global warming metrics

et al. 2022

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The metrics used in environmental management are performative. That is, the tools deployed to classify and measure the natural world interact with the things they were designed to observe. The idea of performativity also captures the way these interactions shape or distort the governance activities that metrics are used to inform. The performativity of metrics reveals how mundane practices of measurement and auditing are inscribed with substantial power. This has proven particularly true for the global warming metrics, like GWP100, that are central to the management of anthropogenic climate change. Greenhouse gases are materially heterogenous, and the metrics used to commensurate their various warming impacts influence the distribution of both culpability and capital in climate policy and markets. The publication of a new warming metric, GWP* (or GWP Star), has generated a modest scientific controversy, as a diverse cast of stakeholders recognize this performativity seek to influence the metrological regime under which they live. We analyse this controversy, particularly as it unfolded in the fractious discourse around sustainable food and farming, to develop the concept of reflexive performativity: where actors are anticipatory and strategic in their engagement with the metrics that are used to govern their lives. We situate this idea in relation to, and in tentative evidential support of, the concept of reflexive modernization.

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“…Here we are interested in identifying the megatrends that are reshaping these relations within dairy industries and the ramifications for the human and non-human actors within it. This requires recognising cattle as "lively" more-than-human actors (Collard and Dempsey 2013;Holloway and Bear 2017;Bear and Holloway 2019;Gillespie and Collard 2015;Gillespie 2021) who shape and are shaped by these trends and highlighting the intended and unintended outcomes of dairy industries at different scales (for example, see McGregor et al 2021). It also requires a level of abstraction, as we cannot do justice to the in-depth ethnographic work on dairying, and instead draw upon selected case study research to help think through some of the impacts of megatrends for socioecological communities.…”

Section: Socioecological Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research into enteric fermentation, the metabolic process that creates methane in cattle rumen, has targeted the digestive system of cattle to limit the production of methane. Despite thirty years of experiments however, improvements have been minimal and inconsequential when compared with the increasing size of the global herd (McGregor et al 2021). Lively cattle bodies have resisted technological control.…”

Section: Growing Awareness Of the Ecological Impacts Of Dairymentioning

confidence: 99%

A review of megatrends in the global dairy sector: what are the socioecological implications?

Bojovic

McGregor

2022

Agric Hum Values

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The global dairy industry is undergoing a period of expansion and consolidation, alongside heightened critique and competition from non-dairy alternatives. This review identifies four key megatrends within the global dairy sector, focusing in on the socioecological challenges associated with each. The megatrends were identified through a literature review of recent publications within the dairy science and social science fields, as well as a review of grey literature from intergovernmental and institutional reports. Key findings include geographical range shifts in production and consumption of dairy milk from the Global North to the Global South; intensification of production agendas that strive for mechanisation, standardisation, and corporatisation of the sector; increasing awareness of the ecological impacts of intensive dairying; and finally, disruptions to the sector driven by plant-based milks and, potentially, synthetic milks. We identify under-researched socioecological challenges associated with each of these trends. Although dairy milk may be homogenous in its final form, the sector remains heterogenous in its impacts across spaces, places, and scales, as increasingly intensive dairying systems fundamentally reshape human–cattle relations. The combined impacts of these trends bring into question the mythologies of milk and the assumed desirability of ever-expanding dairy industries. Our review finds that the future of dairy is not clear nor uncontroversial and that more attention needs to be directed to maximising and broadening the social benefits of the dairy and dairy alternatives, minimising the human and non-human costs, and limiting contributions to global climate change.

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The Biopolitics of Cattle Methane Emissions Reduction: Governing Life in a Time of Climate Change

Cited by 14 publications

References 51 publications

Green rebranding: Regenerative agriculture, future‐pasts, and the naturalisation of livestock

Green rebranding: Regenerative agriculture, future‐pasts, and the naturalisation of livestock

When you wish upon a (GWP) star: Environmental governance and the reflexive performativity of global warming metrics

A review of megatrends in the global dairy sector: what are the socioecological implications?

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