Hey, this is Climate to Action, a CSU San Marcos student podcast focused on climate action,
indigenous knowledge, and climate justice.
I'm Azaria.
And I'm Anali.
Before we begin, we'd like to acknowledge that CSUSM is located on the traditional territory
of the Luceno-Payom Covicham people.
The university and surrounding areas are still home to the six federally recognized bands
of La Jolla, Pala, Pauma, Pechanga, Rincon, and Sobova-Luceno-Poyom-Covicham people.
And this land remains the shared space among the Cupeno, Cumiay, and E-Pai peoples.
So again, welcome to Climate to Action.
And that today's episode is focused on the effects of factory farming on global warming.
We've invited Rowdy Keeler, senior manager of education outreach with New Roots Institute
to talk with us.
Rowdy, thank you for being here with us today.
Oh my gosh, the pleasure is all mine.
Yay!
Rowdy, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your area of work?
Yeah, my name's Rowdy.
That's my real name before anybody starts thinking that I made it up for funsies because
I certainly did not do that.
I'm from the great state of Ohio, the birthplace of aviation, and I've been in this movement
to shine a big light on factory farming for about eight, nine years now.
Yeah, New Roots Institute, we do four things.
We educate, recruit, train, and place the next generation of leaders in the movement
to end this industry and reform our food system.
And so in addition to going to the classroom around San Diego County, I also get to oversee
and help the other educators that we have strategically placed around the country.
So that's a brief snippet of who I am and what we do.
That's amazing.
Why are you so passionate about educating as many people as you can about the truth
on factory farming?
Well, it's a great question.
And one of the primary reasons is that it touches on so many different issues.
And all of us humans were very multifaceted, multi-layered, like onion, some would say.
We care about a lot of different things.
Stop trying to make funny jokes.
They're funny.
Yeah.
I feel like that's just a straight rip off from Shrek too.
Anyways, we're multifaceted human beings.
We care about different issues.
And factory farming touches on so many of them.
So many social issues, environmental issues, health issues, ethical, philosophical issues,
factory farming is connected to them all.
And so as I decided, you know, my values as a human and how I wanted to engage with this
world, as I learned more about factory farming and animal agriculture, it became clear this
is where I wanted to focus my time and energy.
And yeah, it's been a wild ride thus far and an exciting time to be part of this movement,
for sure.
Really?
That's quite amazing.
So what is factory farming?
Large scale animal agriculture.
So they also call them concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs, sometimes called
industrialized animal agriculture.
We would argue it's the foundation of our food system, which we can talk about in a
little bit.
So it's really massive animal feeding operations.
And typically what kind of animals are raised in factory farms and for what products?
Yeah, there's a lot of variety depending on what part of the world that you're in.
So our expertise is really in the States.
And so we bring in some global data and we know some things about how other countries
factory farm, but we focus on factory farming for food products primarily in the United
States and North America.
So that's cows, chickens, pigs, ducks, lamb and sheep, rabbits.
I hope I don't forget anyone.
Gosh, that's going to make me look bad.
Those are the primary species that most people are familiar with.
And then what are some major concerns associated with factory farming practices?
Like we were kind of talking about earlier, there's so many social issues connected to
it at Cal State San Marcos.
I've had the pleasure of coming to talk to the gender studies course several times.
And there are definitely some gender issues as far as like, like it's a little more philosophical
and just food oriented, more so than just factory farming.
But there are some other connections to factory farming specifically.
So but the like the three or four main ones that folks focus on are animal welfare and
animal ethics, how the animals are actually treated in these facilities.
The workers who's working in these facilities, what demographics, how they're treated, the
impacts on our planet and the impacts on our health when we eat a lot of factory farm products.
So those are probably the four primary categories.
Yeah, I can see how it can intersect into all of those.
Yeah.
They start, they start crossing over, they start intersecting and it can be overwhelming
at times, but it can also be really empowering and fun to start drawing those connections.
Transitioning into the environmental impacts.
We've read that more than 780,000 square kilometers of land have been lost to deforestation
in the last 30 years, which has caused a loss of 2000 species.
How is this tied to factory farming?
That's a question.
And I am so curious how many of your listeners, how large of a swath of land that's 780,000
square kilometers.
Yeah, it sounds very huge.
Well, it's also using the metric system, which none of us know how to use in the United States.
Exactly.
And I know what style you're referencing and that's from Brazil specifically, or the
Amazon rainforest specifically, which is one of the primary regions of concern associated
with factory farming because Brazil is such a major producer of beef and America is one
of the major importers of that beef.
Brazil also produces a lot of soybeans on that land.
So to direct connection, there's a big corporation in Brazil called JBS.
They are a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation.
And for decades, the government in Brazil has been very friendly to this corporation
and others, you know, other companies there, but JBS is the primary culprit.
And the government for a long time has been very friendly with them because JBS makes
a lot of money for the country of Brazil.
And so they've been encouraged sometimes subtly and secretly and sometimes not so much to
get rid of the rainforest to make more room for cows because cows make more money, cows
make more money.
So there's a lot of good video and like hard-hitting investigative pieces about the deforestation
in the Amazon.
There are other industries that do it too, but the data that we cite shows that around
80% of the deforestation over the last 30 years or so is caused by cattle ranching.
Wow.
That number is huge.
80%.
So where do most large-scale factory farms tend to be located and how does this influence
the local ecosystems and communities?
Great question.
These are excellent questions.
Thank you.
It makes it more fun.
So let's go back to the United States.
We were just in Brazil, so we'll hop back to the U.S. and generally these facilities
are in rural areas and there are some logistical reasons for, you know, land is cheaper.
Generally speaking, there's more space.
You know, if you're in a densely populated metropolitan area, you can't build a large-scale
animal feeding operation.
So that's part of it.
We would identify a couple other main reasons that these facilities are generally in rural
areas.
One, out of sight, out of mind.
Factory farms do not like people to know how they operate, the true impacts of their industry,
their standard practices with how they treat their animals and workers.
And so if we were driving by it every day, which some people do, but not a lot of us,
we were seeing it and smelling it and hearing it, we might ask more questions and you might
affect their bottom line.
And also the communities that they pollute, so we know the levels of air pollution and
water pollution and all of these different ailments that come from that surrounding
factory farms, these communities have a harder time standing up for their rights and fighting
back because they are low income communities, generally marginalized minority communities
who don't have the resources to sue and stand up to multi-billion dollar corporations.
So that's how we see it generally unfolding in our country.
We also found that industrial animal agriculture uses an enormous amount of freshwater.
What can you tell us about that?
Yeah, this is a big one for everybody because freshwater is such a finite resource.
And we are taught these things like taking shorter showers and turning the sink off when
we brush our teeth to save water.
And sure, tens of millions of people do that.
Definitely it'll save some water.
But conservative data shows that a quarter pound beef patty takes about 450 gallons of
water, 450, which is about a month's worth of showers.
A lot can work for.
You got to grow their food, you got to keep them hydrated, you got to clean their facilities
where they live and where they're slaughtered and all of that takes an enormous amount of
freshwater.
Wow, that is huge.
A huge amount of freshwater, just like you said, can't believe it.
It doesn't even sound real.
Yeah.
I was at a high school the other day.
And when you're teaching ninth and tenth graders, you're not sure what's actually sticking
and what isn't.
But this kid gramps me in the hallway who had seen one of our lessons last semester or
something.
And he was able to grow 450 gallons for every.
The water.
Yeah.
But he was so excited that he remembered it and he wanted to bring it up when we talk
about it.
Yeah.
150.
Okay, so we're now going to be transitioning.
All right.
So a United Nations report identified animal agriculture as a major source of greenhouse
gas emissions and biodiversity loss.
To counter this, the factory farm industry funded friendly academics to downplay this
impact.
And this public trust and influence climate policies.
What do you think of academics promoting such a destructive industry?
I like what you phrased, because you said, what do you think?
And we work hard at New Roots to kind of keep our opinions out of this because, you know,
when wanting to be credible and wanting to be impactful, if we come in slinging our opinions
everywhere, then people get turned off by that.
So what do I think about academics?
Who are funded by big animal agriculture corporations?
I have some very strong thoughts and opinions on that.
But I think more generally, we should ask the listener, what do you think about influential
politicians, academics, whoever that are funded by these corporations and how trustworthy
is their data or the policy that they write that comes from this.
You would argue compromised data.
And it's the same on the other side.
If impossible meat funds a study and it's funded exclusively by impossible meat, you're
going to wonder like, what's the ulterior motive here?
How trustworthy is this data?
So we want to be fair when investigating the data.
We want the best data possible.
So yeah.
I think that's really admirable that encourages people.
Yeah.
And I feel like the facts are so unbelievable.
People might not even believe it, it's really sad.
Yeah.
Data is staggering sometimes.
Whether people believe it or not is one thing.
Whether they care about it is a whole other thing.
Another thing.
Yeah.
We've also read that burning fossil fuel produced for fertilizers for animal feed
crops may emit as much as 41 million metric tons of CO2 per year.
What other aspects of factory farming can contribute to greenhouse gas emissions?
Wow.
Again, these numbers, this is the thing with these huge...
It's a million.
Yeah, it's like huge.
They're mind blowing.
Yeah.
How much is that?
I don't actually know if that's a lot or a little.
Hard to grasp.
Yeah, it is.
There's a few other main ways.
And it gets kind of murky and difficult to measure just the true impact of animal agriculture.
So cows burp out methane and soda sheep and goats.
I forgot goats earlier when I was listing off the species.
The goats.
I forgot the goats.
The goats.
And we were just at the animal sanctuary together where the goats were.
Oh, you were.
That was a really fun time.
Yeah, the goats were fun.
I highly recommend everyone.
Sorry, goats, that I forgot to.
Goats, sheep, cows, they burp out methane because of their digestive system, their
ruminants, giraffes are also ruminants.
They burp out methane.
So that methane is a huge source of greenhouse gases.
The deforestation is often calculated in there.
So the greenhouse gases that are actually emitted when you deforests a place like the
Amazon and also the greenhouse gases that are no longer sequestered.
But the way that we measure methane emissions is questionable.
And there is a scientist up in New York, Matthew Hayek, who's spearheading this new way of
measuring methane emissions.
And so the numbers are probably much higher.
Like conservatively, animal agriculture emits as much as like the entire transportation
sector globally.
I would say that's a conservative number.
So we'll see how the measurements evolve.
You know, but the long and short of it is that this is one of the primary sources of
greenhouse gas emissions on our planet.
And if we are serious and we care, there's that C word again, if we care about climate
change, we care.
Yeah.
Expert autonomous, we are going to have to make major changes to our food system.
Yeah, and fast, of course.
So earlier you did mention soy.
So how does soy, a common feed for farmed animals contribute to deforestation and global
warming?
I love talking about soy for so many reasons.
And I think it's so funny that we just call it soy because it's a soy.
It's a soy bean.
You know, like, you know, like we don't do that with many other beans.
Like, is there another bonzo?
Okay.
Carbons.
All right.
You got me fine.
That's a good example.
Lime.
People just say, I'm going to eat a bunch of lima today.
Or I'm going to eat even garbanzo, like, at least make it plural.
I'm going to eat a bunch of soy's today.
I'm going to eat a bunch of garbanzos today.
My point is that soy gets a lot of negative connotations because it's like soy, soy, soy
products, soy isolates.
The first of all, most soy, as you said, is fed to livestock, like 6% of soybeans globally,
and like that.
Some of my numbers are ever-evolving.
So forgive me if they're a little bit off, but they're pretty accurate.
6% roughly, we see of soybeans are actually directly consumed by humans.
So most soy is fed back to livestock.
Like in Brazil, when they burn down the Amazon and raise cows, that pasture land eventually
becomes desertified and not suitable for raising cows anymore, so often they will plant soybeans
there instead.
And then they'll feed those soybeans, they'll export them around the world, or they'll feed
them to cattle operations, you know, closer by.
So soy does play a big part of it, but not because vegetarians or vegans or flexitarians
or whoever are eating so much soy, and that's causing deforestation.
It's primarily linked to livestock.
So what do you believe our future will look like if we continue our consumption of factory
firing products at the same pace we are today?
So there, so you're asking for my beliefs again, which is funny, you know, we think about
these things.
And my beliefs waver from day to day, from hour to hour, and my thoughts on how this
is all going to go down.
But again, add new roots, return to the experts and what they would tell us, you know, the
people who study sustainability all day every day for their lives.
And they're telling us that what we're already seeing is going to continue to happen and
get worse.
You know, we know certain things are linked to climate change.
We know, you know, climate change is being fueled by the human species.
So those impacts that a lot of us are aware of, some of us are much more painfully aware
of the impacts of climate change.
That's our future, because 80 billion land animals, which is about how many we raise
on the planet every year for our food system, is, you know, disastrous.
And again, I wouldn't say that's my opinion.
That seems to be pretty well-established science.
And that's not even talking about, you know, aquatic life and what's happening in our ocean.
And factory farmed fish, quote unquote, or aquaculture stuff.
It's not pretty, but, you know, there's a lot of progress and a lot of things to celebrate.
And then we maintain hope, maybe foolishly, but we maintain hope.
All right.
So sticking with that hope and what can be done.
So what can be done?
And let's just transition to alternatives and solutions.
So what needs to happen in order for us to transition away from factory farming?
Such a huge question.
Well, I'm going to say I love repetition.
Anybody knows me knows I love repetition.
So at first people are going to have to care.
And it's hard to get people to care about these things, especially things like, you know,
our food, because it's so close to us.
I would argue.
Here's one of my opinions.
I would argue that it's similarly as sensitive as like religion or politics.
That's not a new institute stance.
That's a personal opinion.
That the only one I'll inject today, but I would argue that food is so sensitive that
when you start talking about it and challenging our consumption norms, people get really
defensive and they get really uncomfortable.
And I totally understand why there's a lot of understanding around that, but that doesn't
change the need to shift radically from such an animal based food system to a more plant
centric and plant focused food system.
And again, that is widely agreed upon from University of Oxford to Harvard to the IPCC
to Project Drawdown is a great resource on this.
And they're saying we have to shift and shift quickly towards a much higher percentage of
our food system being plant centric.
Do you think simply informing the public about factory farming contributions to global warming,
do you think that will encourage people to reduce the amount of animal products they
consume?
Well, we have data.
So at New Roots, we collect data and other organizations measure studying behavior change
is not new.
But we have specific data from the lessons that we're giving and it shows us about 80
percent of students ranging from ninth grade or eighth grade sometimes, but mostly ninth
grade to post-grad say that they will reduce or eliminate their consumption of animal products
after seeing one of our lessons.
So 80 percent is good.
Amazing.
Yeah.
And we know that there are always going to be people that will just never change and
they have their reasons and we might agree or disagree with them.
But so, you know, that 80 percent number is encouraging to me.
And I would, you know, if we didn't believe in the power of education, we wouldn't be
doing what we're doing.
We know that education works.
But yeah, not for everybody.
And if people are really dug in.
What facts do you think would encourage people to care about the reality of factory farming
and its effects on our climate?
Here's where it's helpful to know your audience.
And so if I know that I'm talking to an audience that's really concerned about, you know, workers'
rights issues.
And I would, I would, you know, focus in on how factory farms treat their workers and
some of the ways that are questionable, we'll say.
If I know I'm speaking to an environmental ethics course and presumably those people are
taking that class because they care about the environment, they'll focus on that.
So I mean, the freshwater thing is a big one.
The greenhouse gas emissions is a big one.
The United Nations study that you cited earlier says that animal agriculture is the number
one cause of biodiversity loss in species extension.
So that one sometimes is powerful.
Sometimes focusing on our own health impacts, depending, but like when you're 16, you don't
think about colon cancer in your 40s or 50s, you know.
So it's tricky.
And that's like the million dollar question is what do we focus on?
Because there are so many different data points that you could bring into a discussion in
a lesson.
And we're all in that same data that we cite, you know, for like 80% of students will reduce
or eliminate their consumption.
That same data shows us what they care about, what they don't care about, why they don't
care.
Sometimes like they'll actually write out why they don't care about it.
So we can use that same data to help our strategies evolve as well.
And so any advocate, excuse me, out there for any issue needs to be strategic and listen
to feedback from the people that you are talking with and hoping to affect.
Yeah, sounds good.
Have there been any significant changes you have seen in your years of working in this
field?
Oh, yeah.
Otherwise, I would have, I need some of that.
We all need validation.
And we need some, you need wins in your life.
But yeah, we've seen a ton of progress recently from like New York City making all their public
hospitals plant based by default.
Now, hospital Vancouver, yeah, and it's starting to like, people are watching that and seeing
how it unfolds.
That has the potential to be really systemic change and influential change.
Yeah, there's so many, like so we, we train future leaders and like one of our alumni
from our program, our training program or summer training program, they just worked
on a campaign on UCLA and UCLA announced that 50% of their food offerings on their campus
will be plant based by 2027, I think is what they just said.
Just got announced like today.
Not too far away.
Yeah.
That's a huge change from five or 10 years ago and like our mark and Sodexo, these multi,
you know, huge corporations committing to like 45% plant based offerings by the end
of the decade.
There are a lot of signs of progress.
People at home, anybody listening knows how their milk section has changed over the last
five or 10 years and all the dairy free milks that are now available and plant based meats
and plant based cheeses and those aren't, you know, a silver bullet or perfect companies
or perfect foods.
Sure, fine.
They're flawed, but they're a sign of progress.
And so there are so many signs and so many people that care about this issue that it's
why I said at the top it's a really exciting time to be part of this movement because there's
a lot of momentum that's been building over the last 30 or 40 years.
Touching on how milk alternatives have changed, how can consumers identify and purchase animal
products for more sustainable and ethical sources?
That's a tough question.
You're coming up with a hard hitting question.
Hard ones.
It depends on how you define sustainable and ethical and everybody kind of, sustainable
is a buzzword, ethical means something different to everybody.
So you know, could you ethically kill an animal that wants to live if you have other food
choices?
I don't know.
I have my thoughts on that.
You know, even like the most pristine cow raised on the most beautiful pasture land,
they still have to live for a certain amount of time, they burp out methane, they have
to drink a certain amount of water and animals, generally speaking, are not very efficient
calorie converters.
So they generally have to eat a lot more food than we actually get from them.
So as far as being a sustainable way to feed 9 billion people, again, we would look to
the experts and show that even the most picturesque and environmentally friendly seeming animal
agriculture operations, while they're totally different than factory farming, they still
have serious environmental impacts.
And then the ethical quandary never goes away because you're taking life at the end of the
day.
And trust me, these animals want to live.
And if we have other options that we're choosing not to eat, we kill these animals anyway.
Well, then that's a whole ethical dilemma that we loved it, converse about.
And for our audience who is interested in learning more about this, how can they find
out more about the anti factory farming movement?
Well, we are the pipeline and the hub to to toot in our own home.
So new reasons to that org were actually applications are open right now for our leadership Academy
now.
Yeah, it's an eight week training course.
It really equips you with skills, knowledge, connections.
It's all about who you know, and that the networking opportunities are global in our
leadership program.
And we do a deep dive on the industry itself and we bring in experts from around the world,
whether they're science or business or philosophy or economics or whatever, we're bringing
experts from all different aspects of the food system.
They do discussions and workshops.
You get to work with a group of peers from around the world, so we'll have about 150
students from around the world this summer and most of the program is virtual.
So it's really the best way to get educated quickly and also make connections for those
that are interested in like pursuing this as a career.
That's what a lot of us don't understand.
We're young, so we can actually have a career that's super fulfilling, that's super meaningful,
that also pays our bills.
And those two things don't always compute when we're young.
Like when I first started advocacy, it didn't make sense for me to like professionally do
activism or whatever, but there's a million different ways that you actually can and that's
what our training program teaches you.
Even if you're an accountant, we need you in the movement to end factory farming.
Even if you're a friggin' model, I have a bad example.
If you're a podcast host, we need you in the movement to end factory farming.
And that's what our program works to do is to make connections with people with skills
and passion and dedication to ways that they can support themselves and their families,
but also work to perform this FDUP system.
Alright, so earlier you mentioned that people have to care first and that we need a plant-centric
diet and that people also need to be educated.
And you just mentioned your program.
Is there anything else that our listeners should do to help reduce factory farming contributions
to global warming?
Right, so our personal food choices are huge and tens of millions of people are making
different food choices and the proof and evidence of that is undeniable.
Our leadership program is a great way to become a professional.
And then in your own circles, your friends, family, social media, just starting a seemingly
small conversation is massive.
Like that's how things change in our country is millions of people having conversations
about issues.
We've seen it with the women's right to vote with equal marriage with any issue, whatever.
Whether we've made progress or not or made enough progress, it starts with people getting
educated, having conversations, debating each other on it.
So that part of it's really important too.
And it sounds trite and cliche like you got spread awareness.
It really does make a huge difference.
Perfect, thank you for that.
Thank you, Rowdy, from New Roots Institute for talking with us today.
Yes, thank you so, so much.
If y'all want to hear more from Climate to Action, a CSUSM student podcast, follow us
in our socials at climate to action on Instagram and X, that's at climate to action.
Visit us for updates behind the scene, content and more.
Right, finally, climate to action wants to remind you to take action.
How are we going to take action?
I'm happy you asked.
You have to first care.
You have a heart for the land that you live on in this earth.
Number two, have a more plant-centric life.
And finally, stay educated.
Listen to this podcast.
Share this podcast.
Yeah, thank you.
Until next time, this is Climate to Action, a CSUSM student podcast signing off.