The source looking at Ireland does talk about how sheep grazing in the UK and Ireland are primarily on temperate forestland. But more broadly, other ruminants like sheep are going to have similarly high methane emissions to cattle. Ruminants, unlike other farm animals, have most of their emission from eccentric fermentation (and or land use change/deforestation) which is going to occur at similar rates when they are eating grass as well. So should I have separated that out a bit, potentially yes, but my earlier comments were already getting quite long
From one study:
More than 80% of the emissions attributed to sheepmeat and wool result from on-farm methane emissions, due principally to enteric fermentation (Cottle et al., 2016, Peri et al., 2020, Vermulen et al., 2012). Other non-methane emissions and emissions that occur in the supply chain post farm gate are a relatively minor contributor to overall emissions (Australian Government, 2020, Vermulen et al., 2012).
In terms of land usage, the land usage is actually even higher for lamb and mutton production per kg and per kg protein compared to the already high usage for beef production [1] [2]. This entails wool production having high usage since sheep in wool production are typically killed for meat as well once their wool production decrease (similar to dairy).
When we compare wool emissions to other textiles, we find that wool has some of the highest emissions per kg of any textile [3]. We could just as easily be using cotton (lower emissions to produce per kg) which has similar insulation R values and lower emissions
Ah no worries, I have a tendency to just dump a lot into comments so it might be easy to miss some of the details. My infodumping tendencies have their cons sometimes :)
The source looking at Ireland does talk about how sheep grazing in the UK and Ireland are primarily on temperate forestland. But more broadly, other ruminants like sheep are going to have similarly high methane emissions to cattle. Ruminants, unlike other farm animals, have most of their emission from eccentric fermentation (and or land use change/deforestation) which is going to occur at similar rates when they are eating grass as well. So should I have separated that out a bit, potentially yes, but my earlier comments were already getting quite long
From one study:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751731122000416#s0050
In terms of land usage, the land usage is actually even higher for lamb and mutton production per kg and per kg protein compared to the already high usage for beef production [1] [2]. This entails wool production having high usage since sheep in wool production are typically killed for meat as well once their wool production decrease (similar to dairy).
When we compare wool emissions to other textiles, we find that wool has some of the highest emissions per kg of any textile [3]. We could just as easily be using cotton (lower emissions to produce per kg) which has similar insulation R values and lower emissions
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-protein-poore
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/ndustrial-carbon-footprint-of-textile-fabrics-in-this-study-kgCO-2-e-kg_tbl1_303634993 along with other studies all showing the same trends of other regions with wool as a great outlier in terms of emissions. The emissions don’t seem to vary much from what I have read even when looking at regions with mostly all pasture-based production
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Ah no worries, I have a tendency to just dump a lot into comments so it might be easy to miss some of the details. My infodumping tendencies have their cons sometimes :)
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