The Carbon Footprint of Livestock

Providing feed and water for our animal proteins:

• It is in the top 5 for electricity usage.
• It is in the top 5 for diesel fuel usage.
• It is the largest usage of water.
• It is by far the biggest usage of habitable land.

How to Slash Each by 90%

This article discusses the environmental impact of how we feed livestock. It examines the failures of past attempts to reduce this impact and outlines a feasible path forward.

Revised: 03/28/2025

When you hear such a bold statement, your first reaction might be to laugh it off, dismiss it, and say it can’t be done. We have been raising livestock for thousands of years; it can’t be done more efficiently.

If you were to hear that the plan to slash livestock's carbon footprint involved a form of vertical farming, where food for livestock is grown in large warehouses, replacing plow-farmed crops, your first reaction might be, “I’ve heard of that before." I recall that many people and companies invested heavily in vertical farming and lost all their money.

It is a provable fact that we can slash the electricity, fuel, water, and land impact of livestock by 90%, also reducing feed cost at the same time, and we will detail the plan of how it works in this article.

The fact is that there have been dozens of companies formed in the past couple of decades attempting to come up with a more modern solution for growing food for both people and livestock using indoor vertical farming methods, and most all of the attempts that try to replace the sun with artificial grow lighting have gone bankrupt. In fact, vertical farming, also called Climate Controlled Agriculture (CEA)
farming, has experienced losses of tens of billions of dollars.

The exception: This does not include all forms of CEA farming; there are some successful forms of vertical farming that grow produce for people indoors “using the sun” with a glass roof. However, most attempts to use only artificial lighting have failed, or the lettuce or strawberries produced with artificial lighting can’t be done cost- effectively at scale and make a profit.

This article is about feeding livestock.

To effectively address the issue of reducing the carbon footprint of livestock feeding, we first need to understand the past failures.

I personally know the field of vertical farming very well, as I was an owner of a business attempting to use vertical farming methods to produce feed for livestock.

In 2015, I learned of business producing equipment to grow what is called barley fodder for livestock. I found this idea of using hydroponic equipment to grow your own feed on the ranch very interesting, which led me to partner with another individual and start a business selling fodder-growing equipment. In short, we built and sold four systems in 2015 and 2016, each utilizing new equipment designs to improve labor and cost efficiencies in the growing systems.

A Brief Introduction to What Barley Fodder for Livestock Is, and Why It Is a Better Primary Feed

Barley seed is hydroponically grown with racking equipment for just six to ten days in trays without dirt, creating a thick mat of roots and grass, referred to as a “biscuit” of fodder. The living root and grass fodder biscuits are 100% consumable by cattle, horses, and most other livestock.

Barley fodder is rich in protein, calories, vitamins, and minerals, comparable to alfalfa. However, unlike dried alfalfa, fresh living barley fodder contains beneficial live enzymes and probiotics. After nine days of growth, it reaches the "true leaf" or "microgreen" stage, which is the peak of nutritional value and digestibility. This stage is highly valued, similar to vegetable microgreens found in high-end markets and restaurants.

Barley fodder provides a healthier, more natural diet, and livestock love it, preferring it every day of the week over traditional feed. Fodder can replace a significant portion—or even the entirety—of a farmer’s traditional feed mix. Many farmers are using fodder systems successfully, raising animals on a diet consisting almost entirely of fodder.

Side view of barley fodder grown for just 9 days with an incredibly high ratio of calories and tons produced per square foot of the building compared to the best ratio ever producing food for humans.

This slice of fodder is 5” x 1”, only 5 square inches of space, grown for 9 days with a near net-zero carbon footprint.

Now for the Problems That Led to the Failure of My Business and So Many Other Methods of Indoor Hydroponic Vertical Farming Food (for People or Livestock)

The mathematical failures come down to the following:

• The number of growing days to harvest the crop.
• The number of days of grow lighting needed (the most important).
• The inability to get the produce to the consumer for a reasonable price.
• The ratio of calories/tons per square foot of the building.

The feasibility of the above depends on what the food is. In my opinion, the foods people eat can’t be done cost-effectively in indoor systems because the number of growing days and grow lighting days until harvest is too long. But it Can be done with this new business model for fast-growing barley fodder and the right design.

My company and many other fodder-producing businesses faced the main challenge that even after the one-time initial investment, the costs of the seed, labor, and electricity to produce the fodder were higher than the market price of mass-produced feed. If you cant undercut the market price, you cant compete.

The Economy of scale: In the years after ending my fodder business, I kept thinking we needed to produce the fodder so efficiently and get the cost down so low that it would be a better alternative for a verry large commercial operation than picking up the phone and having another 500 tons of feed delivered.

The point of this article is that lessons from the past have led to solutions. I will detail how we can now produce barley fodder for livestock for significantly less than the price of Alfalfa, grass hay, or grain when produced at a large scale.

Now, let me give you a couple of facts before sharing the plan that I have worked on for the past two years.

• 80% of agriculture is used for feeding livestock.
• 70% to 80% of all the country's water is used for agriculture.
• So, that is 60% of all the country's water goes to livestock.
• Pumping water is in the top five biggest uses of electricity.
• Producing and transporting feed for livestock is in of the top five uses of diesel fuel world wide.

Below is a list of the top 10 water-hogging crops in the USA

On the list of “Top 10 Agricultural Water-Using Crops in the U.S.” above, you will see that the top three water-hogging crops are for livestock, and these three crops cover the bulk of the feed for most all livestock.

I am proposing a business plan that focuses on livestock feeding, with a primary emphasis on beef and dairy cattle in feedlots. This approach provides logistical advantages in terms of reducing feed transportation costs. Additionally, by scaling our operations, we can significantly decrease feed expenses while also achieving substantial reductions in water and carbon usage. We will address other types of livestock in the future.

Now we know that more than half our water goes to just three crops: alfalfa, grass hay, and feed corn; surprisingly, you will learn that Barley, grown as a grain crop, is a “drought tolerant crop” that is grown with a fraction of the water and is a fast-growing crop taking just 90 to 120 days to harvest so you can harvest two or three crops a year, but the best part is that it can be “dry farmed,” that term means the crop can be farmed with just rainfall and no irrigation water at all.

Now, the answer is no. We are not going to start raising livestock on barley grain or hay, that is not cost-effective, but we will need to grow traditionally farmed Barley to produce the seed, which will be used in the fodder-growing system to grow the barley fodder grass.

I plan to build huge warehouses directly adjacent to each feedyard. Inside the building, we will use a large-scale vertical farming method with specially designed hydroponic systems to grow “barley fodder.” Barley seed is grown in the early stage of growth in the grass form for just 9 to 10 days, long before the formation of the seeding heads.

The point of this plan is that we can now start replacing the three biggest crops that take half our water, replacing them with a “dry-farmed crop” in the same surrounding area of the feedyard to reduce transportation costs. Then, we grow the seed into 100% edible biscuits of roots and grass, fed directly to the cattle. With my most advanced proprietary system we are now averaging about ten pounds of fodder from a pound of seed in 9 days.

Over the past three years, I have implemented significant improvements over my previous fodder system design and formed a new C-Corp called Sprouting Gear Inc.

Sprouting Gear’s hydroponic system that utilizes a fertilized water approach has more vertical layers, and is specifically tailored for use in very large warehouses capable of housing hundreds of systems. The yield ratio per square foot of floor space has increased several times compared to my previous designs or other designs while reducing labor and electrical demands.

The fodder is grown in the system vertically with more than 20 levels for the first 5 days without lighting and then on wider-spaced racks with grow lighting for the final 4 days. The fodder greening stage is very fast before harvesting, so it uses only a small fraction of electricity compared to most other vertical farming operations.

The new system design in the climate-controlled environment will produce an average of 430 pounds per day, 365 days per year, using about 220 square feet of warehouse floor space per system. We would line the systems up in rows in the warehouse with a conveyor belt system to move the fodder to the feedyard dispensing and mixing truck commonly used by ranches.

Producing larger buildings alone is not enough to reduce the cost per ton significantly.
We still have not addressed labor, electricity, and transportation—along with the high expense of barley seed—each is addressed below to make the system viable.

Labor for Fodder Compared to Traditional Plow Farming:

My revised system is efficient in terms of labor. When scaled up with this warehouse business model, I calculated that under production, it would yield between 1.5 to 2.5 tons of fodder per man-hour, delivered to the feed-mixing truck.

My search of estimations for labor growing alfalfa and feed corn showed that the labor requirements are about the same for traditional feed in large-scale operations, using the biggest and most advanced tractors and harvesters.

Operating the fodder systems is straightforward, with a short learning curve that anyone can master. In contrast, the new advanced tractors and harvesters require a high skill set to operate and maintain.

The fodder building will be constructed right next to the feed yard, eliminating transportation costs. This is important because traditionally farmed hay or corn can travel long distances, which adds trucking labor and fuel expenses.

The labor for the fodder building will involve a daily 8-hour shift year-round in a comfortable, climate-controlled environment maintained at about 68 to 70 degrees. In contrast, plow-farmed feed production is highly irregular due to extreme weather changes and is only seasonal.

Operating the fodder systems is straightforward, with a very short learning curve that makes it accessible for anyone. This is in stark contrast to new advanced tractors and harvesters, which require a high skill set to maintain and operate.

Energy Usage of the Fodder Warehouse:

Based on my research into vertical farming, I have found that food production feeding people typically requires a significant amount of electricity for grow lighting. In contrast, the fodder system consumes only a small fraction of that energy.

For the first five days of growth, the fodder system utilizes no lighting at all, followed by just four days of lighting during the greening process. The total power consumption for the LED grow lights in the greening racks is 432 watts. We can operate the lights in solar generating hours from dawn to dusk, not needing for 24-hour lighting.

Calculations indicate that we can offset our grow lighting energy needs by using solar panels on just one-third of the roof. Additionally, another one-third of the roof’s solar capacity would cover our climate control requirements.

With these measures, we expect to achieve near-net-zero energy consumption.

The fuel needed for traditional livestock feed involves many processing steps including: plowing, planting, weeding, spraying, cutting, gathering, drying, harvesting, baling, shredding, and transporting. These many activities rank livestock feed among the top five uses of diesel fuel worldwide.