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Denmark to tax farm animals’ burps and farts
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Farm animals Denmark to tax farm animals' burps and farts.

Denmark to tax farm animals’ burps and farts

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ProCon debates: Is human activity primarily responsible for global climate change?; Should humans consume dairy milk?

ProCon issues in the news: Denmark is home to five times as many pigs and cows as people, and agricultural pursuits consume almost 66 percent of the country’s land. Thus, farming has become Denmark’s main climate polluter.

As the CLEAR Center at the University of California, Davis, explained, “Cattle are special animals that consume foods such as grasses and hays that humans can’t digest, taking those pieces of energy and turning them into milk and meat that nourish people. In the process, part of the energy cows eat results in the production of methane that is belched out the front end of the animal.” The back-end emissions of pigs, however, are relatively small, but “their manure, when stored in traditional open lagoons, combines with methane-producing microbes to become a significant source of
a ‘fast and furious’ greenhouse gas.”

Denmark’s parliament had been considering a tax on farm animals’ methane emissions for years. In November 2024 three disparate political parties came together to pass the only such climate law in the world. The law goes into effect in 2030 and, according to The New York Times journalist Somini Sengupta, “will charge farmers 300 Danish kroner (around $43) for every ton of carbon dioxide equivalent that their operations produce. By 2035, the tax will more than double to 750 kroner ($106).”

To soften the blow to farmers, and in acknowledgment that the technology to eliminate methane emissions entirely does not yet exist, farmers will receive a 60 percent rebate on the tax. If farmers do things to reduce methane emissions, the rebate increases.

Discussion questions

  1. Should governments tax farmers for their animals’ methane emissions? Why or why not?
  2. Research what other methods could curb methane emissions. Which do you think is best and why?
  3. What other steps can we take to tackle climate change?

Sources

  • CLEAR Center, “Pork Industry Aims to Cut Methane” (August 14, 2023), clear.ucdavis.edu
  • Conor McCabe, “Why Do Cattle Produce Methane, and What Can We Do About It?” (April 22, 2024), clear.ucdavis.edu
  • Somini Sengupta, “Taxing Farm Animals’ Farts and Burps? Denmark Gives It a Try.” (November 26, 2024), nytimes.com