By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL


STERKSEL, the Netherlands - The cows and pigs dotting these flat green plains in the southern Netherlands create a bucolic landscape. But looked at through the lens of greenhouse gas accounting, they are living smokestacks, spewing methane into the air.



That is why a group of farmers-turned-environmentalists here at a smelly but impeccably clean research farm have a new take on clean energy: They cook manure from their 3,000 pigs to capture the methane trapped within it, and then use the gas to make electricity.

The Sterksel project is a rare example of fledgling efforts to mitigate the heavy emissions from livestock. But much more needs to be done, scientists say, as more people are eating more meat around the world.

In releasing its latest figure on emissions last month, United Nations climate officials cited agriculture and transportation as the two sectors that remained most“problematic.’’

“It’s an area that’s been largely overlooked,’’said Dr.Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The trillions of farm animals around the world generate 18 percent of the emissions that are raising global temperatures, according to United Nations estimates, more even than from cars, buses and airplanes.

But unlike other industries, like cement making and power, which are facing enormous political and regulatory pressure to get greener, large-scale farming is just beginning to come under scrutiny as policy makers, farmers and scientists look for solutions.

High-tech fixes include those like the project here, called“methane capture,’’as well as inventing feed that will make cows belch less methane, which traps heat with 25 times the efficiency of carbon dioxide.

Other proposals include everything from persuading consumers to eat less meat to placing a“sin tax’’on pork and beef. Next year, Sweden will start labeling food products so that shoppers can look at how much emission can be attributed to serving various meats.

But such proposals are part of a daunting game of catch-up. In large developing countries like China, India and Brazil, consumption of red meat has risen 33 percent in the last decade. It is expected to double globally between 2000 and 2050.

Producing meat requires creating new pastures and planting more land for imported feeds, particularly soy. That has contributed to the clearing of rain forests, particularly in South America, robbing the world of crucial“carbon sinks,’’the vast tracts of trees and vegetation that absorb carbon dioxide.

“I’m not sure that the system we have for livestock can be sustainable,’’said Dr.Pachauri of the United Nations. A sober scientist, he suggests that“the most attractive’’near-term solution is for everyone simply to“reduce meat consumption,’’a change he says would have more effect than switching to a hybrid car.

At the electricity-from-manure project here in Sterksel, the refuse from thousands of pigs is combined with local food waste materials and pumped into warmed tanks called digesters. There, bacteria release the natural gas within, which is burned to generate heat and electricity.

The farm uses 25 percent of the electricity, and the rest is sold to a local power provider. The leftover mineral slurry is an ideal fertilizer that reduces the use of chemical fertilizers, whose production releases a heavy dose of carbon dioxide.

For this farm the scheme has provided a substantial payback: By reducing its emissions, it has been able to sell carbon credits on European markets. It makes money by selling electricity. It gets free fertilizer. And, in a small country where farmers are required to have manure trucked away, it saves $190,000 annually in disposal fees.

John Horrevorts, experiment coordinator, whose family has long raised swine, said that dozens of such farms had been set up in the Netherlands, though cost still makes it impractical for small piggeries. Indeed, one question is whether consumers will pay more for sustainable meat.

“In the U.K., supermarkets are sometimes asking about green, but there’s no global system yet,’’said Bent Claudi Lassen, chairman of the Danish Bacon and Meat Council, which supports green production.“We’re worried that other countries not producing in a green way, like Brazil, could undercut us on price.’’