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You finally asked *the* question that needed asking.

I farm an irrigated section in Nevada. In Nevada, we grow some of the best hay in the world here. It isn’t just the land - it is our climate. Hot days and cool nights result in forages putting on lots of growth with less fiber.

You can grow alfalfa just about anywhere in the west. They grow lots of it in California. But when their nights heat up in April, they get lots more fiber in their hay than we get. Dairy farmers know that milk production is maximized when they can get more alfalfa protein into a milk cow with less fiber to fill her up.

So they pay a premium to haul low-fiber alfalfa hay out of Nevada into California, rather than suffer a milk production decline by feeding alfalfa grown locally. There’s a whole lot of irrigation and diesel fuel expended growing hay 500 miles from the dairy in the west, and even more diesel fuel used to ship the hay to the dairy. All that CO2 — to maximize milk production.

Maximizing milk production from a single cow means that you need fewer cows to produce the same milk. If you look at the NASS, you see that milk production per cow has been on an upward trend for years as better research into animal science and genetics maximizes the milk we get out of one cow.

Poorer-quality local feed means less diesel fuel burned... but means more cows for the same amount of milk. So we’d trade off CO2 for methane production. Oh, and cow poop. Lots more cow poop. Which produces more methane.

So... would be be putting out more or less satanic warming gases by using locally produce forage?

These are the sorts of things that most non-farming people, including professors of atmospheric science, don’t know.