For about four years, I have dug deep into the debate around regenerative meat, veganism, plant-based proteins. I have written a number of blogs on this topic, usually defending the role of ruminants for environmental regeneration. I am concluding that the entire debate – on all sides of the debate – is delusional, if not intentionally deranged.
In numerous debates with vegans, I have pointed out that we have to bring livestock back onto the land – regenerative agriculture without livestock is impossible. The role of ruminants is to close nutrient cycles in grassland ecology. In dry grasslands, is absolutely necessary that ruminants decompose dry matter that would otherwise accumulate and smother rejuvenation. Without ruminants, grasslands become deserts. Many vegans continue hammering in that all animals must disappear – a dangerous, deranged, and misinformed political position.
I also made a clear case why I don’t believe that ruminants’ methane burps change this story. During the Pleistocene, the Heyday of ruminants, there were almost as many creatures roaming Earth – total emissions were about 15% lower than today, which is almost negligible given the drastic increase in atmospheric methane concentrations from 400-700ppb to now almost 2000ppb. The benefits of ruminants – if properly on the land and not overgrazing – far outweigh the Methane problem.
However, many livestock advocates push for a narrative that “Humankind needs to eat more meat”. Here, I argue that this position is as delusional, or deranged, as the vegan counter narrative.
If a plastic recycling company stated that “We need to use more plastic because, in theory, it could all be recycled”, I would call this argument deranged given the difficulties of modern recycling. Most of these are attributable to the existing power structure and insufficient political will to overcome single-use plastics. If a biological oil company advertised “Humans should use more oil, because we have a technology to produce oil regeneratively” – I would say this is greenwashing of the worse kind, as it neglects the fact that most oil is still from fossil fuels and most biofuel has a horrendous environmental footprint. If a car company advertises: “We need to drive more individual cars”, based on the believe that the future fleet will be electric and the electric grid will be decarbonized, I would call such a commercial deranged, and dangerous.
Yes, I believe that the world could, in theory, produce all the livestock products that we consume today regeneratively. Maybe even more – assuming that we would regenerate 40% of our landmass that today is desertified. Yes, I believe that ruminants are the prime tool to regenerate these 40% of desertified land, if used wisely and with the prime intention to regenerate soils. But this has not happened yet, and we cannot even talk about a ‘trend toward regeneration’ in ruminant production – we can only talk about a growing number of innovative farms across the world who prove the mainstream narrative wrong.
If we tell consumers that they should consume MORE meat, preferentially regenerative, we are simplifying the problem that we are in. First, most consumers cannot access regeneratively grown meat at scale – there are only few producers that supply a minute volume, and value chains don’t label these for the most part. Most grassfed labels are not good enough – overgrazing is also grazing! Second, youth cannot start regenerative farms – land ownership is accumulated in a tiny percentage of people, 98% of which are white in North America. Access to land is impossible unless you are the heir of some big land owner. Thirdly, institutional investors are increasingly powerful agricultural players – portfolio funds, pension funds and rich billionaires who invest in land holdings. These land holdings operate with a simple strategy: rent out land to cash croppers. In today’s world, livestock integration is not feasible under such ownership arrangement. Fourth, the accumulation of power in large processing companies makes a swift growth of regenerative grazing impossible. Grassfed animals do not meet the requirements set out by these companies, in terms of timing, fat content, product consistency, or even carcass size. Fifth, current subsidies continue to foster cash cropping without animal integration. And there are other systemic barriers that would exceed this blog.
The narrative that “supply and demand” is creating the meat market, while hoping that a shift in consumer choices toward regenerative labels, will eventually shift the environmental impact of meat, is naïve and simply false. This narrative buys into the Adam Smith’s idea that free markets, with infinite independent players, can self regulate. Our reality are quasi-monopolistic food value chains, a status quo that is cemented by pro-corporate regulations and subsidies, landownership that has fallen into the hand of ever fewer white people – all these are “market failures” and deeply systemic barriers to a regenerative transition. Regenerative meat producers have to recognize, call out, and help overcome these systemic barriers to regenerative livestock systems, or they will stay an insignificant niche market. Like organic market gardeners that supply small farmers markets, they will have total market shares that are irrelevant from a planetary perspective. Only deep systemic change in the food system can change that.
Until we have achieved these system changes, the call by regenerative farmers that consumers shall eat more meat, is equally delusional, or deranged, as the plastic industry’s call to use more plastic, the oil industry’s call to use more oil. I really have to distance myself from such a narrative.
Our position/narrative should be simple: Let’s overcome feedlots that are built on disrupted nutrient cycles and degenerative feed production. Let’s stop overgrazing, globally. Let’s help regenerative grazing in rangelands, and cover crop-livestock integration in all annual cropping systems. Let’s bring back smart silvopasturing for biodiversity enhancement, and also to thin out forests in regions where dense forests are prone to wildfire. Let’s help regenerative producers, and address all the systematic barriers to a new, regenerative food system. And if we succeed in the regeneration of our desertified drylands, then humans may even eat more meat than today, in some distant future. Until then, let’s drastically cut back on degenerative foods of all sorts – foods that cement the status quo and hinder a regenerative transition. This extends to ALL food items – meat, plant-based proteins, vegetables, you name it.
I am deeply saddened that better livestock management, maybe humankind’s most powerful tool in overcoming the planetary crisis, is caught between two extremely problematic political fronts: One who want to take livestock out of the equation entirely, and another who is promoting ‘more meat’ without educating about the systemic barriers that lock our livestock system in the status quo. Both sides are dominated by white males, often righteous, often highly privileged. It is time that a third voice, more moderate, more humble, more based on system thinking, pushes these delusional (or deranged?) fringe opinions to the side. Our planet’s survival depends on it.
I am so on your page on this. The militants on both sides accuse each other of confirmation bias – and it’s evident to anyone not on one side of the other that they are both guilty of this. Let’s not forget it totally helps the fossil fuel industry escape exposure of the fact that they are continuing to behave as if there’s no climate crisis, if agriculture is named as the culprit, or the saviour for that matter. Keep us aggies fighting amongst ourselves, so we don’t look up.