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Why I personally believe that smart handling of the livestock issue is so important.
Ruminants as the farmers that make grasslands.
Agricultural management has degraded grasslands and caused desertification.
Ruminants’ methane.
Regenerative landscape management with livestock.
Finding coherence with Vegans and regenerative farmers
True alternatives to degenerative meat now..
Why I personally believe that smart handling of the “livestock issue” is so important
As a young student, I started participating in environmental protests and lobbying. Not as a leader but as a follower… A prominent leader and holder of the “Alternative Nobel Price”, Michael Sukow, inspired me to promote his campaign for biofuels. We saw opportunities in “second-generation biofuels” while we were fully aware of the limitations of “first-generation fuels” based on corn or palm oil. Neigh-sayers warned us from a corporate take-over, but I trusted our leader’s political experience. How naive we were. Until today, subsidized bioethanol and biodiesel from tropical palm oil plantations and bioethanol from corn is fueling our vehicles, displacing old-growth rainforest and dominating landscapes in temperate regions. We now know that the greenhouse gas balance of these biofuels is no better than fossil fuels – they destroy habitat, degrade soil, kill waterways with nutrient runoff, and they emit lots of greenhouse gases – nitrous oxide from chemical fertilizers, carbon dioxide from the soil, just to mention some. I still feel sick whenever I see the last Orangutans displaced by biofuel. We learned the hard way: a coalition with a snake – the first-generation biofuel industry and BigAg – comes back to bit you. The signs were clear, but our egos blinded us. The road to hell is paved with good intentions! Today, we lack the power to reverse these industry-backed policies and they continue on with their destruction, seemingly unstoppable. I swore to look out for these signs for the rest of my life, and I learned that the fight against false solutions is as important as the support of new initiatives.
Today, the campaigns against ruminants – and the corporate solutions that are being presented – carry many of the same signs of the biofuel disaster.
Ruminants as the farmers that make grasslands
Ruminants are animals that live from grasses – biomass with very low nutrient value. Ruminants can do that because, through millions of year of co-evolution, they have developed a unique strategy: in their belly, they carry complex bioreactors that host hundreds of unique symbiotic species including bacteria and ciliates. These symbionts can do what no other mammal can: they break up un-digestible cellulose into acetate and methane. Ruminants can live on this acetate, also digesting some of the bacteria that they “farm” in their rumen. Methane, a waste product in this process, is simply burped out.
Ruminants have “farmed” about 40% of this earth’s surface and turned them into fertile grasslands (e.g. [1]). Without ruminants, most these areas return to their “natural state” of a desert. These areas are unable to sustain trees due to long extremely dry seasonality and fire risk, and tend to be exposed to erosion from seasonal rainfall. With ruminants, this 40% of terrestrial land have turned into green, often lush vegetation – grasslands. On their permanent migration routes, ruminant herds trample much of the dried grasses, providing important armor that protects the soil. Ruminants digest the rest of the biomass in their rumen and excrete them as manure, the perfect germination medium for adapted seeds. Excretion closes the mineral cycle by returning nutrients onto the soil. It also spreads essential microbes that vitalize soil for new growth. Ruminant hoofs cut through the top soil layer, which forms hard caps during each dry season. This brings seeds to the surface and fosters germination. Ruminants make grasslands.
Dying grasses in “conservation area” that are not grazed. Colorado, Bijou Ranch.
If you take ruminants out of grasslands, then dry biomass accumulates over many years, even decades. Dry grasses oxidize very slowly in the sunlight, or eventually turn into ashes as lighting strikes create fire. The upper layer of soil hardens seasonally and forms a water-impenetrable cap. Unable to take up water, rainfall during the wet season washes away the ashes of burned biomass, eroding nutrients, and leaving nothing but sand and dust. This way, grassland soils slowly degrade – the grasslands return into deserts, their natural state without grazing.
Agricultural management has degraded grasslands and caused desertification
Humans have desertified much of these 40% of the Earth’s surface. Grasslands appeared convenient for tillage-based agriculture: they are reasonably flat, without trees, and often have accumulated thick layers of excellent soil. But grassland soils also quickly degrade and erode.
Much of tillage-based land is used for the production of high-nutrition grain as livestock feed, feeding monogastric animals that cannot digest cellulose like pigs or poultry, and even ruminants that could directly digest low-quality cellulose.
In addition, widespread poor grazing management – either if herds return too early to grasses that still have not recovered from the previous grazing, or by allowing animals to graze continuously such that preferable fodder plants are overgrazed, has led to widespread degradation by overgrazing. Overgrazing can quickly destroy grassland health, returning it to its natural form of a desert. Through human mismanagement of ecosystems, ruminants have turned from creators of grasslands into their worse enemies – driven by overgrazing and feed production.
Today, people around the world are starting to see the negative impact that our dominant management of ruminant agriculture is having, on all continents. People around the world are considering how to reduce human impact. Some farmers have even found a land management approaches that can reverse our destruction of grasslands and regenerate ecosystem functions: by re-integrating ruminants into the natural grassland processes, while avoiding the damages of overgrazing. Others advocate for reducing ruminant use by humans – which can also reduces the damage, if the land is transitioned to more regenerative uses.
Ruminants’ methane
A waste product of ruminants, Methane, has become the focus of many climate change activists. Since UN’s Food & Agriculture organization published a report “Livestock’s Long Shadow” in 2006, cattle for meat and dairy have become the center of climate activism. More and more people are reducing their consumption of animal products, or learn to live totally without them. Reducing animal products is a potent strategy to reduce one’s personal environmental footprint, because most products sold in supermarkets were produced with methods that destroy biosphere (soil, habitat, wetlands, waterways). Yet others have additionally started to promote the abolition of ruminant products, which would lead to a ruminant-free agriculture.
In feedlots, ruminants are fattened on high-protein, high-starch feed from annual crops. Ruminants fatten faster on such high-nutrient feed than on their natural diet, so animals have shorter live spans to emit methane until they reach slaughter weight. Recently, innovative companies are also stepping in and develop products that make Methane less of a problem: Seaweed, grown in large tanks, or patentable chemical seaweed substitutes. From a Methane emission perspective, feedlots are better than livestock on the land. From an industry perspective, feedlots are more profitable than grazing – at least for the profit of input vendors.
Methane has been part of the Earth’s atmosphere for eons. During the Pleistocene, almost as many ruminates wandered on Earth as today ([2]): much of the land that now is desertified was “farmed” by these ruminants and kept green. Scientists estimate ([3]) that pre-human ruminants emitted 0.12 Gigatons per year, only 15% less than all of today’s livestock combined today, 0.139 Gigatons.
In prehistoric times, atmospheric Methane concentrations varied between 400 and 700 ppb, despite ruminants and despite enormous beaver wetlands that also emitted Methane. Today, Methane concentrations have risen to 1,900 ppb and make up 25% of today’s human greenhouse effect. Despite the pandemic, 2020 saw the fastest ever increase of Methane in the atmosphere ([4]). Livestock emissions alone cannot explain this. The main source of this increase in atmospheric methane is attributed to fossil fuel mining and fracking.
Also, the desertification of 40% of the Earth’s land has reduced the self-cleaning function of the biosphere. All vegetation exudes organic compounds that, through a chemical cascade that includes OH radicals, remove Methane and other substances. Slowly and at low concentration, the exact contribution remains disputed in science. Yet the massive extent of human-made desertification certainly plays a role in disrupting this self-cleaning mechanism, especially because it was most active right where ruminants were burping: close to the ground in healthy vegetation.
Regenerative landscape management with livestock
The regeneration of desertified landscapes requires a return of ruminants to the land. However, letting a few ruminants wander around is not sufficient: the animals have to behave in ways that benefit soils and grassland ecosystems. That means they have to move in dense herds, graze all plants indiscriminately, trample some of these plants for soil armor, leave their urine and dung full of nutrients and microbes, and then leave for a long time so vegetation can recover without disturbance. In nature, huge migrating herds of ruminants – often millions of animals – followed the seasonal cycle of plant growth and typically returned ones or twice per year. Herds were kept bunched together and on the move by pack predators – wolves, bears, and packs of large cats. Animals were neither hanging out in one area for too long, nor could they afford to be picky about which plants they ate.
Today, conservationists struggle to maintain most wildlife reservations in grasslands. Few grasslands remain large enough to sustain the regenerative ruminant migrations that stabilize soils and grasses: the Serengeti and Yellowstone, and some grasslands in Kazakhstan and Siberia are the last places where grassland stabilization still works. In smaller conservation areas, wild ruminants only have small area where they reside the entire year – even with low population densities, ruminants won’t give grasses the rest that is needed. As a consequence, wildlife reserves throughout the Earth are struggling with desertification: Where healthy grasslands once fed thousands of ruminants that were on the move, today much larger areas cannot sustain groups of hundreds and soils degrade nevertheless – a downward spiral.
Regenerative farmers are trying a different strategy for landscape regeneration. Where nature has allowed animals to move in seasonal migration cycles, bunched into herds by pack predators, regenerative farmers now use electric fencing and planned rotaitonal grazing to give grasses short-duration animal impact, and then long recovery periods. If done with awareness for the ecosystem context, this strategy can successfully restore grassland ecology – in brings back healthy biosphere where life was vanishing. In temperate regions, a modified strategy can regenerate Savannah ecology with its fantastic biodiversity and avoid the takeover of invasive species that equally displace biodiversity. Interestingly, these healthy pastures still provide more feed to wild herbivores than desertified grasslands – the biological balance is established, and many regenerative grazers are happy to see wild competition. A few years ago, a Conservation Foundation in Colorado realized how “keeping livestock off the land” only accelerates desertification. Today, the area is ranched with hundreds of bison for meat production and once again is home to pronghorns, dear, and a growing population of prairie dogs.
Finding coherence with Vegans and regenerative farmers
While I have deep concerns against generic claims to remove cattle from agriculture, I certainly see the impacts of modern animal husbandry. How can organizations reflect this nuance when highlighting today’s devastating impacts of modern livestock production systems? In short, by understanding that “It’s not the cow but the how”. And explaining it in simple language that many urban environmentalists, who have not experienced grassland ecology, can understand. And by promoting policies that focus on negative animal impacts rather than on the animals per se. Often, this is a tricky question though, especially in our world where we feel we have to oversimplify.
Policy proposals should carefully examine a few aspects:
- How does the proposal affect different production sectors, in particular from the main ecosystem perspectives:
- Water Cycle
- Biodiversity & biological communities
- Mineral Cycles
- Energy flow and Solar energy conversion efficiency
- Atmospheric gases (sources and sinks)
- What goals will the policy proposal achieve, once it passed the corporate hurdle?
(We must assume that the corporate sector will lobby powerfully and seek to maintain the status quo.)
- Will the policy harm regenerative farming more than degenerative farming, e.g. feedlots?
(g. a Methane Emission tax would harm outdoor producers more than feedlots, because only feedlots can use food supplements like seaweed.) - Will the policy proposal address problems caused by livestock holistically, or foster Band-Aid solutions that ultimately cement the status quo?
(g. seaweed seemingly targets methane emissions in feedlots; however, it would impact livestock on the land more than feedlots. As a consequence, many negative impacts of of feedlots would be cemented, e.g. the spatially distanced production of feed crops (nutrient demand) and manure (nutrient supply) that interrupts mineral cycles. ) - Will Band-Aid solutions create profitable, patented revenues that further accumulate power in the hand of input corporations?
(e.g. a chemical substitute for seaweed will soon be developed and empower BigAg-Input even further, creating additional costs for small farmers who cannot purchase in bulk) - Will the policy further shift diets toward highly-processed food in globalized food chains, or will it support healthy diets and local, resilient economies?
(e.g. patented products or protected seeds may disrupt local economies) - What are impacts on the agricultural production system at large? Will it enable diversification or reduce the number of crops further?
(e.g. corn- or soy-based protein substitutes will further the trend to monocultures, while other plant proteins may support diversification in the cropping system and healthier crop rotations)
If many of these questions are answered with YES, then your anti-cow policy initiative has a high likelihood to be successful and create change – it is good for BigAg and helps them green-washing. Like with biofuels, the benefits activists dreamed of will not become reality. In the contrary, the policy will strengthen a destructive system that we are all here to change! I strongly encourage all organizations to consider these and other criteria when campaigning around meat-related topics.
True alternatives to degenerative meat exist today.
True alternatives to degenerative meat exist today, and individuals have a choice.
Fermented dairy products like yogurt, kefir and cheese can provide nutrients that humans need. Here, buyers should be aware of how these were produced – small local farms with integrated production management and good grazing are preferable, even to large organic corporate products. Plant-based proteins like beans and amaranth, fermented products like tofu and sauerkraut, peas and chickpeas, oat milk, quinoa all have benefits: they are healthy and allow farmers to diversify crop rotations. Long crop rotations really simplify regenerative farming. Compared to feedlot meat, plant-based proteins degrade less land even if these plant crops are grown in degenerative production systems. Ecological outcome verification (e.g. the new Regenerative Organic label) will ensure optimal benefits. In integrated production systems, regenerative plant proteins will also co-produce regenerative livestock as farmers restore the natural cycles of nature!
Regenerative meat is also a true alternative to degenerative meat. In many regions, livestock on the land may be the only strategy that can transition degenerative food production into landscape regeneration, given that modern land ownership has made naturally roaming ruminant herds unfeasible. It takes skill, knowledge, labor, and ecosystem sensitivity to do that – few farmers are currently willing to jump through these hoops, and the food system is not sending the right signals. Innovative leaders demonstrate what is possible, even at large and very large scale – but their voices are drowned out by corporate propaganda and by an urban culture that vilifies meat. Simplistic narratives are powerful, yet nothing in ecology is that simple. We need to complicate our narrative!
[1] Geremia, C, et al. Migrating bison engineer the green wave. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. doi: 10. 1073/pnas. 1913783116 (November 21).
[2] Zimov, S.A.; Zimov, N.S.; Tikhonov, A.N.; Chapin, F.S. (2012). “Mammoth steppe: A high-productivity phenomenon”. Quaternary Science Reviews. 57: 26–45.
[3] Smith, Felisa A., John I. Hammond, Meghan A. Balk, Scott M. Elliott, S. Kathleen Lyons, Melissa I. Pardi, Catalina P. Tomé, Peter J. Wagner, and Marie L. Westover. “Exploring the influence of ancient and historic megaherbivore extirpations on the global methane budget.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 4 (2016): 874-879.
[4] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210805-the-search-for-the-worlds-largest-methane-sources
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