The Amazing Benefits of Grass-fed Meat
(Page 6 of 8)
April/May 2009
By Richard Manning
A conversion on an enormous scale is not out of the question. In fact, we have already done a massive land use change just in recent decades. After the great plow-ups of the 1970s and ’80s (conducted at the federal government’s urging) the country saw an enormous increase in soil erosion, so taxpayers began paying farmers to plant the most highly erodable acres back to grass. This Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) now costs us about $1.8 billion a year, and peaked at a total of about 36 million acres a couple of years ago. That’s exactly the sort of scale we need.
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Intriguingly, though, the rules prohibit grazing on CRP lands under ordinary conditions. Imagine what could be accomplished with some creative changes in the rules to allow carefully managed grazing and connect CRP to the market driver of grass-fed beef and dairy!
All this raises the very point missed by industrial agriculture. Intensive rotational grazing offers a corrective to the narrowing diversity on the farm landscape. We are slowly learning that human enterprises work best when they mimic nature’s diversity. Early on, especially in organic farming and with the rise of vegetarianism, we began thinking we could approach that diversity by raising a variety of a dozen or so tilled crops (never mind that an acre of pure prairie contains hundreds of species of plants). But it seems obvious now that this line of thinking needed to step up a couple of levels on the taxonomic hierarchy. Why did we think we could in any meaningful way mimic nature’s biodiversity by excluding the animal kingdom?
Over the years, organic farmers have told me they relearned this important point: Many found out the hard way that they could not make their operations balance out — both biologically and economically (they’re the same in the end) — without bringing animals back into the equation. Handled right, animals control weeds and insects, cycle nutrients, and provide a use for waste and failed crops. Healthy ecosystems — wild and domestic — must include animals. Now there’s a chance we may realize how very important this idea is to the life of the planet.
The Multiple Benefits of Grassfarming
- More humane animal treatment
- More nutritious meat and dairy products
- Reduced flooding and soil erosion
- Increased groundwater recharge
- More sustainable manure management
- Less E. coli food poisoning
- More fertile soil and more nutritious forages
- More diverse and healthier ecosystems
- Reduced use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow unsustainable corn and soy
Considering Cattle Burps
Any discussion of cattle and the environment will move quickly toward the unsavory subject of belching. Simply put, during digestion, a cow’s rumen breaks down lignins in feed, releasing methane, which happens to be 24 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. So would a grass-fed beef and dairy system mean more methane?
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