Eat Meat to Help the Earth? You Grass-Hugger!

Eating meat contributes to climate change, right? Hamburgers must be abolished if we are to save the Earth. Many staunchly support this point of view, while others scoff at what they see as radical buffoonery. But it's not quite so black and white. You see, it all depends on what kind of meat you're talking about.

A recent post of mine on the subject over on the sustainable food blog drew an interesting comment from alert reader Harry Hamil: "it is clear that well designed, intensive grazing of grasslands by domesticated livestock offers the quickest and greatest opportunity to reduce atmospheric carbon."

So, producing meat could actually be good for our climate?

Hamil pointed us to a New Mexico-based organization called Holistic Management International (HMI), which promotes a system of land management that coordinates with natural cycles to increase the health of damaged grasslands and the productivity of farms and ranches. The organization's Website boldly states that "Managing land holistically ultimately results in the removal of carbon 
from the atmosphere: it offers an incredibly powerful, natural solution 
to the problem of global warming."

This model uses grazing animals such as cattle to de-desertify grasslands, which then sequester large amounts of carbon. The system of "Holistic Management Planned Grazing" involves moving concentrated groups of animals according to a specific plan to mimic natural grazing patterns. In doing this, the animals till the hard-packed soil as they walk, disperse fertilizing manure and seed across the land and avoid overgrazing by constantly moving. The result: healthy, vibrant grasslands with masses of CO2 sequestered in the soil and grasses.

Healthy soil and the grasses that root in it, according to HMI, sequester far more carbon than more-visible trees. So the more grass, the better off we are. And the more grazing animals, the better off the grass.

And just as grasslands need animals, sustainable farming is impossible without them. An article in June's Audubon Magazine investigates this issue. Author Lisa Hamilton explains the thinking of a Georgia farmer who raises pigs, chickens and cattle on pasture: the system is "like a bank account: Every time he harvests an ear of corn or a head of lettuce, he withdraws from the soil’s fertility; if he doesn’t redeposit that fertility, the account will hit zero."

So if we need to add animals' fertility back to the soil (unless we want to stick with fossil-fuel-based fertilizers, which are low on sustainability), then we must have animals. And, as Hamilton writes, “In order for pasture-based livestock to become a significant part of the meat industry, we need to eat more of its meat, not less."

So while things are a lot more complicated that this one blog post can analyze, it's worth taking a pause to think about the important role that livestock play in the climate equation. And whether declaring war on meat is really the best way to go about saving the world.

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng