How Cows Can Save Us All

In 2006, I found myself knee-deep in milk. You wouldn't think milk would be a controversial and important issue, but it is, and so I found myself reporting on whether organic milk standards ensured that cows would graze, rather than simply eat feed.

I don't know the first thing about farming, but the farmers I spoke to patiently explained that feeding cows corn is a solution in search of a problem. The real issue is that our farm policy has created a glut of corn.

Eating corn makes cows sick, requiring them them to, err, "emit" more methane and to be fed a steady diet of antibiotics. Grain-fed cattle are also more prone to E. Coli. And, if cows never get out to pasture, their poop becomes a polluting problem instead of the fertilizing solution it would otherwise be.

I was shocked: If we just let cows eat grass would would wipe out three problems in one? It couldn't really be that simple, could it?

Actually, it's even simpler, and even Time magazine has gotten wind of it. The mainstream weekly reports that allowing cows to eat grass as nature intended would also solve the climate crisis.

Seriously. When cows graze, they boost the carbon-absorption capabilities of the soil by packing decaying matter back into the ground. And if we sent all the cows in the world out to pasture, we could capture the total equivalent of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions. Agriculture -- in large part feedlot cows -- currently contributes almost a fifth of global emissions: more, even, than transportation.

Did I mention that grass-fed beef is more nutritious to eat and tastes better?

One problem: It costs more. But people don't need to eat anywhere near as much red meat as they currently do. It's our insatiable appetite for beef that's driving deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. The increased cost, then, is also as much solution as it is problem.

It doesn't get much easier than that.

Photo credit: JelleS