Month: April 2021

Part 1: Carbon and The Carbon Soil Sponge

On the left is a graph of global Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels since 2016. The black line is the mean, and the red line the actual, which shows the natural fluctuations through the year. We can see from this graph, how the planet takes a breath in and out each year. CO2 levels peak in April at the start of the northern hemisphere spring (there is a far greater land mass in the north), so the peak comes right before everything starts growing and absorbs carbon back into matter, which is only possible via photosynthesis.

Figure 1. Global Atmospheric Carbon Levels – annual fluctuation and overall rise. Graph thanks to NASA:https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2636/Rise-of-carbon-dioxide-unabated

What is evidently unnatural about this graph is the fact that levels are increasing year on year. The planet draws down 120 billion tons of carbon a year, but 130 billion tons end up back in the atmosphere. The additional 10 billion tons coming largely from the combustion of fossil fuels (7,8).

The jump in atmospheric CO2 in 2019 and 2020, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was probably due to an increase in extreme weather events – rainstorms and droughts causing floods and fires; and because our oceans, which are warming and acidifying, are less able to absorb excess CO2 (1). The world’s oceans act as a huge buffer to atmospheric CO2, there is currently 30,000 billion tons more CO2 dissolved therein than normal. 

But let’s go back for a moment to this idea that the world breathes in and out on an annual basis. This shows us how important and powerful the growth of life is in regulating the earth’s atmosphere. This fact is the gold at the end of the rainbow, it is the key to solving our climate crisis, but in order to understand how we can help nature to help us, we must first gain some understanding of the relationships and cycles between our atmosphere, climate and land management. 

For this reason we have put together this 3 part article on Climate and Agriculture, we hope you enjoy reading it. Welcome to part 1.

How do we Help the Earth Breathe More Deeply

Crucial to earth’s annual ‘breath-in’, is the functional condition of her ecosystems and soils, and we will return to this point in a moment, but first we must distinguish between ‘ancient’ and ‘current’ carbon.

Are Cows Causing Climate Change?

Animals breathe Oxygen in and Carbon Dioxide out, and plants do the opposite, so it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the best thing we can do to help the situation, is plant lots of trees and stop eating meat. Animals also emit Methane (CH4), so cows are further demonised as part of the problem (we will cover this in detail in part 2). But blaming cow farts for climate change is a gross red herring, because it ignores the role of animals in cycling carbon into the soil (which we will come on to), and it detracts from the important distinction between ‘current’ and ‘ancient’ sources of carbon. 

Fossil fuels are ‘ancient carbon’, mostly accumulated in the carboniferous period when there were much higher levels of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere. At that time mega-flora with huge photosynthetic capacity evolved. These plants sequestered vast amounts of carbon which eventually became the stable solid (coal), and liquid (crude oil) forms, buried underground, the power of which we harness today. The mega-flora that locked carbon into the earth, led to increasing oxygen levels, and eventually created the stable climate we humans now benefit from.

‘Current carbon’ is what was left in circulation, the stuff that the world breathes in and out each year. So whatever aspect of ‘the problem’ of climate change we are looking at, it is essential that we ask, are we pumping ‘ancient carbon’ into the system as a shortcut to productivity? Or are we working with ‘current carbon?’

If we look again at the beef industry for example, then yes, intensively farmed beef has ancient carbon pumped into the system on many levels. All feed that isn’t pasture, will be dripping in ‘ancient carbon’. Animals kept indoors or in feed-lots require a lot of machinery to move food around. So intensive beef is a serious problem, but then so is all intensive agriculture: Soya, wheat, chicken, you name it, it is all saturated in ‘ancient carbon’. 

100% grass-fed meat however has a very small ‘ancient carbon’ footprint. Very little if any machinery is required, mostly these farms manage to get away with just a quad-bike and no tractor. The animals never receive any additional feed, so apart from animal transport to slaughter and quad-bike fuel, the carbon is almost entirely ‘current,’ sequestered by the grasses and herbs in the pasture. 

How the Earth Breathes Deeply

You know how elderly people often have a shortness of breath, their bodily functions are not quite what they were, and they are unable to breathe deeply and easily like in their younger days. Well, the earth’s ability to breathe deeply also depends on the state of her body. It depends on the functional condition of her ecosystems and soils. 

The earth breathes CO2 in through photosynthesis by plants and trees, but the earth retains carbon (locks it in long term), by incorporating it into soils. Every living thing is made largely from carbon, so it is through all life forms that carbon gets cycled ultimately into the soil. These are the main 3 ways: 

1. Through animals who eat those plants and then defecate on the ground which soil microbes incorporate into soil. 
2. Dead organic matter from either plants or animals, which soil microbes and fungi incorporated into the soil. 
3. A  less apparent route is that plants directly feed soil microbes and fungi via root sugar exudates. 

So while it is an excellent idea to plant trees to try and stabilise the climate, it remains largely unacknowledged that soils are the ultimate carbon sink. There is no limit to carbon accumulation in soils, as long as they are well managed. This is where the debate about grazing animals heats up, because these walking bio-digesters are a key component to effective carbon draw.

Lands managed under intensive production on the other hand, be it livestock or crops, are only oxidising carbon into the atmosphere. These soils are unable to sequester carbon, because such soils are no longer alive.

Living Soils 

Agri-Culture still mostly works off a chemical model for how plants receive nutrients from the soil. If plants are short in potassium, we add soluble forms of potassium. But this is a far cry from how nature cycles nutrients. In a natural living soil there is an inexhaustibly complex web of interactions between life and mineral soil, and nutrient deficiencies do not exist. 

Plants exude sugars from their roots which feed bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms. Plants commonly expend around 30% of their energy in this way, feeding all soil microbiota, which in turn cycle minerals back, in forms that the plant can absorb. 

This process is grossly inhibited in intensive production systems because the plants are fed with water soluble inputs, so no-longer need this symbiotic relationship with soil microbiota; and because fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, etc, kill soil life. In livestock farming intestinal parasite treatments are death to soil organisms from dung beetles to bacteria, so the form of farming system is an essential detail when we talk about the relationship between agriculture and climate change. 

In regenerative livestock farming systems the land and animals are managed in a way that breaks the life cycle of intestinal parasites, removing the need for intestinal treatments. Farmers who convert to regenerative methods are astonished by the return of life to their farms. This surge in biodiversity however is just a symptom of what is going on underground – the return of living soils, which rapidly draw down carbon and create the carbon soil sponge. 

The Soil Carbon Sponge

The sheer enormity of soil microbiota, itself living and dying, as well as drawing down dung and other organic matter into the soil, builds up as a carbon matrix within the mineral structure of soil. Without this organic matter soils are simply dusty dirt, able to hold little water, and once dry are extremely difficult to rehydrate. However living soils, rich in organic matter have a sponge like texture, are springy under foot and can hold large amounts of water, all due to carbon. 

For every gram of carbon present in the soil, it can hold 8 grams of water (7,8). So we start to see that soil carbon is not just key to climate stabilisation and biodiversity, but also water management. Over time, carbon rich soils just get deeper and deeper, and it is from such soils that we can grow the best, nutrient-dense foods.

Mobile bio-digesters 

Vast areas of the world are naturally grassland-scrub: The great plains of North America once grazed by buffalo; the Savannahs of South and East Africa grazed by a myriad of ungulates; Europe thousands of years ago, where wild horses, aurochs, elk, bison and deer maintaining wood-pastures.

These animals and their grassland-scrub homes are synonymous. Originally predators like wolves and lions would have managed their behaviour, keeping them moving in dense bunches, grazing, trampling, pooing and peeing, then moving on. This animal impact is essential to grassland regeneration. Without them, especially in dry climates, grass stays standing up and can only decompose through oxidation; bare ground soon appears underneath, the start of desertification, where carbon only goes up, not down. Animals in dry grasslands are the only thing that can put carbon back into the soil. 

So while overgrazing is a huge problem across the world, especially in drylands, this is only due to the mismanagement of animals. Animals can be the problem, but also are the solution, because their correct management (mimicking the action of predators), is about the only thing that can reverse desertification which is all about locking carbon into the soil and restoring dense plant cover.  

The following examples show just how effective pastureland is at locking in carbon,
if managed correctly:

1. Texas A&M University study demonstrated 1.2 tons of carbon per acre per year (1.2 tC/ac/yr) drawdown via proper grazing methods (2).
   
2. University of Georgia study demonstrated 3 tons of carbon per acre per year (3 tC/ac/yr) drawdown via a conversion from row cropping to regenerative grazing (3).
   
3. Michigan State University study demonstrated 1.5 tons of carbon per acre per year (1.5 tC/ac/yr) drawdown via proper grazing methods and demonstrated in a lifecycle analysis that this more than compensated for natural enteric emissions of methane (4).
   
4. The drawdown potential on North American pasturelands is 800 million tons (megatons) of carbon per year (800 MtC/yr) (5).

To Conclude

This is part 1 of a three part series of articles about farming and climate change.

References

1. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/earthmatters/2019/06/14/carbon-dioxide-reaches-record-levels-plus-6-things-to-know-about-the-greenhouse-gas/
2. https://www.jswconline.org/content/71/2/156.abstract
3. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7995
4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X17310338?via%3Dihub
5. https://www.jswconline.org/content/71/2/156.abstract
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxTtXabC2TM
7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3Z430GFyZg
8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=123y7jDdbfY
9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwEToq05L2k 

It’s very true that all meat, regardless of how raised, is an important nutrient source – especially for developing children. 1

However, some serious ethical and environmental concerns are associated with factory-farmed animals reared to produce cheap meat. These concerns give fuel to the argument that meat no longer has a place in a modern diet. 

Exciting new science has, however, further highlighted why grass-fed and factory-farmed meat should not be treated equally. In fact, beyond the legitimate and convincing environmental and ethical arguments, it now turns out eating grass-fed meat could be an efficient way of eating your greens!

At the root of most of the global issues we face today is our tendency to apply a mechanical mindset to our management of natural systems – both the outer environment and our inner ecosystem (our bodies). 

In farming or human health, if you want to benefit from the vast productive capacity of functional natural systems and their inherent ability to balance and suppress disease, you need to work with nature rather than quantify, separate, and understand it by the individual components. We cover this topic in more depth here.  

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

In my work as a consultant in regenerative agriculture, to benefit from these natural processes, we manage land and livestock with principles rather than prescriptions. The further you wander from these laws of nature, the more costly the economic, ecological and social consequences. This has always been the case, forever, for everyone. And it won’t change just because we have invented a new technological revelation such as chemical fertiliser or lab-grown meat. 

Living by these principles does not mean you’re anti-science. Not at all. It simply helps you understand that the science currently available is only a partial view of a far larger picture. True scientists understand this completely – this is why they do what they do. There’s always more to discover and understand. 

Because I live by these principles, I have always known that meat from animals raised within a healthy functional ecosystem is better for the planet, people and worth the extra price. But, in a western society that makes decisions primarily based on empirical evidence, it is frustrating that there’s not more good science to confirm what I already know to be true. This is starting to change.

The many health benefits of grass-fed meat.

What we do already know about the health benefits of grass-fed meat is thankfully pretty compelling 2: 

Meat from animals reared in functional ecosystems on a diverse pasture is higher in omega 3. It has a healthy ratio between omega 3 and 6, which allows us to benefit from omega 3 essential fatty acid’s potent anti-inflammatory properties. As inflammation has been scientifically proven to be associated with nearly all modern chronic disease, this is a pretty big deal. 3

Grass-fed meat is rich in conjugated linoleic acid – CLA. CLA is associated with a lowered risk of heart disease and may help prevent and manage type 2 diabetes. 4 5

CLA has also been shown to reduce cancer risk by blocking the growth and metastatic spread of tumours. 6 7

Some research suggests that CLA can help reduce body fat and promote weight loss. 8

For many years, we have understood that grass-fed meat, compared to grain-fed meat, contains a powerhouse of minerals and vitamins, including bioavailable protein, zinc, iron, selenium, calcium/or B12. All of these nutrients are critical for fighting disease and maintaining health – especially in a world where our fruits and vegetables contain fewer nutrients with every passing decade. 9

We know – although often choose to ignore – that animals reared in factory-farmed systems are more likely to suffer from disease (and therefore be routinely treated with antibiotics and medication) and live in low welfare conditions. Their production has a vast and negative impact on the environment. (We cover this in-depth in our free introductory course on eating meat.) 

Powered by plants.

We have for a long time known and studied the critical role of phytonutrients in promoting health and fighting disease in plants, animals and humans. ‘Phytonutrients’ or ‘phytochemical’ are primary or secondary metabolites found in plants and recognised to have nutritional quality attributes and powerful potential health benefits. 

Beyond the protective qualities they provide the plants themselves, these compounds have been known from ancient times to elicit positive biologic responses in human and animal systems. These elicitors have been shown to reduce the risk of many chronic diseases that plague modern society, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, diabetes and many more. 10

The need for food rich in phytonutrients to help tackle our ill-health epidemic has led to a push towards plant-based diets. It has also accelerated interest in the metabolic engineering and the genetic modification of plants to ‘create’ – and presumably patent – varieties that are higher in these disease suppressive nutrients. 11

Nature had this whole issue worked out a very long time ago – and without the need for a potentially disastrous intervention from modern technology. 

Wild plants are a powerhouse of beneficial plant nutrients. However, it takes healthy soil and healthy ecosystems to brew – through complex interactions between plant and the soil food web – the range of natural medicines found in our native wild plants.

Wild dandelions, for instance, contain seven times more phytonutrients than spinach, a plant considered a superfood among the sad array of factory-farmed vegetables proudly displayed on the supermarket shelves. 

Wild food wins.

Certain wild apple species contain a whopping 100 times more phytonutrients than the golden delicious you will find at your local convenience store. 12

The dramatic loss of phytonutrients in our modern plant foods comes from a combination of factors; 

1. Plant breeding for flavour, size and texture above and beyond health properties.

2. The fact that the main plant foods we eat come from growing systems that are the antithesis of a healthy functioning ecosystem. Lifeless soils and reliance on damaging chemicals lead to vegetables, grain, and fruits unable to perform the basic processes required to synthesise the plant nutrients that offer us health benefits. 13

1. The long gap between harvest and digestion. How we harvest, transport and cook food can have a degrading effect on our food’s nutrients.

Researchers have found that healing phytochemicals such as terpenoids, phenols, carotenoids and anti-oxidants with anti-inflammatory, cardioprotective and anti-cancer effects are found in the meat and milk of livestock who have access to healthy, diverse pastures.

This revelation is perhaps shining a light on why many traditional meat-eating cultures and modern carnivores see such dramatic health benefits from eating a diet high in grass-fed meat – when on the face of it, the diet seems to conflict with the natural principle of diversity. 14 15

By eating meat grown on healthy ecosystems – either hunted from wild landscapes or reared on regenerative farms – we leverage and upcycle the herbivores’ foraging behaviour. 

These herbivores freely graze and browse on the thousands of species of the most phytonutrient dense plants of all – wildflowers, grasses and legumes – growing on healthy soil or wild landscapes. 

Foraging phytonutrients for you.

Many of these native plants are inedible or unpalatable to humans, but as part of the pastures and woodlands they form, they are the foundation of a biodiverse food web. These plants create drought and flood-resistant landscapes that sequester carbon from the atmosphere. By eating the animals that eat these plants, we provide food and nutrition security in a highly vulnerable foodscape of monoculture grown vegetables and grains. 

Healthy pasture could legitimately be considered the only truly functional ecosystem that remains a part of conventional modern farming systems.

So I feel reassured. From my own experience of nature’s principles, I know that eating animals who have spent their entire lives grazing and browsing herb-rich pastures is better than eating meat from animals fed on grain. 

Eating animals that are part of a fully functional ecosystem – such as the regenerative farms that supply the meat we sell – is better for the animal, better for the environment, and better for my health. 

I am excited about what new incredible scientific revelations will further demonstrate that nature has the complete picture – the best and brightest human efforts still only represent a tiny piece of the puzzle. 

Caroline Grindrod