Month: January 2025
Doing your bit for the Environment?
by Georgia Wingfield-Hayes
Part 2 of a 2 part series
Is eating meat, as we are told, bad for the environment? The quick answer is, there is no quick answer. Farming systems differ vastly in terms of carbon, biodiversity and animal welfare. So, let’s see if we can unpack this issue in brief.
When it comes to the meat, less is more. As we learned in Part 1, replacing intensively reared and highly processed meat with high quality, nutrient dense meats, from regenerative, organic and nature-based farming systems, means we don’t need as much animal protein to fulfil our dietary requirements. This forms part of the equation of regenerative living. So, what are the arguments that tell us that eating meat is an environmental no no.
Argument No 1. Land Use
Beef and lamb production occupy large areas of land that could otherwise be used for growing crops or rewilded. This seems like good sense, we can feed more people off less land with crops and rewilding should restore biodiversity. However, not all land is suitable for cropping and rewilding is a young science making some serious mistakes in not understanding the herbivore’s role in ecosystem restoration.
Meanwhile, let’s not forget that a certain amount of animal protein is essential to good health. There are no examples of vegan diets in indigenous cultures.
A macro-issue here is the linear nature of western thinking. X hectares of land could produce x amount more food if we grew crops not meat. But that thinking doesn’t ask what does x piece of land want to be? Can we foster a healthy ecosystem and fit our food systems into that? This non-linear, holistic thinking requires a lot more head scratching and acceptance that we never have all the answers, in a life-long apprenticeship to nature.
Are the former great plains of the USA more suited to crops or rewilding? Or could we use regenerative livestock farming to restore the health of the prairies? All is possible, it depends on what our imagination allows. One thing is for sure, rewilding such semi-arid lands without a healthy population of wild buffalo, elk and wolves, will see it turn to desert.
Herbivores are essential disruptors. Wild herbivores in the presence of predators will keep an ecosystem dynamic and soils healthy. In the absence of predators, disruption becomes excessive and causes degradation of land. In regenerative farming we aim to mimic a healthy level of disruption in order to rapidly regenerate the soils carbon, life and depth; grassland plant diversity and root depth. All of which massively improves soil water retention and the diversity of invertebrate, insect, small mammals and birds.
Upland Britain is not viable for crop production and overpopulation by deer prevents forest regeneration. We can fence off areas, plant trees and allow rewilding to occur, as is already being successfully done by organisations like Reforesting Scotland, however, in the long term, this rewilding will not create optimal biodiversity without a healthy balance of herbivores and predators (wolves, lynx and bears), in the mix. Without these the result will be closed canopy forest, with little in the way of grassland and wildflowers for pollinators.
Is it possible for us to move beyond the siloed thinking of either-or, food or rewilding, and see an integration of the two? We believe it is, what’s more we see this as crucial. Insect populations have crashed alarmingly in recent years; 60% or more in 20 years to be precise. While the finger rightly gets pointed at the use of pesticides in agriculture, we must also acknowledge that 97% of the UK’s species rich meadows have disappeared in the last 100 years. Wildflower meadows are an essential part of our landscape and can only be engineered by herbivores. Dung from these herbivores, is another essential element of a complex ecosystem, providing food and shelter to dung beetles and other microfauna and mycorrhizal networks, which help building soil carbon.
In 2016 the UN estimated that we have only 60 harvests left in our farmed soils, if we continue with current practices. So, rewilding vs cropping isn’t the question? Farmers shifting to regenerative arable systems are discovering that they require livestock – grazing herbal leys, as part of their arable rotation, in order to build fertility. Animals are essential to chemical free farming.
Argument No 2. Methane: Burps, farts and manure
The UN estimates that 14.5% of global carbon emissions come from livestock production. Here we need to go back to feedlots vs 100% grass-fed as spoken about in part 1. Feedlots mean large amounts of land gets used to grow grain, in order to feed cattle. The manure from these animals then has to be dealt with: spread back on land, piled up to decompose or put through a bio-digester where at least methane and other gases are harvested as fuel for other uses. Run off from effluent pollutes rivers and ground water. But none of these things are an issue in systems where animals are 100% grass-fed.
Three important things are consistently overlooked in the overall analysis of meat production and climate change:
- The most carbon rich soils are grassland soils.
- There is no upper limit to how much carbon can be sequestered in well managed pastures.
- A soil’s water holding capacity is a direct function of soil carbon.
The soil water infiltration rate of Gabe Brown’s ranch, pre-regenerative farming was 1/2 inch an hour. The rest ran off the land. Today that has increased to 8+ inches an hour. That water, held by soil carbon is part of the climate change debate that is overlooked at our peril. If we are going to cool the planet, we need soils that hold water, and soils covered by plants. Bringing trees into these pastures improves this picture still further.
The argument that cows produce methane and therefore, let’s get rid of the cows, is a perfect example of linear thinking getting us into trouble. The prairies of North America were home to 30-60 million buffalo before Europeans embarked on their slaughter. In Europe our landscapes were once a mosaic of woodland and pasture expertly engineered by deer, horses and bison in the presence of predators. The methane output of cattle is a problematic partial picture, we need to look at complete carbon equations for whole farming systems, alongside biodiversity, water, etc.
Tilled soils, for example, have half the carbon of an average productive pasture. Regeneratively farmed pastures, however, keep on sequestering carbon. There has to date been a gross underestimation of the carbon sink potential of pastures, which outstrip forests. On the regenerative farm, White Oak Pastures in Georgia, USA, they have shown that not only does the sequestration of carbon into their regen-soils balance the methane output of livestock, but in fact negates 85% of the farms total emissions.
Summing Up
While the finger is being pointed at meat, we miss the point that the way most food is farmed is causing a climate, environment and biodiversity catastrophe. All farming needs to change drastically for the sake of human health and the planet; and we need to stop seeing these two things as separate and understand that the health of the biosphere and the human body are one and the same. Macrocosm – microcosm.
Herbivores are essential for the rapid rebuilding of carbon rich soils. They are our best tool in the regeneration of complex and complete ecosystems from the ground up. To us here at Primal Meats, it makes sense for this regeneration to include food production. Keeping people in relationship with land and food providence. A world where land is either intensively cropped or rewilded, while people eat lab-grown meat, will not only be deeply spiritually impoverished, but the chronic health problems we are facing today will only get worse.
One final note. Food waste is still a big issue in the UK and one of the best ways to get around food waste is to buy food whilst it is still in the field. This is exactly what we do with Primal Steaks Club. You buy part of an animal, so that when it goes to slaughter, every bit is already destined for a customer. All fresh and no waste!
Referencess
Study: White Oak Pastures Beef Reduces Atmospheric Carbon
https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/blog/carbon-negative-grassfed-beef
Soil Carbon Cowboys
https://savory.global/science_library/soil-carbon-cowboys
What’s your Beef
http://kinnebrookfarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/whatsyourbeef.pdf
Is Grass-Fed Beef Really Better For The Planet? Here’s The Science
Restoring the climate through capture and storage of soil carbon through holistic planned grazing
https://savory.global/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/restoring-the-climate.pdf
Eating Meat Is Bad for Climate Change, and Here Are All the Studies That Prove It
The fight to save vanishing wildflower meadows
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-61869167
UK’s flying insects have declined by 60% in 20 years
Methane Madness
The last few weeks have seen a fascinating public response to Arla Foods’ – a farmer-owned dairy cooperative—announcement that it is trialling the methane-suppressing feed additive Bovaer on 30 UK supplier farms.
The public pushback has been astonishing, with a mass boycott of Arla food products and a sudden raising of awareness of the issues.
For several years, I have been discussing the limitations and risks of a climate response that is so narrowly focused on Carbon (Methane is part of this ‘carbon tunnel vision’ as the gas is measured in carbon equivalents in climate models/calculations). I covered my concerns in this article last year.
In the article, I explore the risks of oversimplifying complex systems, particularly in relation to the functioning of our living planet. I draw attention to the dangers of focusing exclusively on a limited aspect of the intricate dynamics that make up our climate, especially considering that our scientific understanding of these systems is still in its infancy.
We covered this in some detail in this series of articles a few years ago.
When this partial understanding of how the planet works is then baked into policy and backed up with a new economic system, we have a serious problem. As we have seen, corporations and entrepreneurs will scramble to get to market with the next ‘solution’ that could change the world. Unfortunately, they are right. It could change the world, but not for the better if it is based on a faulty premise. We don’t need any more solutioneering; we need to address the multiple root causes of this complex problem.
The pushback against Arla has been largely attributed to a bunch of conspiracy theorists pedalling ‘misinformation’ on X. This assumption is yet more evidence that the industry is not grasping the mood of the Nation and their growing instincts that ‘the science’ (that is essentially conducted by the companies who are bringing the products to market and regulated by organisations with questionable ties to the industry) is perhaps not as robust as we would like!
The facts and details of what people are sharing might be incorrect, but the assumption that companies are spinning the climate narrative to benefit themselves is bang on. People are not stupid; they can spot that ‘big food’, ‘big agriculture’, ‘big pharma’, and now ‘big climate’ are embarking on a gaslighting exercise of the highest order.
Conversely, and equally as worrying, is the general public’s seemingly blind ignorance about how our food and farming systems currently work. Perhaps it is because I have been ranting about the state of our food system for nearly three decades, but it is astonishing to me that most people think that their 95p a pint supermarket milk comes from happy cows grazing peacefully in flower-rich meadows and that this new methane additive is messing with a pure unadulterated natural product!
It doesn’t take much digging to find out that this is not how most dairy farms manage their cattle, and there are some serious concerns about the ethics and environmental impact of high-production dairy farms. For those of us who have been buying and promoting organic and pasture-for-life products for a long time, this is incredibly frustrating to watch as it unfolds.
I hope the boycott of Arla milk will highlight the fabulous dairy farmers who do indeed rear their cattle in high-welfare, organic, and extensive pasture systems. Instead, it seems to be mostly driving supermarket buyers to switch their brands to other cheap supermarket milk that is anything but Arla! Ironically, some fabulous Arla farmers who run pasture-based organic systems will probably suffer from this boycott, too.
Of course, some excellent dairy farmers will be found amongst the huge dairy supply chains of the major supermarket milk suppliers. There will, however, be quite a number of large-housed dairy units where the cattle never graze in a field. These systems generally use highly concentrated feeds grown from ecologically degenerative arable systems. Such systems often have questionable ethical practices, such as calf separation at birth, an overreliance on antibiotics and fertility hormones, and cows being treated like production machines where yield is prioritised over metabolic health and longevity. For these housed systems where the cow is decoupled from the methane-oxidising grassland environment, you can see why there is a case to be made for the use of methane inhibitors!
Methane inhibitors are a mechanistic response to the mechanisation and decoupling of what should be a natural system: cows eating diverse pasture and producing nutrient-dense milk. Caroline Grindrod
But a better response, of course, and one I have committed my life’s work to support, is to buy our meat and milk from pasture-based, organic, and ideally regenerative systems. In these situations, the methane emitted is simply a natural part of the carbon cycle.
Primal Meats does not and will never sell meat from animals that have been fed methane inhibitors. Instead, we dedicate our climate response to promoting and supporting farming methods that achieve net zero by redesigning their systems to ones with minimal inputs and managing their land to sequester carbon, improve water cycles, and naturally oxidise methane.
Pasture for Life has posted its stance on the website, which I encourage you to read
And you can find a list of Pasture for Life certified dairy https://www.pastureforlife.org/where-to-buy/where-to-buy-dairy/
Patrick Holden the CEO of the Sustainable Food Trust has also written an excellent response to the Arla debacle.