or feed me swiss or spinach chard as well.I'm with the worms and bugs, on that one. Give me a good Romaine or spinach any day, and keep the Kale for decoration only.
How much food is in our gas tanks?
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Often it seems that doing things in a more 'natural' way is better. Certainly feeding cows grass rather than grain seems better for the cows and more natural.... but the numbers tell a different story.
Switching feedlot cattle from grains to grass would vastly increase the land use footprint AND the amount of methane emission of beef production. Beef grazing and feed production already uses more land than producing food for direct human consumption, and is responsible for global warming forcing comparable to all the worlds cars.
Increasing both by a multiple would be absurd unless you had another earth available and wanted to accelarate global warming.
Grazing cows under wind turbines and solar panels doesn't make grazing green. And the land already being grazed is a far larger area than would be needed for wind and solar in a future 100% renewable scenario.
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Wisco Shepherd
Minister of Fire
All that grain has to be grown somewhere so the land use is quite similar and I would tend to believe that properly managed pasture which requires minimal fertilizer inputs and tillage is better for our soil, water, and wildlife. With proper grazing management less land can support more livestock and utilizing multispecies grazing is even more efficient.
I do understand your concern about emissions from cattle and some early research definitely did point this way. However, newer research tends to find that these early results were not entirely accurate and do not take into consideration the difference in the methane released by cows (biogenic methane vs the methane produced by cars, tractors, fertilizer plants).
All in all I would rather have 1000 acres of well managed, carbon sequestering pasture with healthy soils and minimal runoff than 1000 acres of corn.
EbS-P
Minister of Fire
The fertilizer input for corn is massive on a CO2 emissions scale I’d like to see that broken out.
If your reference more recent research being that grazing is green, please provide some sources.
If you are talking about White Oak Pastures, that project has been throughly debunked... with huge inputs of external feed and biomass, highly degraded land can be converted to productive pasture, and that process can sequester some carbon into the soil... for 5-10 years before saturation. Their own peer-reviewed paper shows just this, and led them to scale back their previous, unfounded PR claims to be producing 'green, sustainable beef'.
Not only does WOP have higher emissions over time than feedlots (not sustainable), it has a productivity in beef/acre far less than conventional grain and feedlot practice, which would require far more land use if adopted broadly.
Here is their peer reviewed paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2020.544984/full
Check out figure 2:
https://www.frontiersin.org/files/A...4984-HTML-r2/image_m/fsufs-04-544984-g002.jpg
Their claims to being carbon negative depend on that line fit of very noisy data. Their claim to being sustainable is based upon that line continuing upwards forever, and not plateauing after 10 years. And remember they were only able to sequester that much carbon bc they were working with highly degraded land to begin with.
Of course, they use General Mills millions of dollars to produce mountains of press releases and slick infographics, which get circulated by the Beef Board for their PR purposes, so everyone believes what they want to believe... that grazing and beef by extension can be 'green'.
Wisco Shepherd
Minister of Fire
Agreed
Not really based on the WOP guys they always seemed very salesman like to me. I try not to suck up to either side we definitely need feedlots we don't have the genetics to finish most of our animals on grass and they do allow for a significant amount of animals to utilize a smaller space. But negating the land use and carbon impact of getting the feed to the feedlot seems to make this argument lopsided.
Grazers have also gotten better about "stacking" uses of ground to include things like Silvopasture (livestock and trees) which in turn sequester more carbon and provide quality habitat to wildlife.
Livestock and food production will always have environmental impact, you can't get something for nothing but for the long term health of our soils, water, and wildlife I will still opt for 1000 acres of grass, legumes, and forbs mixed with trees, brush and wildlife cover fed by a healthy soil biome than tilled acres of corn on dead dirt going to feed ruminant animals (which have evolved to eat corn, not grass). Even if the results noted by folks like WOP tend to taper off and stabilize that is a better trend than what happens to soil after years of tillage and monoculture cultivation.
Sure. Everyone like natural-like landscapes.
But the problem is that natural landscapes are much less productive than intensively farmed ones, acre for acre. We ran out of land to feed the world with natural-like landscapes around 1950, and now produce 6X that much food for humans and our livestock.
Why not raise food in the way that minimizes total land usage (and global warming at the same time) by intensively farming the smallest possible area (with synthetic fertilizer inputs), and then leaving the maximum remainder of the land in a natural undeveloped state?
While I might be misinformed, I am under the impression that cattle grazing operations generally degrade landscapes compared to wild ruminants.
But the problem is that natural landscapes are much less productive than intensively farmed ones, acre for acre. We ran out of land to feed the world with natural-like landscapes around 1950, and now produce 6X that much food for humans and our livestock.
Why not raise food in the way that minimizes total land usage (and global warming at the same time) by intensively farming the smallest possible area (with synthetic fertilizer inputs), and then leaving the maximum remainder of the land in a natural undeveloped state?
While I might be misinformed, I am under the impression that cattle grazing operations generally degrade landscapes compared to wild ruminants.
Analysis of global warming impacts of grain versus grass feeding DO take the impacts of feed production into account.
Wisco Shepherd
Minister of Fire
Because high input tillage and based operations will eventually deplete those acres both in terms of nutrients in the soil and the topsoil itself. We simply do not have the topsoil to support what we are doing. And yes, poorly managed ruminants utterly destroy the ground via compaction, overgrazing, ruining ponds and creek banks, destruction of soil biology, and habitat loss. When I drive and see "pasture" that is putting green short and showing signs of these things it seriously irks me.
However, I encourage you to find a time to tour a farm that intensively manages their pastures and focuses on soil health. Our 20 acres started as 13 acres of overworked soil and 7 of mixed brush and native grasses. With good management we have deer in our fields eating clover year round, significantly decreased runoff, no need for chemical inputs and as we grow our flock we will be able to stock nearly twice as much as the neighbors.
![[Hearth.com] How much food is in our gas tanks?](https://www.hearth.com/talk/data/attachments/318/318658-4b15ea14eb05f9d8c18d0f7830cd5cfc.jpg?hash=LNu3sr5P-b "[Hearth.com] How much food is in our gas tanks?")
Because this practice is carbon intensive, it destroys the soil leading to mass erosion of both water and windborne, in some cases it can seriously mess with the underlying aquifer, and it is a system of ever-increasing dependencies on fertilizers and pesticides as the soil degrades. One might as well just grow hydroponically to reduce some of these impacts. The soil is a living entity, not a neutral growth medium. Regenerative practices are more sustainable with less impact.
So, we are basically arguing about sustainable agriculture, while agreeing that most grain cultivation AND animal cultivation as currently practiced is not sustainable long term, because it destroys the land.
Again, I will assert the goal is to produce the food that people want to eat, sustainably, on the least land area, and with the least global warming impact. And to leave any land not under production (for crops or grazing) in a natural state, with remediation if needed.
That will require us to adopt more sustainable grain production (to produce biomass intensively), and finish cattle on grains in feedlots (to speed their growth and reduce methane emissions).
The usual figure is that humans get 18% of our calories from 70% of the land in agricultural production.. much of that figure is grazing. It is usually argued that that 70% land is 'marginal' and not useful for any other purpose. But that sounds self serving to me... we drained swamps because they were not useful to us. Deserts used to be seen as places with no wildlife to speak of. And would the grazing land still be marginal if it were not being continuously grazed, often for the last century, using bad practices?
I'm just saying that if we want to increase grass finishing of cattle, for whatever reason, we will need a LOT more land than we currently have, which will need to come from somewhere. Because we are already using MOST of the land available for this purpose for agriculture.
Do you want to find some degraded land and give it the WOP treatment (at huge taxpayer expense) and bring it back? OK. Put that approach head to head with other remediation approaches that don't use cattle and see what is cheapest and works best. But even so, I don't think you will find enough land to move the grazing needle much higher than the current 70% of land use. And while we can argue that carbon sequestration (WOP style to pasture) will offset the GW driving of that cattle production (for the first 10 or so years), its possible that other remediation strategies (e.g. to pasture then forest) will sequester much MORE net carbon and provide a more diverse habitat for wild animals afterwards.
I personally don't worry about this stuff too much, because I think the soil will hold together for another century or so until human populations start to fall significantly. And by then our 'livestock' will be bred to non-sentience, grown under controlled conditions or in a fermenter, or most folks will be vegan, or enjoying delicious 'air protein' cuisine originally developed on Mars, or other things we can't imagine.
For those who care, here is a nitty-gritty review paper about how to change animal husbandry to meet our current climate goals:
The authors conclude that with best practices, cattle production can be improved to meet 2030 goals, but not 2050 goals with current technology.
If you care to read it, here is the UN-funded 400 page book reviewing the impacts of animal ag as currently practiced on global land and water use, and its GW and biodiversity impacts.
The executive summary is pretty short.
Again, I will assert the goal is to produce the food that people want to eat, sustainably, on the least land area, and with the least global warming impact. And to leave any land not under production (for crops or grazing) in a natural state, with remediation if needed.
That will require us to adopt more sustainable grain production (to produce biomass intensively), and finish cattle on grains in feedlots (to speed their growth and reduce methane emissions).
The usual figure is that humans get 18% of our calories from 70% of the land in agricultural production.. much of that figure is grazing. It is usually argued that that 70% land is 'marginal' and not useful for any other purpose. But that sounds self serving to me... we drained swamps because they were not useful to us. Deserts used to be seen as places with no wildlife to speak of. And would the grazing land still be marginal if it were not being continuously grazed, often for the last century, using bad practices?
I'm just saying that if we want to increase grass finishing of cattle, for whatever reason, we will need a LOT more land than we currently have, which will need to come from somewhere. Because we are already using MOST of the land available for this purpose for agriculture.
Do you want to find some degraded land and give it the WOP treatment (at huge taxpayer expense) and bring it back? OK. Put that approach head to head with other remediation approaches that don't use cattle and see what is cheapest and works best. But even so, I don't think you will find enough land to move the grazing needle much higher than the current 70% of land use. And while we can argue that carbon sequestration (WOP style to pasture) will offset the GW driving of that cattle production (for the first 10 or so years), its possible that other remediation strategies (e.g. to pasture then forest) will sequester much MORE net carbon and provide a more diverse habitat for wild animals afterwards.
I personally don't worry about this stuff too much, because I think the soil will hold together for another century or so until human populations start to fall significantly. And by then our 'livestock' will be bred to non-sentience, grown under controlled conditions or in a fermenter, or most folks will be vegan, or enjoying delicious 'air protein' cuisine originally developed on Mars, or other things we can't imagine.
For those who care, here is a nitty-gritty review paper about how to change animal husbandry to meet our current climate goals:
The authors conclude that with best practices, cattle production can be improved to meet 2030 goals, but not 2050 goals with current technology.
If you care to read it, here is the UN-funded 400 page book reviewing the impacts of animal ag as currently practiced on global land and water use, and its GW and biodiversity impacts.
The executive summary is pretty short.
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Ashful
Minister of Fire
People in the plains states surely have a different perspective, but I always chuckle when any east-coaster looks at a farm and reminisces about nature or open land. Cleared farm land on the east coast is anything but natural, it took a lot of energy and man-hours to clear those natural forests!
The UK used to be all forest (think Robin Hood), and it is now nearly all pasture.
The US prairie was cultivated by controlled burning of forest lands by native americans before Columbus. It was not the wholly 'natural' state of the land as often supposed.
Folks will always see what they have now as the only 'natural' way to use the land.
More to the point... with the East Coast the forest has been cleared for agriculture, and reforested sometimes multiple times. This shows the possibility that land currently used for pasture or grains can be converted back to useful wild habitat.
":Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb"
I only ask that the Martian Air Protein be served with a side of Xanax.
Rural New England used to be the bread basket for the big cities along the coast in the 1800s. Much of Maine central NH and VT southern VT were farmed. VT was 80% cleared in the mid 1800s and now is more than 80% forested. The wholesale logging and farming changed the forest type. If they couldn't farm it they had livestock like sheep forage it.
This article is more about logging but may be of interest on how woods can grow back. https://vtdigger.org/2018/07/15/green-mountains-not-green/
This article is more about logging but may be of interest on how woods can grow back. https://vtdigger.org/2018/07/15/green-mountains-not-green/
EbS-P
Minister of Fire
I’m sure a roaming heard of buffalo degraded the landscape for weeks/months. At this point what are we considering a “natural” landscape? Conservation reserve program took a lot of acres out of production and planted thr with “natural” prairie grasses. But if there was an elm tree within sight they started to really take hold.
We had nearly an 80 bushel per acre dryland corn crop on the KS/CO border this year. 30 years ago no one grew dry land corn. Perennial wheat has always been 15-30 years away but it’s looks closer than ever now. My point is land use will continue to evolve driven by the climate constraints and science. These advances continue to maximize profits but could be with the right incentives be focused on improving climate and or ecologically.
Actually, the opposite. There is clear evidence that they improve the landscape. By trampling, wallowing, pooping, etc. they create a rich habitat and improved soils. As bison forage, they aerate the soil with their hooves, which aids in plant growth, and disperse native seeds, helping to maintain a healthy and balanced ecosystem.
Landmark Study Demonstrates Cultural, Ecological and Economic Benefits of Tribal Bison Restoration
A study published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution found that widespread restoration of bison to Tribal lands throughout the Northern Great Plains can help restore the prairie ecosystem while improving the long-running issue of food insecurity and food sovereignty for Native Nations and may...
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