Beef: Just Bad, or Can Regenerative Grazing Make it Beneficial?
By Lydia Wandmacher
Image: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/daf95d3f-2f0a-4eb9-b62b-24b0b98279fe
“Beef is bad.” We’ve all heard it, and the statistics show that meat, and especially beef, is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Agriculture broadly accounts for about 10% of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions. Globally, animal agriculture accounts for an estimated 14.5% of emissions, and beef alone accounts for around 41% of that 14.5%. Ranching is incredibly resource-intensive, especially when the need for pastureland is added into the equation.
There have been great initiatives towards promoting meatless meals and developing meat alternatives in order to reduce the demand for beef, thus reducing the climate impacts of meat, but what if there was a form of ranching that could help the environment? What if beef could be beneficial? In the United States, there are about 655 million acres of grazing land, which makes ranching the single largest land use in the country. Globally, 70% of grazing lands are degraded.
Imagine what could happen if the cattle grazing on the land could rejuvenate it instead of degrading it. Imagine the environmental impacts of restored grasslands and carbon-negative ranching. That is the goal of regenerative grazing.
Regenerative grazing is a term that encompasses a wide array of ranching practices and techniques, but all the various definitions have a common theme: a focus on the soil. Broader definitions describe it as a form of grazing that is focused on interactions with soil to build soil resilience or as a practice built on ecological principles guiding the relationship between grasslands and ruminants. One rancher described it as using cows as land management tools and working with the land, instead of against it. More specific definitions refer to a grazing technique called Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP). AMP involves short grazing periods, long post-grazing periods for plant recovery, adjusting herd size to environmental conditions, and using multiple paddocks to retain enough plant matter post-grazing to allow for strong regrowth and maintenance of the growing ecosystem. Basically, AMP is a practice built around adjusting the farm to the land, instead of the land to the farm.
It is important to note in these discussions that while regenerative grazing may be a newer theory in the world of popular farming and ranching techniques, it is not actually new. The concepts behind regenerative grazing are based on how wild herds originally would move through the land, grazing and stomping down the ground before moving on. The concepts of human response to the land are not new either; they stem from indigenous land stewardship. These are old ideas and concepts that are being given new names backed by scientific articles.
These scientific articles go into the science of soil health and the impacts of regenerative grazing. Soil health is linked to a wide range of benefits and interconnected positive feedback loops. For example, better pasture management techniques lead to better quality and quantity of plants, which in turn lead to better soil health, which leads to even better plant quality and quantity. It is incredibly cyclical.
Healthier soil has a lot of components, but soil structure and biology are two major ones, both of which are improved by regenerative grazing. Better soil structure goes towards resilience in weather events, which means less erosion, which means fewer problems that stem from erosion. Erosion is also a cyclical problem, meaning that the effects of erosion create situations that increase the amount of topsoil lost due to erosion. Some of these erosion effects include reduced quality and quantity of topsoil to grow plants in, either native or crops, a reduced ability to hold water, which creates flooding and runoff of fertilizers into waterways, and even a decrease in air quality if wind erosion is playing a role. Better soil biology refers to increased amounts of biodiversity within the soil, such as fungi, insects, and microbes. Increased biodiversity positively affects soil structure, water retention, and nutrient cycling.
Regenerative grazing also creates more soil cover, which also reduces soil erosion, as well as increasing carbon retention. Soil with more retained carbon can also retain more water. Some researchers theorize that regenerative grazing could lead to carbon sequestration that exceeds ruminant carbon emissions, which makes ranches that use regenerative grazing techniques carbon negative. Healthier soil overall results in better outcomes for plants, livestock, and soil, among other things.
Better plant outcomes include increased growth and increased biodiversity, which in turn aid in creating habitats for insects and birds, preventing erosion, increasing soil fertility and organic matter levels, improving water quality, heightening water retention, nutrient cycling, and increased evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration is the process by which plants draw heat from the surface and release that heat into the atmosphere, cooling the Earth. This process accounts for about 24% of the global natural hydrological cooling. Better livestock outcomes include improved animal health, better human nutrition from consuming the animals, less bacteria in milk, less reliance on antibiotics, and reduced stress and disease in the herd. Other benefits of regenerative grazing include increased biodiversity above and below the ground, such as more soil microbes, which leads to improved soil aggregate formation. Improved soil aggregate formation, in turn, affects water infiltration, water storage capacity, and nutrient turnover by changing the porosity and aeration of the soil. All these outcomes mean that regenerative grazing could reverse the damage done by traditional grazing practices and return the ecosystems to how they once were.
Beyond the cyclical ecosystem improvements, regenerative grazing reduces reliance on fossil fuels, synthetic fertilizers, and tilling, since the soil is becoming healthier through the regenerative process. Frequent tilling, seen in traditional farming practices, destroys soil structure and plant residue, which contributes to the problems that healthy soil fixes. Tilling over time leads to unhealthy soil, which means that additives must be used to increase soil fertility, which is a temporary solution that creates new problems, like erosion and runoff.
Regenerative grazing helps heal degraded soil in multiple different ways, and degraded soil releases carbon back into the atmosphere. As discussed, healthy soil has many important components which stack on top of each other. This intricate web that contributes to healthy soil also contributes to increased carbon sequestration, which in turn increases other soil components in a healthier fashion, resulting in increased carbon sequestration. For example, the increased level of plant growth in regenerative grazing fields means increased photosynthesis, which means there is more carbon being taken in by plants. Increased plant cover plays a role in increased soil health. Healthier soil for microbes and increased nutrient and water retention play important roles in minimizing carbon release into the atmosphere, meaning that more carbon continues to be retained in the land, combined with the increased levels being sequestered from the increased level of plant cover. More carbon sequestered in the land means less carbon in the atmosphere.
Excess atmospheric carbon has long been recognized as a cause of climate change. One government initiative to combat excess atmospheric carbon is currently being proposed by the Biden administration. This proposal entails using $30 billion from the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) to pay farmers for implementing sustainable practices and for sequestering carbon in their soil. Generally, CCC funds may be used to implement programs established by Congress and to carry out activities authorized under its charter act. The CCC does fund some conservation-farmer actions, but an increased focus on funding for regenerative grazing practices over other grazing practices would be a firm push towards regenerative grazing. This federal program would complement similar programs that some states have started to put into place, such as Missouri’s Parks, Soils, and Water Sales Tax, which uses a portion of the money collected to support farmers implementing conservation efforts.
Despite the spread of information about the contribution of beef greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, Americans are still eating tons of beef. In 2020, there were approximately 26,738.3 million pounds of beef produced that was federally inspected. That is a lot of beef consumption. Instead of trying to change consumer habits, the federal government should focus on promoting regenerative grazing methods that can mitigate the effects of climate change by sequestering carbon, not to mention all the other tangential effects of healthier soil. This promotion can and should take many forms, like providing educational opportunities, aids and consultations in switching to regenerative grazing, and subsidies to cover that end. Perhaps, beef can be beneficial after all.