Western Morning News (Saturday)
Grazing livestock – the natural way
We don’t need to give up meat or dairy to save the world, says Mario Du Preez
SHOULD we give up red meat and doom our livestock farmers to a life of financial ruin and plant-based purgatory? Billionaire IT guru and philanthropist, Bill Gates, and many other environmentalists, certainly think so.
In fact, Gates wants us to substitute red meat with lab-grown, 100% fake meat. No thank you to all that, I say. After all, I was brought up in an African country where barbecuing is a quasi-religion, where barbecued chicken meat is considered a serving of side-salad, and where an indoor hearth, dedicated exclusively to barbecuing, is any estate agent’s silver bullet. Some would argue my position reeks of hypocrisy.
So how do I reconcile my pro-red meat stance with my pro-environment stance? Well, it is almost impossible if one compares the lifecycle assessment of fake meat with that of hormone and anti-bioticfilled, grass-deprived beef reared in dung-covered, concrete feedlots. Note, I said it is almost impossible, since most plant-based meats are derived from soil-degrading, mono-cropped soybean or pea protein, coconut oil, etc., which are grown using genetically modified seeds, fertilizers and herbicides.
But, the situation changes dramatically in favour of red meat consumption when I invoke lowimpact methods of livestock production, under the banner of regenerative farming, as part of my reconciliation efforts.
Why? Because regenerative agriculture can restore degraded soils, help mitigate climate change via carbon sequestration, and enhance biodiversity at farm scale. Luckily for red meat lovers, the UK’s farmland is 65% grass, which is ideally suited both to livestock farming, and the implementation of regenerative farming practices, such as rotational grazing, inter alia (which, by the way, most UK farmers are already practising, to some extent or another). What’s more, the UK government’s Agriculture Act 2020 is hastily ushering in more regenerative farming via its public money for public goods scheme.
How does livestock farming become regenerative? Well, according to Colin Tudge, in his book entitled Six Steps Back to the Land, “… various pioneer farmers worldwide have shown in recent years that permanent grassland can quite easily be managed in ways that keep the vegetation intact and year by year improve the soil beneath.”
The central idea is so-called “mob grazing”. Tudge writes, in a fundamental departure from traditional grazing, that: “Mob grazing is quite different: much more tightly controlled – but also, albeit paradoxically, closer to what grazing animals do in the wild. First, all the animals are gathered into a small space, generally circumscribed by an electric fence. They are close-packed; as many as 50 animals to an acre.” “Then after 12 to 24 hours the whole ‘mob’ is moved along to the next patch – and so on all the way round the grazing area. After several weeks or months, and usually at least six weeks, they get back to the patch they first grazed.
By that time the grass on the first grazed patch has recovered.” This type of grazing facilitates the rapid build-up of the organic content of the soil.
I can already hear the indignant cries from the apostles of the antired meat brigade: this is cruel, unnatural, and inhumane! Not so.
Tudge argues that herds of wild herbivores of the past, such as antelope, aurochs, deer, and pronghorns moved “around in tight packs as a protection against predators.” In short, the electric fence is a “stand-in” for predators.
Apart from restoring soil quality, Tudge also maintains that “it seems, the amount of carbon sequestered by well-managed mob grazing exceeds the amount that the animals expire in the form of methane and carbon dioxide.
This means that the net effect of animals grazed in mobs is not to raise atmospheric carbon, but to reduce it; and since the soil is able to hold far more carbon than the atmosphere does, the effect of this could be very significant.”
Tudge’s arguments are substantiated by a four-year study conducted at Michigan State University viz. rotationally-grazed cattle produced a carbon sink comparable to 6.5 kg of CO2 equivalents per 1 kg of beef, whereas feedlot-produced beef emitted around 33 kg of CO2 equivalents, and plant-based meats, such as producing 1 kg of Impossible Burger, emitted 3.5 kg of CO2 equivalents.
In the final analysis, I think Vandana Shiva puts it best: “Food freedom means you cannot destroy our right to grow food. Secondly, you cannot destroy our governments’ obligations to us to support regenerative agriculture rather than support degenerative agriculture and subsidise it.
“And third, I think we should call for a worldwide boycott of lab foods…” To this I would like to add: it is crucial that we avoid any suggestion of moral superiority in our dealings with one another in the environmental movement, lest it destroys us.
■ Mario Du Preez is an environmental writer, living in Exeter
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