Recommended Reading: The Summer 2022 Issue of World Wildlife Magazine (available online). Here are some excerpts:
A new vision for food. By Melissa Ho, World Wildlife Magazine/Summer 2022
Agricultural production is currently responsible for 70% of biodiversity loss and represents 70% of global water use. And in a negative cycle, climate change, exacerbated in part by agriculture, is impacting our ability to produce food as it drives the loss of pollinators and wreaks havoc on freshwater supplies….
There are ways to produce food for a growing global population that don’t cost us the Earth. We need to collectively make food production smarter, use land and freshwater resources more efficiently, emit less carbon, drastically reduce waste throughout supply chains, and recognize small-scale food producers as guides and knowledge-holders—and as part of the solution. Indeed, they’re often nature’s guardians and conservation’s biggest allies.
Common Ground. By Di Tipping-Woods, World Wildlife Magazine/Summer 2022
[Grassland] plow-up across the Great Plains has continued to accelerate for the second year in a row. The data shows that from 2018 to 2019 about 2.6 million acres of grassland—an area larger than Yellowstone National Park—were plowed up, primarily to make way for row crops. Almost 70% of new conversion across the Great Plains was for three crops that are grown primarily for food and fuel: corn (25%), soy (22%), and wheat (21%).
In addition to impacting wildlife habitat, these changes release enormous amounts of carbon, exacerbate droughts and wildfires, and cause harmful soil degradation and erosion, threatening the interconnected livelihoods of rural ranching communities and the ecosystem they rely on.
[For some ranchers], a primary approach to sustainable ranching is rotational grazing—a method that involves frequently moving their cattle to different pastures, often using temporary electric fences that divide the land into smaller pastures (this is known as cross fencing). This type of grazing allows the soil and grasses to rest and recover more often and between seasons—and improves overall grassland health.
“The grasslands evolved to be grazed, with cattle now mimicking the action of historical grazers like bison,” says [one rancher]. “If a cow munches the grasses down to where there are 2 to 3 inches left, and then is rotated to another pasture, the grasses can recover all that growth within one growing season while also putting down more roots, which store carbon.” The resulting mosaic of heterogeneous, patchy habitat also supports a diversity of wildlife.
[These ranchers] say they don’t think of themselves as conservationists so much as stewards of the land.
Approximately 73% (over 94 million acres) of remaining grasslands in the Northern Great Plains are privately owned. While ranchers operate across a spectrum of sustainability, they all face pressure to convert existing grasslands into cropland, which—depending on market fluctuations—can yield better short-term profits than livestock can. This reality means that, when wheat and barley prices go up, ranchers may feel compelled to plow up and plant crops on large areas of intact grasslands.
But in the long term, plains land is not well-suited for row crops. In addition to releasing large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, the conversion sets off a cycle of negative feedback loops: Row crop agriculture requires more water and fertilizer, which further degrades the ecosystem, leaving farmers even more vulnerable to weather conditions and market forces than ranchers.
Food Forward. By Madeleine Janz, World Wildlife Magazine/Summer 2022
WWF [World Wildlife Fund] has documented the success of closed-loop systems on farms where manure can be transformed into fuel. First, manure is collected and fermented in a sealed tank. Over time, bacteria digest the manure, which produces bio-gas that’s then converted into electricity. Leftover waste becomes fertilizer or compost. Working with universities and dairy farms, WWF is researching how food waste can be co-digested with manure to displace fossil fuels, reduce the amount of food sent to landfills, and create new revenue streams for farmers.
And from a previous post about cattle management:
Common misconceptions about the effect of grazing cattle on the environment:
Agricultural land and wild habitat are mutually exclusive.
This is mostly true, but not for sustainable cattle ranches on lands already adapted to grazing ruminants.
As long as demand for beef keeps rising, more and more land must be cleared for cattle.
Not all ranchers clear land for raising cattle. For example, US cattle typically graze on marginal grasslands that were populated by millions of roaming bison and pronghorn antelope long before European contact.
Grazing cattle inevitably harm ecosystems and biodiversity.
Not true. Per Sheila J. Barry/ UC Division of Agriculture & Natural Resources: “Well-managed grazing can control non-native plants and maintain habitat and ecosystems to support a variety of species…maintaining ranching, or managed grazing for beef cattle production, can support the conservation of many threatened and endangered species…” In Patagones, a semi-arid area of Argentina, some farmers are working to repair damaged ecosystems by switching from growing cereal to improved and natural pasture for grazing livestock.
If North Americans ate less beef, North America would export more beef and therefore reduce demand for beef from the tropics.
Beef from the tropics is leaner and cheaper than beef from developed countries in the Northern Hemisphere. The export markets are different too. The US exports to higher-income countries where demand growth is slow, while tropical beef goes to middle-income countries where demand is rising quickly.
What Governments Should Do
Governments should offer farmers and ranchers plenty of technical guidance and financial assistance to help them intensify production and sustainably manage their land. That’s the carrot. The stick would be strict enforcement of environmental protection laws.
Further Reading:
Beef cattle grazing more help than harm for endangered plants and animals by Sheila J. Barry/ UC Division of Agriculture & Natural Resources May 19, 2021
Broom, D.M. Land and Water Usage in Beef Production Systems. (2019), Animals, 9, 286. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani9060286
European settlement shifted methane emissions from wildlife to livestock by Amy Stewart/ASAS Communications American Society of Animal Science May 16, 2012
Is Meat Bad for the Environment? CLEAR Center (Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research at UC Davis) October 23, 2019
Saving the Amazon: How cattle ranchers can halt deforestation, by Sara Miller Llana/World Wildlife Fund March 4, 2020
Smith, Stephen B et al. (2018) “Current situation and future prospects for global beef production: overview of special issue.” Asian-Australasian journal of animal sciences vol. 31,7: 927-932. doi: 10.5713/ajas.18.0405
Stephanie A.Terry, John A.Basarab, Le LuoGuan, and Tim A.McAllister. (2020) Strategies to improve the efficiency of beef cattle production. Canadian Journal of Animal Science. 101(1): 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjas-2020-0022
The Amazon is turning into savannah – we have 5 years to save it, by Graham Lawton/ New Scientist December 8, 2021
Why U.S. Beef Isn’t Causing Deforestation and Land Use Change Elsewhere, CLEAR Center (Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research at UC Davis) February 10, 2020