Are Cows Really Ending The World?

Eating red meat is causing irreversible climate change and will end the world. 

This is what an increasingly large portion of the population believe, and government policies are being implemented to reflect this.

This is largely a myth. I’ll explain how below.

Firstly, we’ve all been told that cows emit more greenhouse gases than all of the world’s transport. This is entirely false - cattle contribute less than 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Not only this, but grazing cattle can actually help remove carbon from the atmosphere.

When cattle are raised on natural pasture, such as that beautiful grass-fed beef we all love, they actually can can remove more carbon from the atmosphere than the amount of greenhouse gases they produce! Cows are net negative, carbon neutral, zero emission friends.

grassbasedhealth.blogspot.com2012/08/cattle-emissions.html1

Another point that people speak about is that cattle is using up too much of the world’s water. Partly true. Cattle farms in the US mostly feed cattle concentrates much more than anything else, requiring much irrigation, resulting in thousands of litres of water per kg of meat.

There is, as alway, another way. In Australia, for example, cattle farms without feedlots use only 18-214 litres of water per kg of meat, much lower than others suggest. For reference, a very efficient showerhead uses 9 litres of water per minute. 

link.springer.com10.1007/s11367-010-0161-x

While this style of farming isn’t applicable everywhere, it’s certainly not the climate catastrophe that some say is ruining the world’s environment. Politicians love radical solutions that rarely ever work. Sometimes, there is more than one answer.

Some have even gone as far as saying that cattle grazing erodes the soil and can lead to desertification. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Allan Savory, Zimbabwean scientist and livestock farmer, has tested many grazing methods and found the opposite to be true.

He states that grazing can actually reverse desertification, and that livestock may be humanity’s best hope at restoring land that is currently unusable as pasture.

Check out his TED Talk on the topic here: youtu.be7O66pI

One thing that for certain ruins the soil, killing the microorganisms within it, is ammonium nitrate fertiliser. In the short term, this works by making the soil nitrogen-rich (needed for life), but in the long term makes farms dependent on the fertiliser.

There is a great solution for the dependency on nitrogen fertiliser, which also doubles as a support for cattle grazing. Stop the agricultural segregation of plants and animals, and practice rotational grazing. 

Great thread: twitter.com1489235566113796097?s=46&t=1kURcAdxxTj3JHyIz6ELgw