Part 4: Agriculture, Ecosystems, and the Future of Food
The right solution here might not be all or nothing. Rather, we might have to start looking at how natural systems work and doing our best to support those processes instead of circumventing them. Cattle manure has proven a vital component in healthy grassland ecosystems. Not only does the grass thrive—it expands beyond the intended boundaries of the test area. The cows breached the safety fencing and did what cows do: pee and poo. And eat. And move. And breed. A dynamic equilibrium is found. The grassland slowly spreads around the planet, supported by the activity of the cows, whose population is kept in check by the wolves. Or a virus could wipe out the whole herd of cattle. Just one of these three species dies, and the entire system goes with. The solution? As quickly as possible, introduce as many new species of plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi to increase the biodiversity and thereby stabilize the planetary ecology. It was because millions of bison and other ruminants were grazing and fertilizing the soil, driving the solar fueled process that typifies grasslands. Without ruminants chomping, grass just grows, oxidizes (this is a slow, nonproductive process in which sunlight slowly turns organic matter into the biological equivalent of ashtray leavings), and eventually dies. Over 90 percent of the pasture’s health lies underground. Continuous grazing, where the land is not allowed to rest, depletes the root biomass, increases the bare ground, lowers soil organic carbon reserves, and contributes to soil erosion and compaction, decreasing its water-holding capacity. Exposed soils— which can result from overgrazing, overstocking, or poor cropping—emit greenhouse gasses. Industrial monocropping, though it can temporarily feed a lot of people some cheap calories, is a horror show to nature. Growing food is a biological process, but we’ve taken this biological process and turned it into a chemical one. Not only is this system more precarious than we’d like, the very processes supporting industrial agriculture are literally blowing the soil from beneath our feet. The bulk of modern life, including food production, is driven by the use of fossil fuels. This would continue the trend of the past sixty years, with wheat, rice, and corn taking center stage in the diets of most people. Modern agricultural practices have allowed us to dramatically increase our numbers to the point where humans have expanded to nearly every corner of the globe. But in this process we have inadvertently shifted what was once a highly diversified planetary ecosystem into something much closer to Grassworld. Synthetic fertilizers bypass the complex natural processes established over millennia involving sunlight, plants, animals, and a host of soil microbes. These are the three main greenhouse gasses (GHG) associated with agriculture: carbon dioxide (CO2), primarily released in plowing, cutting trees, and when burning fossil fuels, methane (CH4), which comes mostly from rice and belching cattle, and nitrous oxide (N2O), largely coming from the application of fertilizers. According to a recent NASA study, the largest contributors to methane are fossil fuels, fires, and wetlands or rice farming. It all comes from a 2006 analysis by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) called Livestock’s Long Shadow. The report stated that livestock produce 18 percent of all GHG emissions, which was more than the transportation sector. In the case of cattle, a full life cycle analysis was done on the industry. This means they looked at the feed production, transport of the feed, processing, transport to stores, and the like—everything from what the animal ate to how it ends up in a consumer’s meal. There’s a lot more going on here than cow burps. More damningly, the same cradle-to-grave assessment was not conducted on the transportation sector. Only direct emissions from burning gasoline were calculated. A new study was published showing that fertilizer plants emit a hundred times more methane than the industry previously reported. Once this is folded into the GHG emissions data, it will be even clearer that synthetic chemical-driven industrial monocrop agriculture—which has brought us high yields at the expense of soil loss, ecosystem destruction, and intense GHG emissions—will no longer be acceptable as we move into the future. Instead of utilizing pasture grown with the help of free energy from the sun and photosynthesis, the peas, soy, and other crops that go into these burgers must be sprayed, harvested, transported to a factory, and then dumped into large vats to be extruded into a product hardly distinguishable from pet food. There’s nothing natural, eco friendly, or pure about it. Pollinators lose their habitat, birds lose their food, soil microbes are annihilated, and water runoff destroys waterways, creating dead zones. When you compare this production method to a grazing animal on pasture, which is actually improving ecosystem function, converting food we can’t digest (grass) on land we can’t crop (pasture) into the most vital and nourishing food for humans (meat) with very little needed in the way of labor, inputs, and fossil fuels, then regeneratively produced beef is the clear winner here. Starting to document other ecological outcomes from grazing animals, like water filtration rates, increase in plant diversity, decreases in bare spots in pastures, and the return of pollinators, birds, and other wildlife. None of this is happening in the industrial monocrop system. What we take away from this is that even typical beef is a net win for our food system nutritionally, and if we improve our production and finish cattle in a well-managed system on grass, which helps dramatically reduce emissions, then it can benefit the environment as well. Now, in the case of chicken and pork, we are talking about a highly energy-intensive process that diverts what is ostensibly human food into animal food, but this is almost purely grains and legume products such as soybeans. With cattle, it’s quite different. When looking at what only ruminants eat, the numbers are even lower for grain, at only 10–13 percent of the diet for cattle, globally. Grass and leaves make up 57.4 percent of global ruminant feed rations. The rest is inedible by humans, like “crop residue” such as corn stalks. In response to the “plants = good” and “meat = bad” paradigm, we’d like you to consider this question: Is overgrazing worse than industrial synthetic-chemical monocropping? Over their lifespan, typical cattle only get 10 percent of their diet from grain. This means that about 90 percent of the feed for beef is inedible by humans. Let’s ruminate on that for a moment: Cattle convert grass and other nutrient-poor food into nutrient-dense food for humans. This is something ruminants are really good at doing. They’re upcycling nutrients! Beyond Burger is one famous plant-based meat substitute that’s gotten large amounts of funding. But is this a healthier product than grass-finished beef, and is it really better for the environment? The main ingredients are pea protein isolate and canola oil. Do you think that chemically sprayed monocropped peas and canola fields are causing less harm than a field of grass-fed cattle on land we can’t crop, increasing biodiversity and soil health? Is this product increasing or decreasing biodiversity and soil health? They aren’t even using organic ingredients, and nutritionally, this is a pale comparison to a real beef burger. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: we don’t need more calories in our food system; we need more nutrients. This means that the more we “megacrop,” the more soil degradation happens. As soil health fails, so will the amount of land that we have to farm. No matter the technique, the main idea we’re trying to get across is this: by far the best thing a farmer can do is increase soil biology, which is what’s necessary to make minerals bioavailable to plants. For example, one could make the case—and we will—that eating a diet built from grazing animals, fruits, vegetables, and roots and tubers is not only more nutrient dense (healthier) but arguably more ethical because it is more environmentally sustainable.
