Meat has been part of most hominin and human diets for more than 2.5 million years. Its consumption is now under attack from three directions – health, animal welfare and climate change. Most people will want to consume more meat as they grow increasingly wealthy. The chances of persuading sufficient numbers of people to stop eating meat – and therefore reduce livestock farming – as to have a significant impact on climate change is almost zero.
The primary cause of climate change is the use of fossil fuels, and agriculture most certainly uses a lot. Rather than failing to persuade people to become vegetarian or vegan we can have a much greater impact by changing the way we cultivate meat, so that the downsides are minimised and the upsides emphasised.
Meat is a food source we must not ignore
Meat is a remarkably valuable food source, providing significant amounts of protein as well as vital amino acids, vitamins and minerals, in some cases more than in any other food source. However, there are potential downsides to growing and eating meat.
Some meats, such as salamis and sausage, are reported as unhealthy but the evidence is weak. Some adamant vegetarians have returned to eating meat citing health as the reason. And there are communities who have lived long term on vegetarian diets, most notably in India, and others, such as the Inuit, who survive healthily on predominantly animal diets.
Methane and meat
Cows, sheep and goats are ruminants, and their complex stomach systems produce methane – mainly by belching. Methane is one of the drivers of climate change. It is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, but it disappears faster.
So, should we stop eating meat? 90% of atmospheric methane emissions come from five sources: wetlands 33%; fossil fuels 20%; animal digestion and manure 19%; waste 11% and rice production 5%. Annual CO2 emissions are equivalent to twice the methane emissions from all these sources and the primary source of that CO2 is fossil fuels.
Human beings cannot eat grass, but ruminants can. So, CO2 is absorbed as the grass grows, and whilst grass-fed animals do release methane, the manure they produce is reabsorbed into the soil enriching it. If properly managed the entire process of growing meat can be carbon negative – meaning that the total amount of methane and CO2 produced in the process is less than the amount absorbed and stored in the soil. This is brilliantly explained by Nicolette Hahn Niman in her book Defending Beef.
Wetlands absorb atmospheric CO2 and produce some methane. The exact balance will vary from place to place but we cannot just count the methane. The same is true of rice production. CO2 is absorbed, and methane released. Fossil fuels just add methane and CO2 that has been buried for millennia.
Animal welfare
The way that animals are bred and kept and grown will have huge impacts on their welfare. The pressures on individuals to reduce the amount of meat they eat rarely distinguishes between the different methods.
The industrial approach of packing animals into sheds and feedlots means these animals have no opportunity to undertake natural behaviours, be that rooting, grazing, pecking, etc. Grass-fed and outdoor reared animals do have the opportunity to live much more naturally. And whilst eating meat does mean killing animals, it does not have to involve pain and suffering, provided abattoirs are properly run and regulated.
Animal feedlots a threat to health
Outside of Europe, but possibly coming to the UK with another trade deal, is meat from animals fed antibiotics to prevent disease in their close packed quarters and to promote growth. Hormones are also fed to industrial animals as growth promoters.
Uncontaminated cowpats feed the soil as they are deposited around the fields, whilst industrial manure grows in vast slurry lakes, is difficult to move where it might be useful, and can contaminate water tables. The meat and the manure from animal feedlots and sheds will contain the residues of those hormones and antibiotics. Hormones can have disruptive effects on other animals and on humans. Disease resistance to antibiotics and antimicrobials is growing, putting many of the gains of modern medicine at risk.
Grasslands
As the deep green grass of English farmland with its scattering of cows fades into the history books, it is worth remembering that not all ground can support lush pasture. The British Isles could be largely rewilded as has been done very successfully at Knepp in Sussex. Sheep would need to be restricted to fenced areas, as their grazing includes eating the shoots that become the next generation of trees.
And much of the world does not have ground to support trees or woodland. 40% of the land surface of the earth can only support grass. This includes: the Asian and Australian steppes, North American prairies, South American pampas, African grassland and savanna, and European plains.
The tropical grasslands of sub-Saharan Africa are shrinking as the desert expands. Worst affected is the semi-arid Sahel but further south the savannas are drying. Rainfall on an area that has become drier is less likely to sink into the earth and feed future growth but more likely to run off taking precious topsoil with it. This is true of most of these grasslands – and how it can be reversed is explained later.
Topsoil
Agriculture is destroying the temperate grasslands of the North American prairies and elsewhere as it repeatedly ploughs the earth. This shreds the mycorrhizal fungi that hold together the biodiversity that once lived in that soil and fed the early crops. Now artificial fertiliser and pesticides must be used, and that demands vast amounts of fossil fuels for the process. And as the earth lies bare for months wind and water take it away.
And every gram of soil that is lost releases CO2 and other carbon products into the atmosphere driving climate change. Primarily due to agriculture half of the world’s topsoil has been lost in the last 150 years. The current rate is 3.4 tonnes of topsoil lost every year, for each man, woman and each child upon this planet. Agriculture has to change how it grows crops as well as how it grows meat.
Livestock farming: is there a solution?
Desertification, soil degradation and topsoil loss have an enormous impact on humanity’s ability to survive whilst making climate chaos worse. And they can all be reversed. Cover crops, green manures, no till agriculture and alternative methods of rice production can reduce soil loss, improve biodiversity, lessen the need for artificial fertilisers and increase carbon retention.
The grasslands and savannas of Africa used to teem with animals in their millions – wildebeest, impala, zebra and gazelle and many others – plus the megafauna of hippopotamus, giraffe and elephant. As an example, elephant numbers have plummeted from 26 million in 1800 to under 350,000 in 2021. When herbivores survive in sufficient numbers and are preyed upon by lions, cheetahs and jackals, their activity has remarkable effects.
Clustered in tight herds they eat the vegetation and leave their urine and dung feeding regrowth of the plants. Their feet and hooves create depressions in the earth, so when the next rains come, instead of evaporating and running off in hours, the water is held long enough to sink into the soil and feed new growth for months and years. Instead of dry wadis with earth turning into dust, streams and rivers run and the land does not deteriorate to desert. If it does, the rains stop coming, creating more desert and driving global heating.
Recreating the vast herds of herbivores and reintroducing the predators is no longer practical with our current populations. But Allan Savory has demonstrated the best way to reverse desertification is by bringing back herbivores. We may not be able to return bison to the American prairies but we can introduce a different animal and use holistic planned management to mimic the processes of old. That animal is the cow, because cattle do everything that the herbivores do.
This approach has been challenged by some scientists and others have shown that properly managed grazing can sequester carbon, reverse desertification exactly as Savory has demonstrated, whilst producing valuable food.
A return to mixed farming and holistic management
Change how we produce meat and get it out of the sheds. If that means growing some in distant places then use solar power for slaughterhouses and refrigeration and for transport. Returning some land to mixed farming means crops can be grown without artificial fertilisers as they reap the benefits of last year’s animal droppings.
Moving meat production to mixed farms and to grasslands reduces the need to grow crops to feed animals. It reduces the demand to clear cut rainforests, protecting their precious biodiversity. And it also reduces the need for fossil fuels.
Exactly how much food can be produced by mixed farming and holistic planned management on grasslands is uncertain. But this is not an ‘all or nothing’ equation. Every animal raised by these means sequesters a higher carbon equivalent than it produces, and reduces the need for industrial meat production. The more we can reduce, and ideally stop intensive animal-rearing and eat grass-fed meat, the more meat ceases to be a ‘problem’ and can be part of the solution.
