Grazed perennial grasslands can match current beef production while contributing to climate mitigation and adaptation

Jackson (2022) Agricultural & Environmental Letters
https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ael2.20059

Methane Myopia - Seth Itzkan

My response to the typical methane inquiry about grassfed cattle, enjoy!

“Allow me to put this matter into proper context. Methane is a natural result of the digestion of cellulose via methane producing bacteria (methanogens) in the guts of animals (including insects) that are optimized to eat grass and wood (cellulose sources), such as cows, sheep, goats, termites and cockroaches. This breakdown and recycling of plant nutrients is - of course - essential to the heath of grasslands and their carbon rich soils. Grasslands NEED the interaction of grazers and prodigious amounts of them. The healthier the grasslands, the more grazers must be present. That’s how nature works. It’s like the seals and the kelp forests. They are a system. In a natural grassland system, there is no methane loading. The methane emitted via the necessary biological digestion of the cellulose is then broken down naturally in the soil and in the atmosphere in measure equal to what is produced. Most of the world’s soils today are suffering from a paucity of ruminant herds. There aren’t nearly enough. Ruminant numbers will very likely need to at least double in order to restore the soils of the world that have been decimated by the decline of megafauna at the hands of humans over the past 15,000 years, or so, since the last ice age. In the absence of these wild grazers and their predators, livestock, managed holistically, are our only choice.

Eventually, large parts of the world may be “rewilded,” but, given the panic that emerges with even the slight presence of foxes near human settlements (with their precious pets), I really don’t see how most people are going be ok with billions of wild grazers and 100s of millions of wolves, hyenas, lions, and all the rest, stampeding and patrolling right through suburbs. Don’t see it happening, and even if it did, and the grasslands were restored, would that then lead to an atmospheric methane problem? Is it ok for wild ruminants to emit methane, but not domestic ones?

The problem - of course - isn’t the animals, domestic or wild. The problem is the “system.” Are the animals in a system which is in balance with nature or aren’t they? If they are in a feedlot, eating soy and making manure lagoons, then, obviously, they aren’t in a system that can be self regulating. If, however, they’re on grass, and just eating grass, and moving in a way that restores soil, then they’re in a balanced system. The methane emitted is recycled. There’s no net gain. Assessing the impact of a system by just looking at one variable is, of course, profoundly misleading. There is no scenario in which building livestock to restore depleted soil is bad for the atmosphere or anything else. It is only a net benefit and it is something we must be acting on urgently. Thank you for your interest.”

no vypada, ze monbiot se radne nasral…

It might be ridiculous, but this is not a trivial issue. Allan’s claims have been massively amplified by Big Meat and other sectors: McDonalds, General Mills, JBS et al + Shell, Fox News etc have all used such claims to justify one of the most destructive industries on Earth.

Surfing this tide of bullshit, cattle ranches are even selling carbon credits! Like many other forms of offset, they are completely fraudulent. You might as well buy them from a coal mine. But plenty of businesses are purchasing them.

Loads of unsuspecting people have fallen for this greenwash – millions, for example, watched and believed Allan’s TED talk. It has helped justify an industry that has dispossessed more indigenous people and destroyed a greater expanse of wild ecosystems than any other.

Having wiped out people, wild predators, wild herbivores and entire ecosystems in grasslands across the world, the livestock grazing industry is now ripping down the forests of Brazil, Ecuador, Columbia, Mexico, Madagascar, Myanmar ... It’s an absolute tragedy.

Soil Grown Tall: The Epic Saga of Life from Earth | SpringerLink
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-88739-1

"Soil Grown Tall" looks at the role of life in buffering the global carbon cycle, using evidence captured in paleosoils - fossil soils - over periods stretching back right to the beginning of the solar system..

Gregory is a pretty rare creature - a geologist and paelobiologist specialised in paleosoils, which he has analysed and studied way more than anyone else. He's always expressed surprise at how few colleagues made paleosoils their life's calling and, reading this masterpiece, you cannot but agree with him. More knowledge about our planet's history is hidden in fossil soils than anywhere else.

Retallack shows how paleosoils contain plenty of evidence towards what he calls the Proserpina Principle, or the way the planet achieved homeostasis - long-term stability - without falling either into a runaway greenhouse, like Venus, or an unchanging snowball, like Mars. The secret? A never-ending evolutionary arms race between producers (plants) and consumers (animals).

For example, when trees evolved they precipitated a serious ice age, as lignin is so, so hard to digest. When termites evolved the ability to digest wood a hundred million years later or so, they tipped the planet into a greenhouse world, as they put all the carbon trees had captured back in the air.

Similar producer-precipitated ice ages came earlier (with the evolution of lichens) and later (with the evolution of grasses), interrupted by consumer-precipated greenhouse worlds.

That dance goes back to the very dawn of life: the microbial mats that covered the world three thousand million years ago also drew down vast amounts of carbon dioxide, both directly through photosynthesis, and by enhancing weathering through the acids they produced. They, as much as lichens and trees, were responsible for planetary deep freezes.

The Proserpina Principle kept the planet liveable through mile-wide asteroid impacts and continent-sized volcanic eruptions (see the Siberian or Deccan traps). The huge amounts of carbon that spewed into the air heated the world up, which encouraged plant growth even into polar regions, which soon drew that carbon back into seas and soils.

What this long view leaves you with is, first, that as far as the planet is concerned, we're just the latest consumers tipping the world into a greenhouse (two hundred million years before termites, millipedes did a great job too), and second, that whether we fine-tune the system to keep Holocene-like stability (through all our favourite nature-based solutions, from agroforestry and holistic grazing to ocean iron fertilization and kelp forests) or not, matters little to the world: a hotter one will see less ice and deserts and more forests and grasslands, and they'll do the job of getting carbon back out of the atmosphere whether we like it or not.

Of course, something that matters little to the world may still matter a lot to us. Sea levels 90m higher and crocodile-infested rainforests in Antarctica may be business as usual for the planet, but most definitely not for us.

monbiot proti regenerativni pastve

Perhaps the most important of all environmental issues is land use. Every hectare of land we use for extractive industries is a hectare that can’t support wild forests, savannahs, wetlands, natural grasslands and other crucial ecosystems. And farming swallows far more land than any other human activity.

What are the world’s most damaging farm products? You might be amazed by the answer: organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb. I realise this is a shocking claim. Of all the statements in my new book, Regenesis, it has triggered the greatest rage. But I’m not trying to wind people up. I’m trying to represent the facts. Let me explain

The most damaging farm products? Organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb | Food | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/16/most-damaging-farm-products-organic-pasture-fed-beef-lamb

TUHO: Grasslands store approximately one third of the global terrestrial carbon stocks and can act as an important soil carbon sink. Recent studies show that plant diversity increases soil organic carbon (SOC) storage by elevating carbon inputs to belowground biomass and promoting microbial necromass contribution to SOC storage. Climate change affects grassland SOC storage by modifying the processes of plant carbon inputs and microbial catabolism and anabolism. Improved grazing management and biodiversity restoration can provide low-cost and/or high-carbon-gain options for natural climate solutions in global grasslands. The achievable SOC sequestration potential in global grasslands is 2.3 to 7.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year (CO2e year−1) for biodiversity restoration, 148 to 699 megatons of CO2e year−1 for improved grazing management, and 147 megatons of CO2e year−1 for sown legumes in pasturelands.

SHEFIK: ja fakt nevim. jedna z veci, u kterejch se fakt snazim proniknout do hloubky je interakce pudy, bylozravcu a lidi ...

ten text toho prehledu je dobrej, ale

'overgrazing – defined here as grazing at stocking densities higher than the land can support'

a

'Where soils are over-grazed, reducing the grazing pressure – including by removing the animals altogether if necessary until the vegetation recovers – can help'

prekonana definice/teorie - 'overgrazing' nesouvisi s pocty zvirat, ale casem

ad 'here defined' - zajimavy, ze to definujou, misto aby to definovali opet jako jeden specifickej pristup, resp. koncept prislusici nejaky [v dusledcich degenerativni] teorii pastvy - ie kde je studie srovnavajici dusledky aplikace techle teorii?



ad 'The Savory Institute hides the very detailed description of the specific practices involved behind a paywall' - lol, muzou si to koupit na amazonu - prirucka s explicitnima popisama vseho a pracovni sesity k tomu :D je to min za paywallem nez kazdej druhej vedeckej clanek, kterejma se to tam hemzi

....

ramcove souhlas:

it is clear is that the extremely ambitious claims its proponents make are dangerously misleading. The Institute claims that widespread application of its methods would lead to quite massive removals of carbon from the atmosphere – some 500 billion tonnes over 40 years. This would be enough, as it says,125,126,127 to ‘reverse climate change’ since about 555 billion tonnes carbon (or 2035 tonnes CO2) have been released into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. The Nordborg review128dismantles this claim extremely effectively and its conclusions are worth summarising here. First, Nordborg points out that the sequestration rate of 2.5 t C/ha/yr is substantially higher than all other peer-reviewed estimates (see Section 3.5 below). Second, the amount of grassland to which this is applied, 5 billion hectares, is considerably greater than most estimates of the area of grasslands that can be defined even loosely as grazing lands – Nordborg cites the estimate provided in the IPCC’s 2000 report on land use change, of 3.5 billion hectares.129,130 Third, it is vanishingly unlikely that this constant high sequestration rate could be maintained for 40 years since the rate of accrual diminishes over time as soils approach carbon equilibrium. Finally, Savory does not take into account the significant increases in methane and nitrous oxide that would result from higher livestock numbers.In many ways, the regenerative approach and its variants can also be seen as a socialmovement, appealing to people who are dissatisfied with conventional practices. Those attracted are often unusually motivated by considerations that go beyond the monetary, and tend to embrace the nuanced approach that is required. Emphasis is placed on community support, knowledge exchange, peer to peer learning and the replacement of inputs with knowledge.131,132,133,134 While these motivations are clearly laudable, their effectiveness serves to underline the importance of the social context ather than the merits of any one particular management regime. Regenerative grazing, applied well and by motivated farmers, could well benefit soils, build organic carbon matter and as such perhaps help sequester some carbon. However the overall gains are likely to be modest, are not exclusive to rotational practices, and will be time limited – and the problem of the other greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide – do not go away. There is an important difference between arguing that good adaptive management can improve soil quality and increase soil organic matter – and concluding that it offers the solution to our climate crisis.