Cattle and the Fate of the Earth, Part I

Depending on who you listen to, livestock are either destroying the planet or saving it. 

For those who argue that livestock are a dead loss to the planet, the primary source of data has always been the 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Association report called "Livestock's Long Shadow," which, among other things, blames cattle production for a high proportion of the planet's greenhouse emissions. 

That single document has cast its own long shadow on every subsequent discussion of whether the world would be better off without ruminant livestock. 

from the Cowspiracy website

Then along came Cowspiracy, a popular documentary that stepped up the anti-livestock argument with Indiegogo crowd-funding, a Michael Moore-style narrative, and an all or nothing conclusion that promotes veganism as not merely an environmentally-sustainable lifestyle, but a panacea for our ailing planet.

                                      

Cowspiracy, now on Netflix, claims to have used the best science available--or at least the best science supporting their black and white thinking. We can assume that one piece of research they gave a miss was this study published in Nature conducted by a group of scientists working at 40 sites on six continents, including the University of Guelph's Andrew MacDougall. 

The study showed clearly that grassland biodiversity depends upon grazing. In all of the study sites around the world – from the Serengeti to small grasslands in eastern North America -- plant diversity proved to be higher where herbivores, wild or domestic, were able to graze normally.

They also did not check with Tim Flannery, scientist, author of The Weather Makers, and chief commissioner of the Australian Climate Change Commission, who is on record saying that livestock grazing today is a sustainable use of grassland: "If we get the stocking levels right, we get the management techniques right and the management of water and of biodiversity right, I think we can have a very sustainable system of livestock management."

Allan Savory on TED

Meanwhile, early in 2013, holistic grazing guru Allan Savory gave a controversial Ted talk with more than three million views online in which he describes his own panacea for the climate's woes--more grazing. But not just any kind of grazing. Savory is famous for promoting his “holistic range management” brand of grassland management, in which densely packed groups of livestock graze an area for a short duration and then are moved to let it recover—a practice that many livestock producers are adapting under the name “mob grazing.”

In August 2014, however, British pundit and environmentalist George Monbiot, interviewed Savory and dismissed his theories in an article in The Guardian.

Shortly after that, Colorado sustainability promoter Hunter Lovins shot back with her own Guardian op-ed in defence of Savory and “holistic range management”.

OK—let’s stop right there. Following this debate over the past decade has given me a bad case of tennis-spectator neck.

All of the experts make compelling arguments. Even the Cowspiracy film makers have their charm and some of what they say about feedlot agriculture is undeniably true. But they did not look at the wider ecological issues for natural grasslands that scientists and writers like Flannery have explained vis a vis the role livestock plays in replacing absent native grazing animals.

And, as much as I agree with Allan Savory that grazing livestock is an important way for us to restore carbon to our grassland soils, I am not entirely convinced that his system of intensive grazing works everywhere. I may not like the way Monbiot cherry-picks in his critique and dismisses Savory as a quack, but I agree with him on several points about the problems with Savory’s grazing theories. But then I read Hunter Lovins’ defence of Savory and am confused all over again.

That was when I decided to abandon the experts from far away and look for a local one. In part II of “Cattle and the Fate of the Earth”, I ask Saskatchewan rancher, conservationist, and biologist Sue Mihalsky for her thoughts on Savory and his holistic range management system.