One Cow in One Field

Why cows are innately carbon neutral.

The reason I love this example is because it puts aside all the nuances and plainly corrects the fallacy that ‘cows are bad for the environment’. So let’s do just that; let’s put everything aside including the assumption that we eat meat. For this example, a cow is just a cow.

Imagine putting one singular cow, alone, in a field for a year. For 365 days she walks around, grazing the grass that grows there. She drinks water from the pond over in the corner. She burps an awful lot over this year. For the uninitiated, the problem with cow burps is methane, a greenhouse gas. And what about the farts also, and the emissions from the cow pats, oh and even the c02 she breathes out?! Her emissions of carbon over the year really would add up.

But where has this carbon come from? Has our dear friend the cow just whipped them up out of thin air? Of course not. They have come from the grass that she ate. Yes, that innocent looking grass down there on the ground. Remember it’s the only thing she’s consumed for the year (and water). The cow ate it, digested it and dropped almost all of that carbon out of her back end again, albeit brown and steaming. In the meantime, some of the carbon that was in that grass has become CO2 and some has become methane, CH4. Blame the microbes in her stomach for the methane part.

Now for the real hammer-blow. The grass got the carbon from the air! That’s right, using our old friend photosynthesis from childhood science lessons. Carbon dioxide from the air, and water from rain got turned into grass and oxygen. (Farming is harder than that, I promise).

So, to be clear, our cow made no new carbon or compounds whatsoever. This really is the law of conservation of energy; that states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change form. Presuming that our field has about the same amount of grass (carbon) on day 1 as day 365, our cow has been carbon neutral.

Optional(?) Nuances

Ok so she’s carbon neutral… but our pretty little cow is not off the hook quite yet. If she wasn’t there, could we not just leave all that carbon in our grass just as… grass, instead of unnecessarily making greenhouse gases? I think that economists call this opportunity cost.

No, no we couldn’t. You see, this carbon stuff is just begging to be cycled. If a cow didn’t eat it, it would decompose anyway, on the soil, and emit damn near the same amount of gas. In some climates, it would dry out, oxidise and would likely burn in a wildfire.

I know I said I wouldn’t do this, but it can’t go unmentioned that the cow does so much more than meets the eye. She cycles nutrients and helps build natural diversity. Importantly, at an opportune moment, we can harvest our friend, the cow, to feed us.

Money

“That natural farming” he said, “It might be good for nature, but it’s just not economically viable” I was recently informed by a farmer as we sipped pints of beer. I swayed my head side to side in a contemplative manner. But of course he was right, my farming friend. Regenerative farming simply will never be profitable. Not until he believes it can.

“Whether you think you can or you think you cannot, you’re right.” - Henry Ford

I’ll come out and say it: Regenerative farmers are doing it for the money! Those greedy so-and-sos! Yes indeed, I will do the whistleblowing; those sneaky nature-first farmers are making more money than the rest of us. Phew, it feels good to get that off my chest.

I recently heard it said: “you can’t be green if you’re in the red”. How true this is. The first element of being a sustainable business is making money. We’re all here for a finite amount of time and being alive costs money. 

I believe that the metaphorical house of regen farming has several different doors from which to enter from. Indeed, many people have entered from a passion for ecology and natural processes. Some, a desire for good, sustainable food to eat. But the front door, the big white wooden one with the knocker, is always open, and it’s money.

The three timescales of economic projections in farming:

• Short term:

From what I’ve seen, it has actually been the case for the majority of regenerative farmers that they have been somewhat forced to make change as their conventional practices just weren’t stacking up. I’m talking about balance sheets literally in the red. Minus figures on the year-end accounts. Farmers toiling away day after day to simply lose money. This isn’t unusual; most published data on the economics of farming will show you just how few farmers make a real profit. Why do you think we have been forced to ‘diversify’?

So yes, making short term projections is usually pain motivated; the ‘stick’ not the ‘carrot’. Very few people are seeing dollar signs at the thought of growing all-organic crops in under 12 months. It’s scary and it takes a real paradigm shift to change.

• Mid term:

This is where the real business minded farmers sit. I admire these guys. Thinking mid term is about projecting where our business could be in 5, 10, 20 years time. Within our careers. These farmers are sitting down, crunching numbers and usually concluding “let’s work with nature today, and reap the rewards in a few years time”. It takes humility and bravery to do this, to go against the status quo.

• Long term:

Often reserved for the young or the old. The young have many decades left and want to still be in business when they’re older. The old are beginning to think about legacy and handing their assets, businesses and practices down to younger generations. Either way, the result of long-term thinking is always the same: sustainability is key. In farming, it comes down to working with nature and building our soils. In the short and mid term, we can make progress by improving efficiency, technology, marketing etc. Some decisions might even degrade our soils for a quick profit or solution. But long term, this won’t fly. Want a prosperous career for the next 50 years? Build soil. Want to hand a working, profitable farm down to your grandchild? Build soil. 

It’s audacious of us to think we can beat nature into submission and enjoy a profitable business in the meantime. Nature keeps score and she bats last. I’ve said before: every farmer on the planet will farm regeneratively one day, the smart ones will choose when that day is.

White Bags of Silver Bullets

In the commercial crop growing world, applying fertiliser has become as routine as pulling on your boots in the morning. Take your pick; ‘pre - em’ (before emergence of the plants), post - em, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium. I was going to say that the list goes on but it doesn’t really; and that’s exactly the problem. Fertility, in soils and plants and farming, is so much more complex.

As a matter of fact, I’d like to take a hard stance on this one (shocking, I know). I think fertiliser has been misnamed. A fertiliser should be something that, when applied, adds fertility to your soil. Fertility is the ability of soil to sustain agricultural plant growth, consistently and sustainably. Everyones got that one great-great aunt Judith who had 11 healthy kids in 11 years. That’s real fertility, right there. 

But ‘fertiliser’ that comes in a bag, made in a factory from fossil fuels, with a label describing the 3 ingredients and how toxic they are… that’s not fertility. That’s a drug, a steroid. That’s raising a test-tube baby on an IV drip of just enough nutrients to live. Nothing to do with the ‘parents’ (soil) fertility, and nothing to do with the baby’s (plant) fertility.

Surprisingly, I’m not completely anti artificial fertiliser. It has its place, but only alongside practices that improve real fertility and balance the effects of the artificial stuff. Real fertility is using compost, vermicast, animal dung, improving soil carbon, correcting ph levels. Even by improving the water holding capacity of your soils, you’re adding capacity to capture more of the most important fertiliser, water! 

Over ¾ of the air around us is Nitrogen. Something tells me that mother nature wouldn’t make it a requirement to spread bags of granulated ammonium nitrate to make plants grow.

Keep ‘em Moving

In his article titled ‘Just One Thing’, Joel Salatin so persuasively summarised why moving your livestock every day is the keystone practice for grass farmers. I’d like to emphasise and expand on this theory.

Moving our livestock on a frequent basis is deemed non-negotiable for forward thinking grass farmers like you and I. What I’m only just starting to appreciate, however, is that the seemingly repetitive process of yanking up my step-in posts, striding a little way through my field and trodding them in again is perhaps of equal value to me as the farmer, as it is to my cows or my soil.

Proverbs 14:23 “In all labour there is profit”

We all need the exercise, yes, but I'm talking about something a little more creative. Moving livestock becomes a ritual. Like a runner clocking in 5 miles every morning, like a baker kneading a batch of dough for the thousandth time, like a painter setting his easel. 

The work is not only a necessity, but a creative process. There are both conscious and subconscious results of our practice:

Conscious

• Frequent checking of livestock health: To the experienced eye, even one glance at your animal can tell you their overall health.

• Constant re-calibrations of our grass-measuring eye: Whether we use a physical tool for measuring forage, or just ‘eyeball’ it, we can’t help but get better at it when the feedback loop is so short (in the case of daily moves or more).

Subconscious

• A tangible affirmation of our goals: When we move our livestock, we are usually performing the key process (the ‘one thing’) that helps us reach our farming, business and livestock goals. This reinforces our goals in our minds and gives us a dopamine hit in reward of our effort.

• Bias for efficiency: when we do something over and over our brain will find the most efficient way of doing it. I’ve found that an idea on a new way to layout my fence will then come to me later in the day (AKA a shower thought!).

In essence, when we make frequent herd (or flock) movements a non-negotiable, all the negotiables fall into place. It doesn’t take many days of dragging water pipes or rolling up miles of wire before you’ll figure out a good place to leave it more permanently. Equally, it doesn’t take many days of stock moves before the process gets burned into your mind and your identity. Once a thing is a part of your identity, you fight like hell to make it look good, feel good and do good. Iteration at its finest. 

“The work works on you more than you work on it”. This quote sums it up. So thank you Joel for your clear advice to newbies and old hands alike: ‘Move ‘em Every Day’!

Take the Blinkers Off

Why comparing the land used for livestock to the calories it produces is a waste of time.

By Harvey Dunn

It’s 6:30 AM and I’m standing amongst my cows, watching, silently. In the mornings, there is enough dew in the tall grass pasture to soak my boots and dampen the denim of my jeans all the way up to my knees. If you really listen, there's a symphony of birdsong soundtracking the scene as the cows graze. Grab, tear, chew, swallow. Grab, tear, chew, swallow. 

It’s a spectacle I have the privilege of watching every day. I move the cows, then get to soak up what feels like the most natural scene ever: A breeding herd of large ruminant herbivores doing their job. Grazing, trampling, dunging, peeing. And that’s just what it is: A job. A role. Just like any organism on this earth, cows are playing a role in our ecosystem and it’s our job to manage them well. A bit like an HR department but for cows… CR?!

Simple Questions?

But for some reason, we’re obsessed with ignoring the role of the cow and reducing our perspective to binary questions: 

How much methane did that cow just burp?! Quick, grab the methane-ometer (Is that a thing?). 

How much land is that cow using? (Selfish bugger!)

Well exactly how many people will that evil creature feed if we kill it?

Let’s answer questions 2 and 3: Around 85% of agricultural land in the UK is used for livestock and their feed, whilst only around 30% of our calories come from our animal products. Keep these 85% vs 30% numbers in mind, I’m going to refer to them.

Here’s why this  statistic is flawed and a useless metric:

Incorrect Assumptions

• Land use is a problem and setting it aside / wilding is better. Good land management can improve ecosystem processes far faster than just walking away from it. And we can (and should) feed ourselves in the meantime.

• All land is croppable. Every farmer knows this. The hills, valleys, flood meadows, rocky bits, dry bits, awkwardly shaped bits all cannot be efficiently cropped. Livestock are by far the best use of this land.

• All calories are equal. Possibly the most important distinction here. Calories have very little to do with real nutrition. Livestock provide the most nutritious protein and fats for humans.

• Livestock are inherently destructive. Our management is what can make livestock damaging to our environments. There are no accidents in nature.

• Current practices will continue with no improvement. The way we manage farmed livestock is improving every year.

• No imports or exports take place. The majority of the remaining 70% of calories from plants are imported into the UK from other countries! AND, we’re exporting millions of tonnes of animal products every year, which completely invalidates the whole argument anyway!

Here’s my absolute favorite part about this: None of the above arguments independently stand up. E.g, even if all calories were equal in nutrition, we’d still need the livestock. Even if all land was croppable, we’d still need the livestock. Even if rewilding the whole country would be ‘better’, we’d still need the livestock.

85 vs 30, Remember?

I hope I’ve given you ample permission to roll your eyes if someone mentions that livestock use too much land for the amount of calories they produce.

I’ll conclude with a proposal: 

I think the vast majority of land should be managed using livestock, and the vast majority of our diet should be animal products. For the sake of our health, our land and our country.