Regenerative Farming and Grass-Fed Beef

“I agree that factory farming is problematic, but have you heard about regenerative agriculture? It is actually better for the environment!”

Will this be better for the environment than just eating plant-based foods? Will this actually be a sustainable solution to allow us to keep eating beef without wrecking the planet?

Let’s find out!

Graze, plant, rotate, repeat

Regenerative agriculture is a holistic approach to farming which aims to restore soil health, water retention, and biodiversity, while reducing external inputs like synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Practically speaking, I think it involves allowing cattle to graze on grasslands, rotating them across different pastures, and then repeating this cycle to maintain soil health and prevent overgrazing.

I couldn’t really find a clear set of rules or definitive practices that make a farm “regenerative”. One website describes it as more of a mindset.

I don’t know, man. There isn’t a government certification to specify what counts as regenerative. There are some private companies out there offering consulting or certification, but they all have their own definitions and standards. Right now it’s a bit of a Wild West.

Gotta catch ’em all (the carbon)

One of the big claims of regenerative agriculture is that grazing cattle on grasslands can help capture carbon in the soil, thus offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions. This is achieved by:

1. Rotating cattle across different pastures to prevent overgrazing and allow the soil to recover
2. Cows trampling plant matter into the soil, which stimulates plant growth and helps sequester carbon

It sounds promising. However, the University of Oxford’s Food Climate Research Network looked into this in a report called Grazed and Confused. They found:

• Way off from 100%: Even in the best-case scenarios, soil carbon from grazing offsets only 20–60% of the emissions from grass-fed cattle. Not 100%, so not carbon-neutral, let alone net negative. Results may differ depending on very specific local conditions and management practices.
• Carb(on) Loading: Soil can only absorb so much carbon and eventually becomes saturated. After a few decades it reaches a new balance and stops sequestering additional carbon.

So regenerative agriculture may be better for the soil than factory farming, but it is not some magic bullet that makes beef climate-neutral. The Oxford study also concludes that if we want to do something definitively positive for the climate, the answer isn’t grass-fed beef. Eating less meat, of all types, is.

How mooving

Even if it’s better for the soil, it still produces an immense amount of greenhouse gas emissions compared to plant-based foods.

The other thing is:

The cow still dies.

They’re still sent to a slaughterhouse, usually at around two years old, out of a natural lifespan of about twenty. A nicer field doesn’t change the one bad day at the end.