ARE CATTLE CAUSING CLIMATE CHANGE, OR ARE THEY PART OF THE SOLUTION?
Rancher and environmental lawyer Nicolette Hahn Niman separates myth from fact.
HART: Are cattle causing climate change or could they be part of the solution?
NICOLETTE: That is a big question these days for a lot of people. I think we absolutely need cattle in order to fight against the effects of climate change. That surprises a lot of people. But when you dig into the science, it's clear that a huge amount of carbon has been lost from the soils of the world.
We know that an enormous portion of the carbon that was once contained in the soils is no longer there and that it has been lost due to widespread desertification and plowing of land all over the world. The carbon that would have been in the soil, historically, has been lost to the atmosphere.
That's the troubling part of the story, but the upside is that we can get a lot of that carbon back into the soil, which makes the soil much more productive and healthier, supports more life and holds more water.
This creates healthier food because there is more biological activity in the soil. That helps both the soils and the food system in terms of how much it can generate and how healthy the food will be. This also helps the condition of the atmosphere by getting carbon out of the atmosphere.
So it's a no-brainer, and we should all be focusing on this as a planetary community.
HART: How do cattle have a positive impact on the soil? How does that work?
NICOLETTE: When you're talking about what sort of practices that we can do as humans to try to get that carbon back into the soil. It turns out that livestock, especially grazing livestock are a really important part of that. There's a couple of key points. One is that grazing animals the world over tend to occupy those parts of the land where you actually can't even grow crops.
HART: Because they are too rocky or hilly or cold. There are lots of places in the world that are not suitable for growing crops. What are you going to do with those?
NICOLETTE: Exactly. I am originally from Michigan. So I'm used to seeing green stuff all over the place and lots of water. I’ve lived in the west now for almost 20 years, and it's a completely different place.
I didn't understand how different these places were until I moved out here and lived here. It’s a good example of a place where you really can't grow crops. There's just a few areas of our ranch where you could grow some crops. And even there it wouldn't be too great. It would have to be things like potatoes. So what you can do here is limited. But it's an ideal place for cattle because it's breezy and cool. It doesn't get really hot. Historically and in prehistoric times it would have had a lot of wild grazing animals on it.
But the animals have largely disappeared due to human activity. And so the beauty of cattle and other animals is they can live on these lands. They can maintain that biological activity in the soil, they can maintain the ecosystem in lieu of all of the wild animals that would have been here.
HART: If you don't have animals, then there's something missing from these ecosystems. You reported on a study about the vernal pools in California. It was an example of where animal impact can be good. You have the weight of the hoof digging little pits in the ground and mashing in seeds. You have the value of the manure and the urine and even the value of the animal eating the grass and the forbs that otherwise dry out and become a fire hazard.
NICOLETTE: Exactly. And that vernal pools study is a really interesting one because it was done by an environmental organization and by a longtime environmental advocate. It was a multi-year, very comprehensive study. There were a lot of vernal pools around California, there were cattle in these areas. There was a big push by environmentalists to get the cattle out of these areas because it was felt that the cattle were harmful.
But they found that if you removed the cattle, the vernal pools disappeared. It's just that simple. And it's so ironic because there had been this long-standing belief that the cattle were damaging the vernal pools. Vernal pools are seasonal small wet areas that turn out to be really unique ecosystems unto themselves. They actually include all kinds of microorganisms and insects and all kinds of tiny creatures that are found nowhere else. So they are important ecosystems that cattle were not just creating but maintaining.
For millennia there have been animal impacts and ecosystems being created by large grazing herds. When we don't have those wild animals, we have to use the domestic grazing animals to replace them.
I come from a background as a biologist in college. My assumption was for a long time that cattle and other grazing animals were probably harming these places. But I see it differently now from having witnessed it myself and also having read a lot of very credible studies.