DO LIVESTOCK MAKE DROUGHT WORSE, OR ALLEVIATE IT?
Properly managed--properly rotated--grazers are good for the soil and the soil’s capacity to capture, hold and filter rainwater, thereby alleviating drought.
A conversation with Nicolette Hahn Niman, environmental lawyer and author of “Defending Beef.”
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HART: Let's talk about water, drought and desertification and the potential of cattle to positively impact the soil and thereby diminish drought. The American West is experiencing the worst drought in 1,200 years. What is the solution to this?
NICOLETTE: Well it's one of those thorny issues. People tend to think that livestock takes a lot of water, that since we’re in a drought, we need to reduce the numbers of livestock. It’s a very “simple” math problem: the number of gallons of water used per pound of food produced. Therefore, we need to reduce.
This simple analysis ignores the whole idea of thinking in systems, thinking holistically, and trying to understand how things are connected, how important animals are to creating healthy ecosystems. One of the main impacts that they have is on water. Where you have good livestock management, it's been shown that you have cleaner water because the soil acts as a filter.
HART: The soil is a sponge and a filter if we have good soil.
NICOLETTE: If you have good soil, the water percolates better through the soil. Good soil holds water better, and cleans it through the process of going through the soil, whether you're talking about groundwater or surface waters.
And you don't have the huge runoff (that you have with unhealthy soils) because you don't have a hard packed surface. There are lots of reasons why it's important in terms of the quality of water but also quantity because it holds the water as you mentioned.
HART: Once you lose that water, you're not going to get it back. If it runs off, it's gone forever. It has no value after it runs off. And it's running off mainly because your soil is poor. Soil itself is the biggest single reservoir for freshwater. So if we can utilize that--if we can make the soil a sponge and have it absorb the rainfall--then it solves so many problems.
NICOLETTE: Exactly. So when we talk about drought, the oversimplified “solution” is that cattle take water; therefore, we have to reduce the number of cattle. The better solution, the real solution is this: We know that good grazing actually leads to more water being maintained and more water being available for the whole ecosystem. So we need to focus on improving grazing practices. And when we do that, we will actually have a net positive impact on the drought.
HART: Is there an opportunity for agriculture to be more rain fed?
NICOLETTE: As a world, we have to grapple with the fact that there's going to be more and more scarcity of water, both in rainfall and in terms of what we have available for all human uses. We know that a lot of aquifers are being depleted because they're being pumped out for agricultural purposes, etc.
HART: It’s a one way street. If you're dependent on fossil water, then it's going to be depleted, and then it's going to be gone. It even tends to dry up streams and rivers when you deplete the aquifers.
NICOLETTE: Aquifers do get recharged over time, but we're extracting it so much faster than it gets recharged that it's a losing game that we’re playing in a lot of places. The Ogallala Aquifer is experiencing this.
As humans we have to use water much more efficiently and intelligently. We have to think more about what we can do to make water come into the soil and stay in the soil.
Allan Savory talks about “effective rainfall” which means getting more of it to stay in the ecosystem. It’s all about doing things in a smarter way and having healthier soil biology. That is the kind of soil that will allow the water to come into the soil and hold it in the soils.