The most harmful agricultural products? Organic pastured meat and lamb
Perhaps the most important of all environmental issues is land use. Every hectare of land we use for extractive industries is a hectare that cannot support wild forests, savannahs, wetlands, natural grasslands and other crucial ecosystems. And agriculture gobbles up far more land than any other human activity.
What are the world's most harmful agricultural products? You might be surprised by the answer: organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb. I realize that is a shocking statement. Of all the statements in my new book, Regenesis, this is the one that has sparked the greatest rage. But I'm not trying to get people excited. I try to represent the facts. Let me explain.
Arable crops, some of which are used to feed farm animals, occupy 12% of the earth's land surface. But much more land (28%) is used for grazing, that is, for grazing meat and milk. Yet in this vast land, fully pastured farm animals produce only 1% of the world's protein. nature" . If so, the mimicry is a gross caricature. A review of the evidence from over 100 studies found that when livestock are removed from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all groups of wild animals increase. The only category in which numbers drop when cattle or sheep grazing ceases are those that eat manure. Where there are livestock, there are fewer wild mammals, birds, reptiles and insects on the land and fewer fish in the rivers. Perhaps most importantly - due to their crucial role in regulating living systems - there are usually no top predators.
We don't think about top predators in the UK because we wiped them out. Efforts to bring back lynx and wolves have so far been thwarted by objections from herders. In the United States, where large carnivores still exist, federal and state agencies wage war on them on behalf of cattle and sheep farmers, often with startling brutality. A federal agency called Wildlife Services uses poison bait, snares and leghold traps and fires from planes and helicopters to kill wolves, coyotes, bears and bobcats. His agents cremated pups in their dens, or dragged them outside and bludgeoned them to death.
Perhaps his most controversial killing tools are the Cyanide Landmines: spring-loaded cartridges of sodium cyanide planted in the ground, which spray the poison in the faces of animals causing them to trip. They killed a wide range of endangered species, dozens of domestic dogs and at least one person. There are very few places - mainly parts of eastern and southern Africa - where pastoralists tolerate large predators, usually where income from tourism is high.
Even if we manage to ignore this crucial ecological issue, there is still a huge problem. Many ranchers now claim to practice “regenerative grazing”. The minimum definition of ecological regeneration is to allow trees to return to formerly forested land. In the highlands of Britain, judging from the experience of deer handlers, this means a maximum of about one sheep per 20 hectares (50 acres). They might as well not be kept at all. In the lowlands, Knepp's rewilding project in Sussex shows how much production has to drop to allow trees and other wildlife to return: it generates just 54kg of meat per hectare. If, as many chefs and foodies and some environmentalists suggest, meat were to come only from regenerative farms, it would be so scarce that only millionaires would eat it.
En In reality, the vast majority of “regenerative” grass-fed meat is not. It's renamed animal husbandry, arguably the most destructive industry on Earth. In the United States, cattle grazing is the
Perhaps the most important of all environmental issues is land use. Every hectare of land we use for extractive industries is a hectare that cannot support wild forests, savannahs, wetlands, natural grasslands and other crucial ecosystems. And agriculture gobbles up far more land than any other human activity.
What are the world's most harmful agricultural products? You might be surprised by the answer: organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb. I realize that is a shocking statement. Of all the statements in my new book, Regenesis, this is the one that has sparked the greatest rage. But I'm not trying to get people excited. I try to represent the facts. Let me explain.
Arable crops, some of which are used to feed farm animals, occupy 12% of the earth's land surface. But much more land (28%) is used for grazing, that is, for grazing meat and milk. Yet in this vast land, fully pastured farm animals produce only 1% of the world's protein. nature" . If so, the mimicry is a gross caricature. A review of the evidence from over 100 studies found that when livestock are removed from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all groups of wild animals increase. The only category in which numbers drop when cattle or sheep grazing ceases are those that eat manure. Where there are livestock, there are fewer wild mammals, birds, reptiles and insects on the land and fewer fish in the rivers. Perhaps most importantly - due to their crucial role in regulating living systems - there are usually no top predators.
We don't think about top predators in the UK because we wiped them out. Efforts to bring back lynx and wolves have so far been thwarted by objections from herders. In the United States, where large carnivores still exist, federal and state agencies wage war on them on behalf of cattle and sheep farmers, often with startling brutality. A federal agency called Wildlife Services uses poison bait, snares and leghold traps and fires from planes and helicopters to kill wolves, coyotes, bears and bobcats. His agents cremated pups in their dens, or dragged them outside and bludgeoned them to death.
Perhaps his most controversial killing tools are the Cyanide Landmines: spring-loaded cartridges of sodium cyanide planted in the ground, which spray the poison in the faces of animals causing them to trip. They killed a wide range of endangered species, dozens of domestic dogs and at least one person. There are very few places - mainly parts of eastern and southern Africa - where pastoralists tolerate large predators, usually where income from tourism is high.
Even if we manage to ignore this crucial ecological issue, there is still a huge problem. Many ranchers now claim to practice “regenerative grazing”. The minimum definition of ecological regeneration is to allow trees to return to formerly forested land. In the highlands of Britain, judging from the experience of deer handlers, this means a maximum of about one sheep per 20 hectares (50 acres). They might as well not be kept at all. In the lowlands, Knepp's rewilding project in Sussex shows how much production has to drop to allow trees and other wildlife to return: it generates just 54kg of meat per hectare. If, as many chefs and foodies and some environmentalists suggest, meat were to come only from regenerative farms, it would be so scarce that only millionaires would eat it.
En In reality, the vast majority of “regenerative” grass-fed meat is not. It's renamed animal husbandry, arguably the most destructive industry on Earth. In the United States, cattle grazing is the
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