Much of what we do at Longfield Farm is aimed at demonstrating that agriculture can be environmentally sustainable if we allow ourselves to be guided by Nature. This post is a revision of an earlier piece. It has, hopefully, been made clearer and a bit easier to follow.
Americans eat way too much meat. Most of us would do well to reduce our meat consumption by at least a third. And no one should be eating meat produced on factory farms or from feedlots, where animals are treated obscenely, and where diseases have emerged that didn’t exist before factory farming became mainstream. Eating meat from these sources will make you sick.
On the other hand, meat produced from livestock that spend their lives on pasture is, forgive the pun, a completely different animal. It will help you maintain personal health and will contribute to the health of the planet. So, if you’re a vegan, consider making a big change in your diet. A friend of mine, who was a vegan for many years (yes, I produce meat and I have friends who are vegans) and whose health was in serious decline, was encouraged by her doctors to start eating meat again. If she ignored that recommendation, they warned, the consequences would be catastrophic. She followed doctors’ orders and is doing much better. She has become an outspoken advocate for omnivory.
Meat is potent food. It contains essential amino acids in the proportions and concentrations that we require and that are not available in plant foods. Appropriately sourced beef, pork, lamb and wild fish provide high density lipids essential to health. I’m not suggesting that we balance our diets on meat – that we disregard the dietary importance of plant foods (again, Americans eat way too much meat), but we should eat some. In my opinion, the best advice on how much meat to include in a healthy diet comes from author Michael Pollan’s grandmother as presented in his book, In Defense of Food: “Eat food [whole foods], not too much, mostly plants.”
The other reason for including meat in one’s diet is much bigger than its benefits to us as individuals. The herbivores that produce most of our meat are essential to the health of our soils and ecosystems. This statement is best understood through the lens of the trophic pyramid, which describes the flow of energy and materials through ecosystems. There is no healthy ecosystem on the planet that functions without the four elements of the trophic pyramid – (i) primary producers (usually plants), (ii) herbivores, (iii) carnivores and omnivores, and (iv) the soil microbiome (especially bacteria and fungi).
Plants use energy from the sun, water and carbon dioxide (CO2) to produce simple sugars,. The process is called photosynthesis. These simple sugars are utilized to produce complex sugars, as well as starches, fats and proteins, which are used by the plant for growth, reproduction (flowers and seeds) and metabolism. Any excess is stored in the roots. Some of the nutritional compounds produced by the plants are exuded into the space around the root where they feed the local bacteria in exchange for micronutrients and other important chemicals that boost fertility and disease resistance. Plant sugars are also traded with root-associated fungi in exchange for nitrogen and phosphorus, essential for producing the plant’s proteins, DNA and energy. All of these interactions promote diversity in the microbiome, enhanced growth in the plant community, and general health in the soil.
The nutritional compounds (proteins, lipids and carbs) and energy in the stems and leaves of plants are transferred to herbivores as they graze, and then to omnivores and carnivores by predation. While all herbivores, from bugs to bison, contribute to this process, the large hoofed ungulates, particularly the ruminants – with their amazing three and four chambered stomachs – transfer 40% more nutrients and energy upward through the trophic pyramid than smaller herbivores.
The complex stomachs of ruminants efficiently process plant material, providing nutrition to these animals, and waste products (feces, urine) that become the food of microbes. Without herbivory dead plants degrade by oxidation, a slow process that may retard the growth of the next generation of plants. This weakens soil structure and its capacity to promote fertility. Eventually the soil dies, ensuring ecosystem collapse. In some places this process is called desertification. Alternatively, fire can be used to rapidly turn over dead plant material so that the new can emerge. Fire, however, puts CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere. The urine and feces of ruminants nourish the microbes and invertebrates (such as worms and dung beetles) that live in the soil. In turn, their activities boost soil fertility, which ultimately provides nutrients for the very plants the ruminants eat. A beautiful cycle.
Under such fertile conditions, ruminant populations increase rapidly and may soon they overgraze the landscape. When the food supply is exhausted, the soil dies, and the ecosystem collapses. Herbivore populations must be culled. Carnivores and omnivores serve that function in all healthy ecosystems.
There are many examples of what happens to an ecosystem without carnivores: In 1944, during World War II, the US Navy transferred 29 deer to St. Matthews Island in the Pribilof chain, to allow downed sailors and airmen to have a source of meat if they reached the islands. The deer found plentiful food on St. Matthews, and they had no predators. By 1957, the deer population of St. Matthews Island exceeded 1300 animals. By 1963, there were over 6000 deer on the island, and the vegetation was nearly gone. In 1965, biologists found only 42 living deer on St. Matthews Island. The rest had starved.
For millennia, elk and wolves co-inhabited the region around the Snake and Yellowstone Rivers, now Yellowstone National Park. However, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, wolves were eradicated from the park. The elk population exploded, and the herds loitered along the banks of the rivers. Soon they depleted the vegetation along the banks and the soil began eroding into the rivers. This increased the turbidity (cloudiness) of the water resulting in a precipitous decline in resident trout populations. The downstream towns and villages, whose economies depended heavily on the recreational trout fishery were deeply impacted. Re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone resulted in a quick reduction in the elk population, recovery of the vegetation along the river banks, increased water clarity, re-emergence of the trout, and return of the downstream fisheries.
It is very unlikely that we will restore the 60 million bison that once roamed the plains of the American west, or the herds of elk and other ungulates, along with all their predators that once lived on prairies, plains and forests, in order to restore the soil fertility that Europeans found here centuries ago. Agriculture can, however, provide managed ecosystems that function like the fertile wilderness encountered by our forefathers. But this requires that livestock be grazed in pastures and rangelands in ways that mimic the aggregation and movement patterns of the herbivores they have replaced. And it requires that we humans play the role of omnivores in agricultural the trophic pyramid.
Managed properly domesticated herbivores can provide more meat than we need and they can restore fertility to our soils. My own research, and that of many colleagues convincingly demonstrates that sustainably managed livestock fosters soil fertility and the growth of greenhouse gas-sequestering plants. Research conducted in Louisiana showed that livestock aggregated and moved frequently to fresh, high quality forage, in ways that mimic the aggregation and movement patterns of wild ungulates produce 52% less methane than livestock spread out thinly on the land and moved infrequently (as is typical in the conventional approach to livestock management). Studies of soil regenerative grazing conducted at Michigan State University suggest that, when coupled with sustainable crop management, American agriculture can to remove nearly a third of total US greenhouse gas emissions annually. Alan Savory, founder of the holistic management movement, has shown that properly managed livestock can reverse desertification. Gabe Brown, who manages his family’s 5,000-acre ranch near Bismarck, North Dakota, has photosynthetically sequestered enormous amounts CO2 from the atmosphere and stored it as organic matter in his soil. The water holding attributes of soil organic matter have eliminated floods and droughts from his land. He has accomplished this simply by using regenerative practices to graze his livestock. No matter how you cut it, managed herbivory favors soil fertility and healthy ecosystems.
So, if you are a vegan, you are right to believe that much of the meat sold in the United States is produced in ways many would consider unethical and unhealthy. However, increasing numbers of farmers and ranchers are switching to ethical and environmentally sustainable livestock husbandry.
If you are a vegan, I would ask you to consider the positive implications of meat to your personal health, as well as to the larger circle of life. I hope that you will encourage your omnivorous friends to think twice before downing that Big Mac, but I also hope you’ll consider adding a bit of meat to your own diet. Get to know some of the farmers who are practicing sustainable livestock husbandry and add your voice to those who are working to restore a healthy trophic pyramid to our farms by supporting the regenerative farming movement. If you are a vegan, consider making a change… a big change.