May 13, 2022
Sheep, like all ruminants, can extract everything they need to flourish and thrive by eating grass. Their four chambered stomachs ferment and extract nutrients from plant cellulose, which for the rest of us is indigestible.
Every year, pastures absorb carbon from the atmosphere, and sequester it in the ground, and unless the pasture is plowed to grow grain or vegetables, it stays there forever. Grasslands aren’t static, though. If they aren't grazed, mowed, or burned they will eventually turn into woodland.
A tree stores carbon in its woody biomass above ground whereas a pasture stores all the carbon it sequesters in its roots. During a forest fire, trees that burn, release all their carbon back into the atmosphere whereas when a prairie, grassland, pasture or paddock burns, the carbon is still safely sequestered below ground. We need animals grazing to diversify our carbon sinks in this drought prone era. We need more grazing and less tilling.
This planet evolved with herbivores grazing the grass, and predators (including humans) eating the herbivores. Some people have moral and ethical questions about eating meat, as do I, but grass-fed meat is the way the planet evolved, and it's a viable way to sequester carbon.
The genius of nature expressed through millions of years of evolution has been no match for the unintended consequences of the “advances” of modern industrial agriculture. We all have choices, and the choices we make matter.