December 17, 2021
Every year about this time, I dutifully fill out our U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) survey for livestock farmers. It’s a fairly lengthy survey and I used to balk at taking the time to fill it out, but as a friend who worked at the Department pointed out, it is from this information that the agency determines where funding gets allocated. “So, stand up and get counted!”
The survey data goes back to 1857 and is actually an interesting retrospective, showing trends, over time, in American agriculture.
A 1910 survey estimated that, prior to European settlement, there were 75 million bison in this country. That’s 75 million grass-fed, free ranging, belching herbivores, grazing, pooping and stampeding across the midwestern prairies, with no discernible negative effects on the environment.
As the bison were hunted to extinction, they were replaced with grazing cattle. Free ranging herbivores, be they bison or cows, are a critical part of that highly evolved and extremely healthy ecosystem. Cows and grass were quite literally made for each other. The grass feeds the cow and the cow’s manure fertilizes the grass and feeds the microbes and the carbon sucking fungi in the soil. When allowed to live in that ecosystem, cows are not only carbon neutral, they can also be part of the global warming solution. They are, in fact, “regenerative”.
Those carbon sequestering grasslands and the belching herbivores evolved together for millions of years. That partnership, in fact, created millions of acres of the most productive topsoil found anywhere on the planet - topsoil, which every year got a little bit deeper, a little more fertile, and a little more productive.
At the time of that 1910 survey, the topsoil in those midwestern prairies was over six feet deep and covered with three-foot-tall perennial grass. We now know that what is growing above ground is mirrored by the roots below ground. Roots which contain an intricate web of microbes and fungi that suck carbon and methane out of the air and safely sequester it in the earth. That is at least until the earth gets plowed.
The more recent trend towards confining livestock in industrial sized feed lots, and plowing the grassland to plant corn and soy, definitely saved labor and therefore produced cheap food but it also destroyed that perfectly evolved carbon sequestering ecosystem.
There is a saying in Regenerative Farming circles that “It’s not the cow, it’s the how.” I’d even venture to add “it’s not the cow- it’s the plow”.
By ripping into those millions of acres of grassland in order to grow soybeans and corn, we’ve lost 25% of that topsoil to wind and erosion, releasing all the carbon that had been safely stored. And every time we plow the earth, we destroy the microbes and fungi and lose the carbon sequestration abilities of the land. We have created millions of acres of biologically dead topsoil that are now fully dependent on synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, to replace what once nature freely gave us.
I have righteously boycotted confinement meat for decades and I doubt Whole Foods ever noticed the loss of any of my food dollars. On the other hand, purchasing from small, local, sustainable, farms (which by definition include livestock) absolutely, without a doubt, helps keep them farming from year to year.
So, as I happily fill out our annual “Livestock Survey” I will contemplate our own farming practices. And as I look forward to the end of another challenging year for all New England farmers, I will once again renew my commitment to quite literally “put my money where my mouth is.”