Beyond just eating meat, some creative thinkers believe that raising livestock can actually help our CO2 problem. In an excellent article posted at WorldChanging, Jay Walljasper writes about several innovative ranchers who are using holistic thinking to turn a potential greenhouse liability (methane-producing cattle) into something that can sequester carbon. Cattle can do something that no vegetable can do—they can quickly and efficiently build topsoil and strengthen grasslands. Topsoil is an effective storehouse for carbon, and grasses are like carbon catchers that pull carbon from the atmosphere and push it down into the topsoil. A grassland might be thought of as a nose for the earth—it breathes in CO2 and breathes out oxygen. This carbon capture is effective until the top soil is broken—that break is not necessary if cattle or chickens or other pasture-raised animals are grazing it.  The topsoil needs to be broken only for the most common methods of growing vegetables. 

An innovative group of farmers and ranchers has created a management program called Carbon Farmers of America for farmers who want to use their grazing animals to sequester carbon. These farmers can offer a solution to the PETA scare tactics that makes real, practical sense. PETA claimed that 1 lb. of meat is as bad as driving an SUV 40 miles. According to the EPA, driving 40 miles in an SUV would generate about 45.6 lbs. of CO2. By grazing cows for a year on 40 acres while using proper management techniques, those cows could help sequester 120 tons of CO2. That’s as much as 208,695 miles driven by an SUV. As long as the land management and stocking rates are properly aligned, cows could be either carbon neutral or carbon negative.

I am not saying that eating meat is better than eating vegetables. I am saying that we need to do more research and take a more holistic approach to answering tough questions. Unfortunately, most of the research so far has concentrated on confinement feedlot operations, which are bad for the environment anyway you split it. However, animals when managed properly may be a part of the solution, or at least not as much of a problem as groups like PETA assert. It is important that we leave animal rights as a distinct issue from the environment, which requires that we think about whole ecosystems instead of the individualistic thinking that “rights” require.