Keeping livestock for a more sustainable food system

Have you ever traveled through the farm fields of the Midwest and wondered why there is nothing but corn and soybeans as far as the eye can see? I'm sure it's not a question many Americans ask themselves because, by and large, we've lost our ability and our need to make connections between our food and the earth it comes from. All those fields of corn and soybeans are part of the huge portion of the United States that's devoted to producing the meat and dairy products that dominate our diet.

But not all Americans eat so much meat and dairy. Many vegans and vegetarians are opposed to the eating of animal products for environmental and/or animal rights reasons. From the perspective of the animal rights activist, animal production is inhumane, while to the environmentalist it is an inefficient use of land. Eating lower on the food chain is thought to have much less impact on the planet because, given the amount of plant matter required to feed animals, it would be more efficient to eat the plants ourselves.

It's easy to see how anyone could come up with many arguments as to why in the 21^st century the industrial production of meat and other animal products could be considered cruel and unsustainable. It's estimated that livestock worldwide account for 20 percent of the total terrestrial animal biomass, a number that clearly illustrates our impact on life on the planet. Vast acreage is devoted to growing grain to feed livestock that are raised in inhumane conditions in factory farms and feedlots, all to provide a meat-based diet for those in affluent countries. As well, a UN report found that livestock are currently responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. Those consuming meat and animal products have little awareness of the lack of sustainability of and cruelty inherent to their food system.

Unfortunately, in arguments against animal agriculture often no distinction is made between the production of animals in factory farms and the more humane, small-scale keeping of livestock that has been the human norm for thousands of years. It is true that a vegetarian diet can require less land for a given population size, however, in terms of sustainability, there is evidence to support that making use of livestock in our food production system will be more sustainable over the long term. Livestock were raised sustainably for thousands of years before modern times, so it's obvious that livestock are not the problem; the number of them and the practices we use to raise them today are the problem. In the coming decades we will all have to find alternatives to fossil fuel if we are to survive. By doing away with livestock production we would be tossing out one of humanity's simplest and most valuable alternatives to fossil fuel and a vital means of lessening our impact on the planet.

Preserving a vital technology

The keeping of livestock could be looked at as a practice responsible for the devastation of the environment and the lack of sustainability of our culture. It could also be considered the enslavement and exploitation of fellow beings by humanity. But doing away with livestock entirely would mean the loss of a technology that has taken thousands of years of thoughtful human ingenuity to develop. To cast off this technology because we've forgotten how to keep animals in a sustainable or humane way would be a great loss to humanity. Livestock have provided us meat and other food products, fertilizer for agriculture, material for textiles, and (literally) horsepower for over ten thousand years. They have the ability to take vegetable matter that we cannot eat, and convert it to food we can eat. And they can do all these things without the use of fossil fuel.

As we humans of affluent countries have lost our connection with the land, we have also lost an understanding of our need for basic human technologies of the past. It's easy for someone living in a the city with access to an abundance of vegetables from a grocery store to decide that the keeping of livestock is cruel and unnecessary. But the vegetables we all buy at the grocery store or even through a local CSA farm were likely grown using fossil fuel or unsustainable agricultural practices. In fact, our entire way of life in the US is sustained by a fossil fuel dependent economy that is destroying the environment and usurping the habitat of countless creatures worldwide. If we didn't have the benefits of fossil fuel to rely on, if we were suddenly sent back in time three hundred years to the pre-industrial era, we would all be grateful for the existence of livestock and few of us would likely want to do away with animal production. If we are ever to survive without fossil fuel, which we will soon have to do, we will need the vital technology of livestock.

For about 15 years I was a vegetarian who believed the common efficiency argument about animal products—that it takes ten times the vegetable food to produce a given amount of meat. A vegetarian diet would require far less land, and thus have less impact than a diet that includes meat. I've come to understand that the equation is not that simple because livestock can serve us in many ways besides just providing meat. As a farmer, I've learned that animals can play a key role on a sustainable farm.

Though the keeping of livestock on an industrial scale is cruel and unsustainable, it doesn't mean all raising of livestock has to be. There are more sustainable and humane ways to keep animals and produce animal products. Using these methods, livestock can become part of an integrated agricultural system that will reduce the impact of humans on the planet overall, give farm animals a better life, and produce more healthful foods.

Farming without fossil fuel

Looking toward a future with a dwindling availability of fossil fuel, particularly petroleum, one of the main ways livestock can benefit us is by providing an alternative for farm power. Draft animals were the last step in the development of agricultural technology before petroleum came to dominate, and they are one of the most logical steps away from it.

Conventional agriculture today is highly dependent on fossil fuel derived pesticides and fertilizers. Switching to organic production would eliminate the need for these petrochemical products, however, most organic farming is still highly dependent on petroleum for tilling, cultivation, mowing, and harvesting. In place of herbicides organic farmers commonly use cultivation, which requires a tractor, and fossil fuel to run the tractor. As we pass peak oil, it will become more and more costly to produce food both conventionally and organically using current methods. Animal agriculture offers a way to reduce our dependence on petroleum. Draft animals could be used to till and cultivate land, while grazing animals could be used to mow orchards and vineyards. Besides not requiring fossil fuel, animal farm power has the added benefits of being a renewable resource (animals don't have to be manufactured but reproduce themselves), being less polluting, and being less noisy than fossil fuel based agriculture.

Because farming with draft animals has to be done on a smaller scale than farming with fossil fuel, the conversion back to it would require a massive scaling down of agriculture as whole. This would mean we wouldn't be able to feed as many people, so reducing population would have to be a part of any plan to wean agriculture back off fossil fuel. But this change will have to happen anyways, as humans are currently far beyond earth's carrying capacity. In this way, switching back to animal farm power would further reduce human impact on the planet.

The small scale required of animal agriculture would help solve the problem of erosion of the world's topsoil because it would be impossible to maintain the massive uninterrupted fields typical of petroleum-based agriculture. Smaller fields would break up the land and help prevent the runoff of topsoil into waterways that occurs when large areas of farmland are laid bare by cultivation.

It is possible to practice methods of agriculture that don't require tilling, thus eliminating the need for power for that practice, but any scale of growing of food beyond the garden scale will likely require some kind of horsepower. Hauling large loads, something regularly required on any farm, can be done with the use of draft animals. It's likely that methods of farming that don't require tilling would require the hauling of mulch, manure, or compost, and the harvesting of the crop, whether by mowing, or by threshing and winnowing. All of these practices were being done with the use of farm animals, albeit on a much smaller scale, before the internal combustion engine came about.

Much thought is currently being given to the concept of a post-petroleum tractor. After all, a tractor can be parked in a shed when it isn't being used and it doesn't have to be fed during that time like a draft animal does. But unless we can run tractors entirely on solar or wind power, their fuel would likely be some kind of biofuel, which would mean land would have to be devoted to growing their fuel just as it would have to be devoted growing fuel for draft animals. Why invent a machine, when nature provides something that can turn local ingredients into farm power with no effort? Besides the fact that the tractor has to be manufactured from a complex array of resources, while oxen can be reproduced on farm, the problem with the tractor is that it doesn't doesn't give anything back to the farm. Draft animals, on the other hand, can offer much more to a farm than just horsepower.

A new, old kind of fertilizer

Through grazing and digestion, animals can convert the sun's energy and other nutrients locked in plants into nutrients accessible to plant roots. Digestion by livestock is sort of a sped up form of the natural breakdown of plants that might happen in the absence of animals. Livestock are able to process plant matter, insects, and even agricultural and consumer waste into valuable fertilizer for fields. Through the digestive process, many kinds of livestock can also convert elements like nitrogen from the atmosphere into a form that is more readily usable to plants. This fertilizer doesn't have to be manufactured from fossil fuel, and different from petroleum-derived fertilizers, animal manures add life to a soil, not just fertility. The organic matter in manure gives soil structure, offering a substrate and nutrients for mycorrhizal fungi and other microbial life essential for plant growth. It also increases the soil's ability to retain water. If grazed properly, livestock can help to aerate and sequester carbon in the soil as well.

Laying hens pastured in a vineyard

Animal manure was the main fertilizer in agriculture for thousands of years before petroleum. Today, conventional agriculture depends on fossil fuel to provide fertility for its crops. Dependence on chemical fertilizers has led to the decline in soil health of our farmland, the loss of soil microbial life, and the pollution of our waterways. Organic farming has brought about improvements in soil health with its abandonment of petroleum-based fertilizers and its focus on building soil fertility by organic means. Often though, organic farmers have to rely on green manures to provide fertility, which require cultivation, or they must import manure from other farms to add fertility to their fields. By including livestock in their rotation, they could reduce petroleum use and add fertility to their fields.

Draft and transport animals once provided a significant amount of fertility for a farm. With the advent of the tractor and chemical fertilizers, animals were no longer needed and were no longer available on many farms to provide fertility. Before the automobile, there was a healthy exchange between country and city, as the city with its excess of manure from horse transport traded for produce with country farms. The farms grew food for the horses, and they got manure in return. Although this system was probably unsustainable because so much land was being devoted exclusively to transport (about 40% of American farmland at the beginning of the 20^th century), it illustrates how much fertility can be provided by livestock. Some dairy farms still utilize manure from their operations to increase the fertility of their fields, but this main source of soil nutrients is largely absent from farming today. Most of the fertility is provided by fossil fuels.

Green manures, popular means of adding fertility to the soil in organic agriculture, require inputs of fossil fuel to till, plant, cultivate, and turn in the crop. Animal pasture does not have to be tilled, planted, or cultivated. This can mean a huge reduction in petroleum inputs and in carbon release resulting from cultivation. As well, animals can be grazed on nitrogen fixing hay crops like clover to add even more fertility to a future grain or vegetable field. Livestock can be rotated with crops to provide a break that will aid in pest control at the same time as it adds fertility.

Mowing

Mowing is a common practice in many forms of agriculture. Orchards and vineyards are regularly mowed during the growing season to reduce competition with the crop, improve air circulation, and increase access to sunlight. Mowing requires the use of a large amount of petroleum, and though the cuttings are usually left in the field, they can take a while to break down and be usable to the crop. Large equipment compacts the soil and over time can inhibit the penetration of water into the soil. Grazing animals can mow these areas without the use of fossil fuel and without compacting the soil. Through their digestion they will turn vegetation into valuable nutrient-rich fertilizer that is much more quickly available to the crop. An added bonus is the ability to get some additional product from the orchard or vineyard, such as wool, milk, or meat. A tractor doesn't produce anything but air pollution while it's mowing.

Turning waste directly into food

On the farm and in industrial production, there are many waste byproducts that are fed to livestock or used as bedding. Recycling waste products through animals is a more direct way of producing new food, and it can reduce the amount of land used for food production. This system is promoted by the market because an otherwise valueless waste product can be sold as livestock food. The waste product might otherwise be landfilled, composted, or become a waste disposal problem. Pigs may be fed whey from cheesemaking and spent grain from brewing, while cattle may be fed leftover fiber and protein from oil extraction from oilseed crops. Laying hens can be fed kitchen scraps, spent grain from brewing, and garden waste. Though these products might otherwise end up being composted and returned to the soil, why not skip a step and turn them directly into animal power or products? When we recycle these waste products we not only end up with products, but we end up with another waste product--manure-- that can then be used on farm fields or composted into a nutrient-rich fertilizer.

Land use issues

It is clear that the devotion of most arable land in the US to animal production for feeding the affluent is wasteful and a detrimental use of land. Using land to produce vegetables and grains for human consumption would require far less acreage than using land to produce feed for animals. In strict terms, for a given population a vegetarian diet would put less pressure on the land than a meat diet, but if the vegetarian diet is fed by crops grown with fossil fuel, it is not addressing the greater problem of fossil fuel use and its contribution to climate change and other problems.

Cattle grazing on a hill that is too steep for cultivation on a large scale

Although in a theoretical argument animal-derived foods are less efficient to produce than vegetable foods, when real agricultural systems are examined the argument is not so cut and dried. In sustainable systems, food can be produced from animals with minimal or no input of fossil fuel and with no cultivation of the land, a practice that releases carbon into the atmosphere. Animals can also produce food from land not suitable for vegetable or grain production. Many kinds of livestock need only pasture to eat, so they can survive and make food products from the land using minimal inputs, whereas vegetable crops usually require tilling, maintenance, and harvesting, all of which require power inputs.

Animals can be grazed on marginal land that is too steep for cultivation, has poor soil, or has thin topsoil. Though it wouldn't be sustainable to get a vegetable or grain crop out of this type of land, animals would be able to make the land produce something, whether it's food or another animal product. Grazing livestock could help build the soil in marginal areas, making them more productive over time. If grazed sustainably, animals can build soil on highly erodible land without contributing to erosion in the way that soil building with green manures might, since their grazing wouldn't require tilling. Animals can also be put in a rotation with food crops to add fertility faster than green manures. Food could continue being produced from that field even as its fertility was being increased, because the grazing animals would also be providing a food product.

Another advantage of livestock in terms of land use is their ability to produce food from organic matter that we could not eat ourselves. Humans cannot digest cellulose, but many animals can and we can eat them or the products they can provide through their digestion of cellulose. This opens up a new source of energy that is abundant in nature. Animals allow us to get food out of a resource (pasture) that doesn't need fossil fuel inputs to maintain, holds soil better, and is not something we could eat ourselves. Huge acreages of grasslands inedible to us could be grazed sustainably by certain kinds of livestock.

Chickens being fed duckweed

In our culture, we do not eat many bugs, but insects make up a huge amount of biomass and are composed of complex materials. Many kinds of livestock feed on insects and at the same time they are turning biomass into food or other products, they are trapping complex chemicals in their manure and returning them to farm fields. We would probably not eat these insects ourselves because of cultural norms or because they would be difficult to capture, but we would eat the egg produced by a chicken that was feeding on those bugs. This is yet another way that animals can produce food out of something that we cannot eat.

Often efficiency arguments comparing animal and plant products draw comparisons between meat and vegetables instead of vegetables and animal products in general. This is the argument that makes livestock look the worst because meat is one of the least efficient animal products to produce. But dairy and other similar animal products that can be produced on an ongoing basis through the life of the animal have higher rates of efficiency than meat. In other words, a lot more food value can be produced from a given area of land by production of dairy products than by meat production. Raising draft animals is also a more sustainable application of livestock than raising animals for meat because draft animals can reduce the impact of humans on the planet by reducing the use of fossil fuel.

Raising livestock for food, not for meat

Given the potential impact of animal agriculture as compared to vegetable agriculture, in considering raising livestock for meat and other animal products we have to keep sustainability in mind. Currently animals are raised industrially for the sole purpose of providing animal products. In these industries, what could be assets, such as animal manure, cause problems because of the lack of an integrated system. Livestock are fattened in feedlots or CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations), creating a huge waste disposal problem that results in the pollution of waterways. While animal manure that could be used to add fertility to fields runs into streams and rivers, vast amounts of fertilizer manufactured using fossil fuel are dumped on agricultural fields to bring fertility to crops, with the result that waterways are polluted with nutrient runoff. Cattle are grazed in former rainforests causing erosion and promoting the destruction of habitat. Vast tracts of land are monocropped with corn and soybeans to provide food for the livestock from these industries.

In a sustainable system, animal products would be thought of as byproducts, or co-products. The goal would not be to produce meat or dairy products, but to produce food, both vegetable and animal. While adding fertility to a field or orchard, a farmer would get dairy products, meat, or fabric as a part of the deal. Draft animals would provide fossil fuel free farm power, and contribute fertility to fields as a byproduct. Livestock production would be fit in only where it was efficient to do so. The animal's utility in conserving fossil fuel and contributing to a sustainable system would dictate how many animals would be produced. This would mean a great reduction in the number of animals raised in comparison to the current system, where the market for beef, or pork, or milk determines how many animals are raised. If there was a need for farm power, only as many draft animals would be raised as were required on the farm. If there was marginal land available and livestock grazing was the most suitable use, or there was an orchard or vineyard that required mowing, draft animals or food producing animals would be grazed there.

The breeds of animals chosen might be the ones that best suited the uses and byproducts that would provide the most sustainable system. For instance, one might want to have their vineyard mowed by a breed of sheep that suited the terrain, the climate, and provided wool that could be used for insulation or clothing, or that produced more milk from the feed available. By carefully suiting the number and kind of livestock production to the system, climate, etc, animals can make the land more productive and make agriculture more sustainable. Fossil fuel would not be wasted on practices like mowing, cultivating, and fertilizing where animal power could be applied. Why use a tractor for mowing and burn diesel fuel to do what an animal would do naturally, and in the bargain add fertility to your land?

In this kind of system our diet of meat or dairy products would be dictated by how many animals could sustainably be fit into the system. This concept is nothing new. In the past, when agriculture was more suited to the land and many cultures raised livestock adapted to their local environment, meat and dairy products were a smaller percentage of people's diets. Livestock were expensive to produce in large numbers, but if you could fit them into a farm system, you could have some meat for special occasions and maybe a little to sell.

Besides the obvious foods humans get from livestock production, there are many useful animal products once commonplace that have been replaced with petroleum-derived alternatives. Using the animal byproducts of a sustainable system will offset our need to use these fossil fuel based products. Wool has a very low value on the world market because it is expensive to produce in comparison to fossil fuel-derived fabrics and because it has fallen out of favor for fashion and practicality. Wool could once again take a place of importance in textiles in a post-petroleum economy. Lanolin, an oil extracted from sheep's wool, is another animal product that could be used in many domestic and industrial applications.

It is in these applications that livestock production can make the entire food system more sustainable than a system that produces vegetables and grains exclusively. However, raising animals for the sole purpose of providing meat or dairy products, unless it is making use of marginal land or is serving double duty and building soil at the same time, is not sustainable. The devotion of huge tracts of the earth's arable land to livestock raised specifically for the production of meat and dairy products has led to the loss of natural habitat and other environmental problems on a broad scale.

Protecting and preserving our livestock heritage

Similar to heirloom fruits, vegetables, and grains, heritage breeds of stock have been going extinct at an alarming rate in the past 100 years. Humans have had a close relationship with livestock for many millennia. This relationship has given them an advantage, allowing them to survive where they otherwise might not have. Our livestock has been selected and bred over the years to be adapted to special local conditions. As humans selected livestock, the animals became even more adapted to their immediate environment, its diseases and its climate. Part of the artificial selection process of breeding livestock breeds, by nature, directed it towards sustainability. In order to keep livestock in an area for generation after generation, humans had to select for traits that lessened the impact of livestock in the regions in which they were being raised. Reindeer were herded in the arctic because they were adapted to the harsh conditions there.

Unfortunately, today commercial livestock breeds are chosen largely for yield, and because they are not well adapted to their environment require a greater input of antibiotics and fossil fuel derived pharmaceuticals, as well as more water. More and more farmers around the world are turning to a relatively few commercial breeds and abandoning their better adapted local breeds to increase their yields. As the number of varieties being kept by farmers declines, the genetic diversity in adaptability of livestock to many environments worldwide is being lost. The lack of diversity and the massive scale of animal production of these few breeds is what leads to the spread and persistence of livestock disease.

But the decline in livestock breeds has not been isolated to those that produce animal products. With the increased use of fossil fuel driven transport and farm equipment in the late 1800s and early 1900s, breeds of livestock once valuable as work animals declined drastically in number and many have gone extinct. As globalization has spread modern agriculture across the globe in recent decades the number of livestock breeds being kept by humans has further declined.

The efficiency of fossil fuel power over animal power is obvious, but the future of petroleum driven machine power is uncertain. It's unlikely that agriculture will be able to continue for much longer on the scale on which it is being done and using the technology it has become dependent on. Unless we preserve what genetic diversity is left, we will find we have no animal options when the viability of fossil fuel technology is a thing of the past. The best way to preserve the diversity of livestock breeds we humans have developed over millennia is to raise them on our farms on a small scale.

What about the contribution of livestock to climate change?

One of the criticisms of livestock worldwide has to do with their contribution to climate change, in particular, the methane their waste releases. Livestock are estimated to be responsible for 37 percent of all human-generated methane put in the atmosphere. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, 72 times worse over a twenty year period.

Most of the problem lies in the ways in which livestock are produced globally. The meat and dairy-rich diet of those in rich countries has led to animal production on a scale that has made it a significant contributor to climate change. The fact that livestock make up 20 percent of the terrestrial animal biomass on the planet shows how out of control numbers of livestock are. That excess of methane-producing animals is bound to produce a harmful amount of methane.

But there are other ways livestock contribute to climate change. Feeding livestock grain that has to be grown using fossil fuel produces far more carbon than simply grazing animals on pasture. The destruction of rainforests to create pasture for livestock directly eliminates a major sequesterer of carbon on earth.

Yet while humans have raised livestock for thousands of years, only in the past century has the level of greenhouse gases from human activity been of concern. So it's not the raising of livestock that is the problem, it is simply the scale of production. In a sustainable system, the number of livestock would be reduced to a level that would cause no threat of excess greenhouse gases. When compared to the scale of greenhouse gases currently being dumped into the atmosphere as the result of petroleum agriculture, the amount coming from livestock in a sustainable agricultural system would be minimal.

What about animal welfare?

For those who feel that using animals for human benefit is cruel, I have no argument for you. I personally feel that animals, having likely been eaten by humans ever since we evolved, are a part of the natural system in which we live. Many animals survive by taking the lives of other animals. For those who think that industrial animal production is cruel, I can say that there are other ways of raising livestock in which the animals are given relatively comfortable and pleasant lives, though they may still be in the service of humans. In sustainable systems, animals are given freer range, fresh air, and sunlight. It also has been argued that the relationship between humans and livestock is symbiotic because each provides something for the other. When I'm mixing up a gourmet concoction of grains, greens, and duckweed for my chickens, I've often felt like a servant of my livestock.

As part of a more sustainable system, animals can play a key role in lessening human impact on the planet and thus on all the world's creatures. Currently, the fossil fuel driven economy is destroying most natural habitat for wild animals. For the welfare of the world's wild creatures we need to find a better way to live on the planet. Being concerned about animal welfare but ignoring one's impact on the planet by participating in an unsustainable fossil fuel based economy is ignoring the greater threat to the world's animals and their survival on earth.

Ritual and animals

In the past and still in many parts of the world, human rituals are tied to a reverence for livestock. In India the cow is seen as a sacred animal, and though it's products are used, cattle are not killed for meat by Hindus. In other religions, the slaughter of livestock is not seen as slaughter, but as sacrifice. Animals are only killed for special holidays, and their sacrifice is part of a ceremony of respect. This is a much more careful and planned ritual than the mere slaughter of an animal for food, or worse, the factory slaughter of millions of animals that has no aspect of spirituality or respect, and is in no way humane. Having this kind of relationship with animals would fit much better with a sustainable food system that included livestock production. In such a system, we would only produce enough meat to have it on special occasions. But having meat only occasionally might help us appreciate all that goes into producing it, and we might begin to see it as the treat it is rather than expecting it to be on our plates three meals a day.

Conclusion

Though the miles and miles of corn and soybeans in the Midwest or the feedlots of California may make you want to swear off animal products forever, try to look at the bigger picture. There are better ways to raise animals. We can lessen our impact on the planet by reducing the number of livestock we produce and by developing a more integrated and sustainable food system, with livestock playing a beneficial instead of a destructive role.

This doesn't mean we should embrace a meat-heavy diet because animals are good for the earth. If we continue on the industrial scale that is the norm for animal agriculture today, we will run out of fossil fuel and add to the problems of climate change, habitat destruction, and loss of fertility of farmland. If, on the other hand, we decide that livestock production is inhumane or unsustainable judging it solely on the way it is done on an industrial scale, we will be trading a vital technology we cannot easily recreate for a vegetarian alternative that may in the long run be more destructive to the planet.