It is very hard to ignore the messages creeping into the media that eating less meat will help reduce global warming.  Cows and sheep are being blamed for greenhouse gases.  Unfortunately, there are not enough farmer/land stewards out there presenting the other side of the issue. 

The villain is not the cow, the villain is her jailer.  Yes, agriculture is flawed, when it takes the animal out of her natural environment and turns her into a production unit in a concrete concentration camp. 

The cow and the sheep are ruminants; animals with a complex digestive system that evolved to eat grass.  And grass is one of the most magnificent, and the most underrated carbon-sequestering life forms on the planet.  The grass needs the ruminant to shear it, thus keeping it growing, and to bring back fertility to the grass by actually feeding the soil life that feeds the grass roots. This fertility cannot be achieved artificially. It needs the ruminant animal; the cow and the sheep.  At one time, the Great Plains had the bison.  Beneath the grass throbs the heart of the planet, top soil teeming with many tons more animal and plant life than ever walked on the surface.  A living, breathing soil is virtually the earth’s lungs, inhaling carbon, exhaling oxygen through the grass.  The ruminant animal evolved with the grass and they are co-dependent for the health of each other, and for the health of the soil.  There exist so many magnificent interrelationships between the cow and sheep, the grass and the soil, that volumes are written on the subject.   

So, one begins to see that  the cow or the sheep, in her place on the grass, is no longer a biological hazard, but a key player in the life of the grass and the soil and the countless micro flora and fauna in the soil that make clean air and healthy plants and animals possible.  And one also sees that when the farmer meets the needs of the soil first, the grass will thrive, if it is managed with the help of the ruminant.  In turn, the cow and the sheep are never allowed to damage or destroy the grass and the soil life, but instead are kept in equilibrium with the cycles of the earth and the grass.  The farmer is no longer a “cattleman” or a “shepherd,” he or she is a grass farmer.  The ruminant not only helps the farmer maintain thriving, carbon-inhaling grass, but she adds value to the grass that the farmer cannot otherwise sell, thus providing him with a livelihood.   

In an amazing transaction between the farmer, the soil, the grass and the ruminant, the cycle of nutrition is enhanced…the soil becomes vastly more productive, enabling it to grow more grass and sustain more animals in balance.  In the process, the grass absorbs more nutrients from the soil, becoming less disease and pest prone itself. The grass passes this magic onto the ruminant animal, allowing her to have her young and raise them in the natural environment to which she is heir. The products from these grass fed animals is enriched in health giving vitamins, minerals, amino acids and healthy fats.  And amazingly, all this alchemy leads to food for humans that is not only vastly more nutritious than feedlot products, but extraordinarily flavorful and tender, perhaps even exotic.   

When these food products are grown nearby, processed and consumed within a small “foodshed,” the benefits of farm raised animals continue to cascade, washing away the reputation for polluting the air that the ruminant animal is so undeserving of.  On a thriving grass farm, pollution from large concentrations of animals in feedlots is entirely reversed.  Pollution from transportation is minimized.  Local economies are benefitted.  And with luck, the land that has been returned to a state of robust good health in the hands of a grass farmer will remain for the next generation.   

So the next time someone tells you to go vegetarian for the sake of the planet, tell them that you are actually quite fond of grass!