The concept of carbon neutral cows may seemingly conflict with the notion we must eat less meat and dairy to counter climate change. In the largest analysis of global food systems to date, published in Science in 2018, Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek found beef to be the most carbon-intensive food source, emitting around 85kg of CO2e for every 1kg of beef compared with 8.4kg of CO2e for poultry and 0.91kg for soy milk.
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Since the 1960s, Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean farmer and scientist – and godfather of the regenerative livestock movement – has argued for greater use of animals as a means to battle environmental breakdown and cut carbon emissions.
At the heart of Savory’s approach is mimicking the natural grazing patterns of livestock so often abandoned in modern agriculture. This typically involves mob grazing, a practice in which livestock is rotated in short bursts through small patches of high grass. This ensures most plants in that patch are either eaten or trampled before getting a long rest period.
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Contrary to modern grazing systems that are shown to degrade biodiversity and soil health, mob grazing’s quick and intense rotation is said to evenly fertilise the ground, boost the health of the plants, and increase the depth of their roots. Healthy plants mean higher levels of photosynthesis and therefore higher levels of carbon dioxide drawn from the atmosphere. In turn, this carbon is ‘captured’ either in the plant’s cells as it grows or in the surrounding soil.
