Recently Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown released a piece “Regenerative grazing is overhyped. We should do it anyway.” He wrote that some suggest raising regenerative beef is the climate “silver bullet” the food sector needs. However, Foley says, “the climate benefits are often smaller than claimed and only work under limited circumstances…. Regenerative grazing has a place in the climate-friendly agriculture toolbox. But we must be conscious of its limitations and use it as effectively as possible.” Foley’s column produced a lively exchange on the Climate Land Leaders discussion list. We asked Illinois Climate Land Leader Oliver Luker, Wonderland Community Project and co-founder of Seq Solutions, to comment on some of the scientific studies and dialogue on the climate impact of beef production.

Oliver’s comments:

It seems very likely that some degree of livestock production will continue throughout all of our lives, and probably that of our children. In such a case, then, this is not an existential conversation. While the market demands meat, the most beneficial practices (climate, soil, cultural) should be incentivized. Today, they are not. That needs to be addressed.

This doesn’t mean that we should not continue to minimize the use of practices that produce excessive emissions and associated negative impacts. It is perfectly possible to have both these pressures in a market – a disincentive to produce beef (in general) and an incentive for regenerative grazing (where this is appropriate). Given that we are in a capitalist system, the decisions about which system works best for a given producer are that producer’s to make. Similarly, it is the role of policy to encourage certain developments in the market. Nobody is suggesting any of that change – or at least, the specter of communism need not haunt this debate.

Summary of (hopefully fairly non-controversial) elements:

• There is a spectrum of husbandry practices including CAFO [Confined Animal Feeding Operations], regenerative grazing and related.
• These practices have different emissions signatures (they emit more or less than one another) and other impacts.
• There is an urgent need to reduce emissions and sequester carbon dioxide.
• This urgent need must be addressed in the next 25 years, and today’s problem may not be tomorrow’s problem.
• What we need to solve today: two major questions in play:

1. With 8BN people, is there a way to feed them which reduces carbon emissions to the absolute minimum? (Scope 1, 2, 3 emissions considered)
2. What is the most efficient way to move to this system and have it be sustainable?
   1. For example, if it requires elimination of all livestock, we would want to phase that in.
   2. Similarly, if major socioeconomic changes are required for a given solution, we might want to discard that option.
   3. Answering this question is a heavily local decision with broadly global impacts

So, is regenerative grazing overhyped?

In Foley’s piece, he sets the total potential for regenerative grazing against the total emissions. Clearly, the latter dwarves the former. We might, perhaps, set regenerative grazing against the total required drawdown and conclude it’s a major tool. But no matter what, he is clear (and we should be, too) that no single solution will solve the problem. In my comments/discussion below, I’ve tried to tease out some of the major discussion points. But just as ‘Eat. Not too much. Mostly plants.’ Is a useful way to summarize the raging debates about diet, so might we summarize this debate as ‘Graze. Not too much. Mostly regeneratively’.

Overall discussion

“Some meat” ≠ our existing system of livestock production 

As we all know, the American diet in general tends to be far higher in highly dense protein (meat) than other national diets. When we talk about ‘some meat is natural’, that is certainly uncontroversial as far as our human digestive system. However, our meat supply chain is set up to serve a conspicuously heavier intake; and studies do tend to show that ‘grass finishing’ has a higher methane profile than grain-finished.

 “Farming plants generates emissions” ≠ ”Veganism is worse than any alternative” 

This perennial debate is often a wonderful illustration of the idea that ‘a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step’ – and if that step is in the wrong direction, we can be lost before we have begin. Yes, today’s agricultural systems typically depend on emissions-LULC, heavy machinery, fertilizer, transport and so on. This is unquestionable, albeit wide open to a bracing debate on how much of this emission can be eliminated. With that said, there is clear and well-documented evidence (for example, here and here) that diets richer in plants produce lower total emissions. This doesn’t mean that replacing meat 1-1 with fake meat like Beyond Beef is sustainable, reasonable or even what anyone is suggesting. It’s also worth noting that methane has a very strong impact on warming, but decays very quickly – and also that methane plays a complex role in net zero targets.

“Animals have always been around” ≠ “It can’t be the animals” 

Yes, there have always been animals, and while estimates vary as to the total numbers of bison, we can arrive at reasonable estimates in the low 10s of millions. As of January 2024 there were 87.2M head of cattle and calves in the US. This means that there are anywhere from ~3X to ~10X more cattle in the US now than there were at the end of the civil war. This doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with the picture, per se. However, it does suggest that the change over time would tend to have associated impacts that at least question the equivalency.

“What used to work” ≠ “What can work now”

(see also, “what we need to solve now” ≠ “what we will need to solve tomorrow”)

To some extent, this aspect of the debate mirrors the commentary under #3 – with some important differences. A family that actively raises and slaughters its own meat in sustainable ways looks radically different than the same family, eating the same amount of meat, but not raising it themselves. Their relationship with the land and with the food they eat is very different, including how they dispose of food waste and how they think about meat. There are myriad other vectors to this debate but they end with this: what solutions function best to transition from one stage to another, and what solutions are suitable for sustaining over a long period, need not have much to do with one another. Undoubtedly, it was once possible for folk to have a personal relationship with any meat they chose to eat. It may be again. For now, it presupposes a level of infrastructure which is rarely present for any family and certainly not present for all.

Veganism ≠ “Replace meat with fake meat”

To be sure, fake meat has its place. Whether lab-grown ‘real meat’, CDR scrubbed ‘meat’, or pea protein … it can all play a part in a diet. But let’s not kid ourselves, there is a massive difference between replacing (mostly) unprocessed meat with completely processed ‘meat’ that so far is quite a different substance. Processed food represents a meaningful risk to public health. As a bridge between eating meat and not eating meat, sure – studies indicate that pea protein specifically is a low emitter compared to grazed meat (whether regenerative or not regenerative). But as a prescription? As an end state? Absolutely not.

Part of the confusion here might be between the moral imperative to address the climate crisis (which supports eating less beef, but doesn’t prescribe eating no meat) and the ethical frameworks of veganism, which typically depart from the sense that “It is wrong to ignore or discount the interests of sentient beings because they are not members of our species” (Singer, 2022)

The Great Plains were sustained for millions of years by bison.

• Unquestionably, and with other animals such as antelope etc.
• Those plains don’t exist now, and a return of pre-modern economic structures seems unlikely except via catastrophe
• Regenerative grazing on native vegetation should have full systemic carbon impact assessed

Plants require emissions too, so ramping up plant-based diets is just as bad

Aka My family only eats locally raised meat, so it’s nowhere near as bad

• “Eating locally would only have a significant impact if transport was responsible for a large share of food’s final carbon footprint. For most foods, this is not the case.” (source)
• This is data from the largest meta-analysis of global food systems to date, published in Science by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018). In this study, the authors examined data from more than 38,000 commercial farms in 119 countries.
• The most important insight from this study is that there are massive differences in the GHG emissions of different foods: producing a kilogram of beef emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gases (CO2-equivalents). In contrast, peas emit just 1 kilogram per kg. Overall, animal-based foods tend to have a higher footprint than plant-based. Lamb and cheese both emit more than 20 kilograms of CO2-equivalents per kilogram. Poultry and pork have lower footprints but are still higher than most plant-based foods, at 6 and 7 kg CO2-equivalents, respectively.

The major finding? What you eat can vary 50-60x in its impact on the planet, with ~10% from transport. A conclusion? There are definitely feeding systems that can include local meat, and in general not eating meat has far fewer negative impacts on emissions.