enhanced Grazing

Some cattle producers are focusing on adapting grazing practices to produce beef in a way they frame as environmentally friendly.    

Certainly factory farms and feedlot models, where the vast majority of cows are confined for beef production, are horrific for animals, workers and the planet. But ultimately no form of beef production is sustainable at current rates. So while reduction is key, it’s crucial to shed truth on claims made by grazing proponents.   

Grass-fed beef is often touted as the “eco-friendly option,” making subtle waves in restaurants, grocery stores, and the food world. Grass-fed beef, as opposed to “feedlot beef,” is from cows who are only fed forage (which may be supplemental).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service program plans to spray insecticides on 30,000 acres of public lands in Oregon under its killing program targeting grasshoppers and Mormon crickets. But this insecticide, diflubenzuron, will kill everything else too — including pollinators like butterflies and 700-800 species of bees. 

Western monarch butterflies are already experiencing a 99.99% decline, and many of these pollinators are needed to pollinate U.S. crops. The insecticide will also poison the natural food of imperiled grassland birds like sage grouse on public, taxpayer lands. The USDA has approved this killing program because native wildlife like grasshoppers and crickets compete with private cattle operations for forage.

Limitations of Grass-Fed

• There is no common definition, standard, monitoring or enforcement of grass-fed cattle grazing practices. Cows are fed forage, but without regulations that can mean anything from grassy hillsides to forage pellets on a feedlot, leaving many opportunities for greenwashing.  
• Despite the general aura of being eco-friendly, there aren’t specific environmental standards or practices. Despite what industry, NGOs, or grazing advocates may claim, “grass-fed” simply refers to the cattle’s diet and not any other practice. 
• The sustainability halo around grass-fed beef helps producers charge more for their products, limiting their availability to more privileged echelons of society.
• Previous studies claiming grass-fed beef is healthier or more nutritious have been debunked. 

Unlike grass-fed beef producers, regenerative cattle grazing producers and claim to be striving for more specific environmental improvements. However, they do not go far enough. To add to the confusion, because of a lack of definitions, systems of grazing are blended together and many use terms like “regenerative grazing,” “holistic grazing,” and even “adaptive multi-paddock grazing” and “multi-paddock rotational grazing” interchangeably. 

In adaptive multi-paddock grazing (AMP), cattle are stocked at relatively high densities but graze on a plot of land for a shorter period. This practice claims to allow grasses to recover, put down stronger root systems and store more carbon in soils. But it’s unclear whether adaptive multi-paddock grazing is better than continuous grazing, whether rotational grazing can be scaled or match lofty claims and whether holistic managed grazing even works.

Limitations of Regenerative, Holistic and AMP Grazing

• There is a general lack of clarity and regulated standards or definitions when it comes to grass-fed beef and dairy. It remains unclear what the label means to most producers or how it’s measured, monitored, regulated and enforced. Without a clear framework, commitments and accountability, it’s difficult to determine whether a wildlife-friendly producer uses effective measures. Do they use nonlethal predator conflict reduction practices such as range riders, fladry, fencing, dogs, or lights? Do they use nonlethal, nontoxic farming practices, avoiding not just tillage but pesticides? Do they avoid the killing of native wildlife like gophers, prairie dogs and coyotes? Do claims to carbon sequestration hold up given the difficulties and disagreements about measuring soil carbon?

Another method of cattle grazing is known as “silvopasture.” These practices are often lumped under the umbrella of “agroforestry” in climate agreements. Silvopasture means to integrate forests and forestry practices into cattle grazing — adding trees to pastures and farmed animals into forests. 

The USDA defines silvopasture as “intensive management” of forests and grazing operations to produce revenue from the products derived from trees and cows (although it could also include sheep, goats, horses, chickens, bison, deer or elk). This involves using nitrogen-fixing legumes, fertilization and rotational grazing. 

The idea behind “silvopasture” grazing is that grazing cattle help build the soil health of the forest to produce economically beneficial “saw logs” and reduce unwanted forest “fuel.” Meanwhile, the forest can help build the cattle operation, providing forage, shade and shelter. Both forest and cattle are valued in this model primarily as economically driven outputs.

Adding trees to pastures can offer some benefits to grazed animals, such as providing shade and shelter. Wildlife may also benefit from healthy native vegetation, while waterways benefit from increased protection from erosion with more forage. And in the best silvopasture systems, carbon storage or sequestration in soil and trees may compensate for some increased methane and nitrous oxide produced by cows emitting more greenhouse gases.

Limitations of Silvopasture

• It doesn’t last forever. As with other carbon-storage schemes, stored soil carbon has a shelf life, and is lost when the land is degraded. Land degradation happens as a result of climate change, human mismanagement and overgrazing.  
• It can’t work everywhere. While more common in the southeastern United States, the arid West and Southwest present a very different landscape. Dry grasslands also can’t support healthy forests. 
• It’s not cheap. This is a highly labor-intensive effort, for it is not a matter of simply planting a few trees but determining the right native species, the right spacing between trees, and the right forestry practices, which are new forms of knowledge to many livestock producers. It also takes time to grow new trees and protect them from grazing. The revenue from grazing can fund tree operations and diversifying economic inputs but also requires intense human oversight and a lot of time.  
• It can spread invasive weeds. Adding fertilizers can favor invasive weeds over native species. For example, where invasive cheatgrass occurs, using fertilizers can contribute to its spread.  
• It can hurt wildlife. If added forage and trees are not native, silvopasture can be very problematic for the landscape. In addition to the potential for creating a high opportunity for the spread of nonnative, invasive vegetation beyond the pasture area, native plants and trees have a far greater value for promoting biodiversity, bringing native insects, which in turn supports native birds and other wildlife. This distinction does not appear in many silvopasture efforts.  
• It often still means chopping down trees. Much of this modeling relies on the practice of turning forests into timber for logging. Both the timber industry and the cattle industry have a detrimental impact on the environment, and combining these efforts does not change that concern. Trees can hold an enormous amount of carbon so the deforestation inherent with silvopasture grazing is counterproductive to efforts to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from grazing. 

Even in the best-case scenarios, these enhanced grazing practices have steep environmental costs. While ecologically driven improvements to grazing practices are welcomed, they require clearly defined standards and work best with drastically reduced herds and an overall wide scale reduction in consumption and production. Improved practices cannot deflect from that point, and they cannot reduce the negative impacts of grazing on biodiversity and the climate crisis at a meaningful level without a dramatic reduction in beef consumption. (Read more about alternative agricultural solutions.)