All About Cows: What Has Four Legs, Says “Moo,” and Could Save the Planet?
Many of us have been taught that overgrazing, methane-emitting livestock turn green pastures into arid deserts and are responsible for the widespread desertification that threatens precious biodiversity, soil quality, and more. Not so, as Allan Savory explains in his TED Talk, “We were once just as certain that the world was flat. We were wrong then, and we are wrong again.” You may think it unlikely that these pastured grazers are the soil saviors we need, but it’s true.
Through holistic management and planned grazing, cows can help rebuild soil and restore land to its rightful state—improving carbon sequestration, natural water cycles, and soil fertility and nutrient density.
The following is an excerpt from Cows Save the Planet by Judith D Schwartz. It has been adapted for the web.
Cows saving the planet?
Why not? An idea that sounds preposterous begins to make sense if we stop to take a soil’s-eye view of our current environmental predicament. To crouch down to ground level—literally or metaphorically—and see how human and animal activity enhances or does violence to that fine earthy layer that hugs our planet. To appreciate the imperceptible animal–vegetable–mineral dance that keeps us alive.
You see, that brown stuff we rush to wash off our hands (or, depend- ing on our age, our knees) is the crux of most biological functions that sustain life. Soil is where food is created and where waste decays. It absorbs and holds water; or, if exhausted of organic matter, streams it away. It filters biological toxins and can store enough carbon to reduce carbon dioxide levels significantly and relatively quickly.
It is home to more than 95 percent of all forms of terrestrial life. In any given place the quality of the soil greatly determines the nutritional value of food, how an area weathers drought or storms, and whether an ecosystem is teeming with life or the equivalent of a ghost town.