Cows Help Farms Capture More Carbon in Soil, Study Shows
Cows may belch methane into the atmosphere at alarming rates, but new data shows they may play an important role in renewing farm soil.
Research by the Soil Association Exchange shows that farms with a mixture of arable crops and livestock have about a third more carbon stored within their soil than those with only arable crops, thanks to the animals’ manure.
This also has an effect on biodiversity: mixed arable and livestock farms support about 28 grassland plant species in every field, compared with 25 for arable-only and 22 for dairy-only.
Joseph Gridley, chief executive of SAE, which was set up by the Soil Association in 2021 to support and measure sustainable farming, said it was unlikely that carbon captured in soil would balance out the enormous amounts of methane created by cattle. Farm livestock around the world creates about 14% of human-induced climate emissions.
“It’s pretty unequivocal in the data that having livestock on your farm does mean you have more emissions – five or six times more emissions,” he said. “But if you integrate livestock into the system, on every metric on soil health, there’s an improvement, and on a lot of the biodiversity measures as well.”