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Want to mitigate climate change, reduce green house gasses and protect endangered song birds, pollinators and the native grasslands they inhabit? Support local grass-fed beef!

Okay, so the logic behind raising or eating beef as a means to reduce greenhouse gasses sounds flawed. Meat-eaters can get a lot of flack and finger-wagging for contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Grain-to-fork, the carbon footprint of a meat diet is quite staggering. The good news: eating pastured meat can make a big difference. 

Grass-fed livestock graze and perform natural behaviors while fertilizing the soil naturally. Farmers who raise them employ agricultural practices that maintain the health and integrity of the ecosystem. They make a livelihood feeding people by raising meat sustainably while fostering native habitat for birds, pollinators and natural grasslands. Check out the health benefits of grass-fed livestock at Eat Wild and meet some farmers leading the grass-fed movement at Manitoba Grass-Fed Association.

One Canadian rancher, Bryan Gilvesy, is busy keeping up with the demand for healthy, humanely raised, ecologically responsible beef. For over a decade, Gilvesy and his family have raised grass-fed Texas Longhorn cattle, pastured year round on 350 acres at their farm Y U Ranch in Norfolk County, Southwestern Ontario. Gilvesy saw the viability of his venture into farming from the business world when he noticed the shift in consumer interest towards leaner, sustainably-raised beef.

As a participant in an Alternative Land Use Serivce pilot project, Gilvesy receives recognition and financial credits for carbon sequestration and for using ecologically sustainable farming methods. Solar pumps provide fresh water for his herds and prevent the cattle from contaminating the watershed. One hundred acres of Carolinian woodlands and the watershed within are protected by fences. Atop posts are bird houses providing habitat for blue birds.

Grass-fed livestock are fundamental to supporting and protecting grassland ecosystems, and of great value to farmers wishing to offset carbon emissions. Fertilized and stimulated by grazers, native warm-season grasses (big blue-stem, Indian and switchgrass), with roots 12-16 feet in depth, are absorbing carbon and storing it in the soil. Gilvesy observes many species of birds and pollinators attracted to the hedgerows and grasses. They pick apart manure for grains and bugs.

Saskatchewan naturalist and author Trevor Herriot makes the argument for grass-fed beef farming as a means to protect and restore the ever vanishing prairie grasslands of Western Canada and the U.S. Midwest and the threatened and endangered song birds. In his highly acclaimed book Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the Land of Grassland Birds, Herriot discusses how the western prairies are the most human-altered landscape in Canada. These grasslands also have the ability to sequester carbon in the soil to a degree greater than forests.

“If we could convert even a small percentage of the animal protein we consume in North America from grain-fed to grass-fed, there would be a correspondent increase in grassed land. That in turn can provide better habitat for birds that use grass to nest and forage and it helps reduce the amount of carbon that agriculture releases into the atmosphere.”

The modern-day land-grab culprit here is mechanized, industrial mono-cropping for agribusiness. The irony is that all this would-be grassland now cultivates grain – the primary ingredient in livestock diets.

The wicked step-sister of North American grassland is the feedlot.  Factory farms (which, in Canada, are dubbed intensive livestock operations, or ILOs) rely on synthetic, fertilizer-intensive mono-cropping for grain, using methods that are heavily reliant on fossil fuels. These feedlots are a danger to the animals they confine, the ecosystems they toxify, and the people their chemicals, hormones and pathogens poison. Communities and small-scale, sustainable farming also suffer where ILOs are present. Visit Beyond Factory Farming’s website for information on how you can build alternatives.

Reducing or eliminating meat intake can make a major contribution to reducing greenhouse gases and mitigating climate change, but the choices we make when we do eat meat are even more significant. Supporting sustainably-raised, local grass-fed meats, dairy, and eggs make pastures greener for our health, livestock, ecosystem and communities they support.