Regenerative Agriculture by the Numbers
Most people who follow news and discussion related to the environment know that agriculture contributes significantly to the climate change problem as well as land degradation and water pollution. And, animal husbandry is disproportionately responsible for a large percentage of these problems.
The Problem: Factory Farming
From land and water use, to GHG emissions, the breeding and raising of animals for use by humans is one of the largest destructive industries in the world. This is in large part to the concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), otherwise known as factory farms. CAFOs require large amounts of land to grow animal feed, fossil fuels to operate the machinery to grow the feed, transport the feed to feedlots, cool the animals held in confined spaces, etc.
CAFOs are also responsible for water pollution through the leakage of animal excrements into waterways as well as the excess fertilizer runoff from the thousands of acres feed crop fields that create dead zones.
Environmentalists, and more importantly, farmers are realizing that CAFOs are not a sustainable model for raising animals for human consumption, especially since demand for animal protein is expected to increase by 70% by 2050 as developing nations become wealthier and start adopting a more western diet.
The Solution: Regenerative Agriculture?
Regenerative animal husbandry, that aims to mimic how animals would normally live in the wild, is widely promoted as an alternate method of farming animals that is supposed to be sustainable and reverse some of the harms of breeding and raising animals in industrial agriculture.
Some studies have shown short-term benefits of regenerative animal husbandry that include improved soil health, carbon sequestration and increased biodiversity, especially on land that was highly degraded by conventional agriculture previously.
Long term effects of managed grazing for carbon sequestration, however, tell a different picture. Independent research (those carried out by those who do not have a financial stake in the outcome) shows that while grazing animals on severely compromised land does drawdown carbon in the short term, “Grazing livestock are net contributors to the climate problem, as are all livestock” in the long term, especially, when taking into account methane and nitrous oxide, both potent GHGs, resulting from animal husbandry.
How Much Land?!
Even if it were true that regenerative animal husbandry is the most environmentally friendly way to breed and raise animals, is it truly sustainable?
Currently, over 40% of the total land area of the United States is used for animal farming. Of all the animals bred for human consumption in the US, 99% come from factory farms.
Land required to move beef production to a wholly regenerative system.
Let’s look at the numbers.
Get Kamal S. Prasad’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Factory farmed cattle are pasture-raised up until they are about 12 months of age. Each animal requires about 2 acres of land during this time. After a year, they are moved to feedlots for about 6 months to fatten them up quickly for slaughter. In a feedlot, the animal will require very little space (less than 0.01 acres) since their freedom of movement is severly restricted, but will be feeding on grain (corn or soy) that needed about 0.75 acres to be grown.
Per factory-farmed animal:
Total growth time: ~18 months
Total land use: ~2.75 acres
Cattle raised on Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP)/Rotational Grazing farms take longer to reach slaughter weight, about two years or more. As a result, more animals (about 20–30% more) have to be bred to keep a steady supply of beef available for consumers. Since animals spend all their time on pastures, considerably more land is required per steer to provide them with the food to bring to slaughter weight.
Per AMP-farmed animal:
Total growth time: >24 months
Total land use: ~8.0-12.0 acres (not all land produces equal quality forage)
An oft cited study usuall used by proponents has two authors that have a clear conflict of interest that is not disclosed. Dr. Richard Teague worked closely as a consultant and advocate for the livestock industry. And, in 2018 Peter Byck brought in $4.5 million directly from McDonald’s to fund and promote regenerative ranching research.
Of the total land area of 1.9 billion acres of the contiguous United States, about 781 million acres (about 41% of the total land area of the lower 48 states) are currently used for animal husbandry.
To move to a realistic and wholly regenerative production to meet the current demand of US beef consumption, would require over two billion acres of land in part because large swaths of land consists of low productivity rangelands that cannot support finishing cattle.
Clearly, moving to a wholly regenerative system of animal husbandry will be a disaster for the environment and is not sustainable.
In order to raise enough cattle using the current allocation of agricultural land in a wholly regenerative way, our animal protein needs to reduce to about 1.5 ounce (43 grams) a day. That’s two or three pieces of chicken nuggets. However, I’ve never seen advocates of regenerative animal husbandry suggest decreasing one’s animal protein consumption in order to live more sustainably.
Of course, reducing consumption of animals products would mean fewer animals bred therefore reducing the supply of animal products available to consumers. Anyone with a basic understanding of economics is aware that when the supply of something is reduced, its price goes up. This means only the rich will be able to afford animal products.
Even moving chicken and egg production to wholly organic and pasture based systems will create more environmental problems than they claim to solve.
If one truly cares about the environment, the best thing they can do is to move to consuming wholly plant-based foods to sustain themselves and encourage others to do the same. It is the most cost effective step that anyone can take right now. Plant-based foods require much less land and water.
What can we do with the freed up land? Rewild them, which is practically better in every metric than switching to regenerative animal husbandry.
Disclosure: Research for this article was done with the help of AI. For transparency and to ensure that I did my best to avoid any biases, I’m sharing the response along with my prompt: https://gemini.google.com/share/24e1158d9abd
