This just seems like blatant greenwashing for the cattle industry. This article makes the claim in the headline that it’s “carbon positive”, but makes an incredibly weak case, even saying that a researcher “believes” that it’s carbon positive. This is opposed to the glaringly obvious fact that cattle ranching is incredibly bad for climate change and deforestation:
However, one study revealed that cattle ranching has also been Colombia’s top contributor to illegal deforestation in recent years. Between 1985 and 2019, more than 3m hectares (7.4m acres) of the Amazon rainforest were cleared for pasture.
This is just another techie sounding idea to solve climate change without doing anything, which we’ll all forget about in a few years time. Does anyone even remember the whole “rewilding” fad that was huge in England 6 years back??
Also, “Carbon positive” means they’re releasing more carbon than they’re sequestering.
If they were trying to greenwash they’d be claiming to be “carbon neutral” or lower.
By rejecting traditional grazing and maintaining trees and wildlife habitats alongside pasture, farmers are turning their land carbon positive.
I’m sure that “carbon positive” can mean anything, but the context of this sentence says that it refers to carbon sequestration.
What’s your criticisms of rewilding?
Rewilding in the sense of letting nature grow back is fine. I’m referring to the the form of cattle ranching that was pushed by a literal baroness in England. The science of it was very sketchy, they took tons of public funds, and what really irked me was that the baron/husband was a literal Rhodesia colonist. The biggest proponent of cattle rewilding is a mega colonist.
I’d be open to other forms of “rewilding”. But the only science I’ve seen with rewilding and cattle has been really glossy but non rigorous studies done by agricultural facilities (i.e. paid by big ag in their home countries).
Thought it sounded like the Savory thing. Yes, apparently his claims and experimental results have not been backed up or (EDIT: consistently) replicated by rangeland scientists and he’s an oldschool Rhodesia army officer who still owns a big plot in Zimbabwe, lmao
https://jacobin.com/2022/03/big-agriculture-funding-regenerative-ranching-amp-grazing-soil-carbon
I hold a LOT of hate for Savory. I don’t get how someone so obviously evil still gets to go to TED talks and pretend that he’s saving the world.
Also George Monbiot has a better criticism of cattle rewilding than I could do.
Nao
eco-friendly beef
It’s like eco-friendly solar-powered plane travel. Technically it might be possible with a low capacity and high cost, but it’s so infeasible for the average person that it’s not even worth talking about.
