The climate-friendly cow

by Martin Auer

Not the cow, but industrial agriculture is the climate polluter, argues the veterinarian Anita Idel - one of the lead authors of the World Agricultural Report 2008[1] – in the book “On the myth of climate-smart agriculture” published together with the agricultural scientist Andrea Beste[2]. The cow has a bad reputation among climate activists for belching methane. This is actually bad for the climate, because methane (CH4) heats up the atmosphere 25 times more than CO2. But the cow also has its climate-friendly sides.

The climate-friendly cow lives mainly on the pasture. She eats grass and hay and no concentrated feed. The climate-friendly cow is not bred for extreme performance. She only gives 5.000 liters of milk a year instead of 10.000 of the 12.000. Because she can do so much with grass and hay as fodder. The climate-friendly cow actually belches more methane for every liter of milk she gives than the high-yielding cow. But this calculation does not tell the whole story. The climate-friendly cow does not eat grain, corn and soy away from humans. Today, 50 percent of the global grain harvest ends up in the feeding troughs of cows, pigs and poultry. That's why it's absolutely right that we need to reduce our consumption of meat and dairy products. Forests are cut down and grasslands are cleared to accommodate these ever-growing amounts of fodder crops. Both are "land use changes" that are extremely harmful to the climate. If we didn't feed grain, a lot less land could feed a lot more people. Or you could work with less intensive, but gentler cultivation methods. But the climate-friendly cow eats grass that humans cannot digest. Therefore we must also consider on which meat and which Dairy products we should refrain from. From 1993 to 2013, for example, the number of dairy cows in North Rhine-Westphalia was more than halved. However, the remaining cows produced more milk than all together 20 years earlier. The climate-friendly cows, which had been bred to obtain their performance primarily from grass and pasture, had been abolished. What remained were the high-performance cows, which depend on concentrated feed from nitrogen-fertilized fields, some of which still have to be imported. This means that there are additional sources of CO2 during transport.

The main beneficiaries of the conversion of grassland into arable land for the production of animal feed are the industries that supply the farms or process the products. So the chemical industry with seeds, mineral and nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides, animal feed, antibiotics, antiparasitics, hormones; the agricultural machinery industry, the stable equipment companies and the animal husbandry companies; Transport companies, dairy, slaughterhouse and food companies. These industries are not interested in the climate-friendly cow. Because they can hardly earn anything from her. Because it is not bred for extreme performance, the climate-friendly cow lives longer, gets sick less often and does not have to be pumped full of antibiotics. The feed of the climate-friendly cow grows where it is and does not have to be transported from far away. The soil on which the fodder grows does not have to be cultivated with various energy-guzzling agricultural machines. It does not need nitrogen fertilization and therefore does not cause any nitrous oxide emissions. And nitrous oxide (N2O), which is produced in the soil when the nitrogen is not fully absorbed by the plants, is 300 times more harmful to the climate than CO2. In fact, nitrous oxide is agriculture's largest contributor to climate change. 

Grasses have evolved over millions of years together with cattle and sheep and goats and their relatives: in co-evolution. That is why grazing land is dependent on grazing animals. The climate-friendly cow promotes grass growth with its bite, an effect that we know from lawn mowing. The growth happens mainly underground, in the root area. The roots and fine roots of the grasses reach twice to twenty times the biomass above ground. Grazing contributes to humus formation and carbon storage in the soil. Each ton of humus contains half a ton of carbon, which relieves the atmosphere of 1,8 tons of CO2. Overall, this cow does more for the climate than it harms through the methane it burps. The more grass roots, the better the soil can store water. This is for flood protection and the resilience to drought. And well-rooted soil is not washed away so quickly. In this way, the climate-friendly cow helps to reduce soil erosion and preserve biodiversity. Of course only if grazing is kept within sustainable limits. If there are too many cows, the grass cannot grow back quickly enough and the root mass decreases. The plants that the cow eats are covered with microorganisms. And the cow dung she leaves behind is also enriched with bacteria. In the course of evolution, an interaction between the above- and below-ground life sphere of the bacteria has developed. This is one of the reasons why cattle excrement particularly promotes soil fertility. The fertile black earth soils in the Ukraine, in the Puszta, in the Romanian lowlands, in the German lowland bays and in many other areas are the result of thousands of years of grazing. Today, high crop yields are achieved there, but intensive agriculture is removing the carbon content from the soil at an alarming rate. 

40 percent of the earth's vegetated land surface is grassland. Next to the forest, it is the largest biome on earth. Its habitats range from extremely dry to extremely wet, from extremely hot to extremely cold. There is still grassland above the tree line that can be grazed. Grass communities are also very adaptable in the short term because they are mixed cultures. The seeds in the soil are diverse and can germinate and grow depending on environmental conditions. Thus, grass communities are very resistant – “resilient” – systems. Their growing season also begins earlier and ends later than that of deciduous trees. Trees form more above-ground biomass than grasses. But much more carbon is stored in the soil beneath grasslands than in forest soils. Grassland used for cattle grazing accounts for two thirds of all agricultural land and provides a vital livelihood for one tenth of the world's population. Wet meadows, alpine pastures, steppes and savannas are not only among the largest carbon stores, but also offer the largest nutrient base for protein formation on earth. Because most of the global land area is not suitable for long-term arable use. For human nutrition, these areas can only be used sustainably as pastureland. If we were to give up animal products entirely, we would lose the valuable contribution of the climate-friendly cow to the conservation and improvement of the soil, to storing carbon and preserving biodiversity. 

The 1,5 billion cattle that populate our planet today are definitely too many. But how many climate-friendly cows could there be? We do not find the answer to this specific question in this study. It might just be speculative. For orientation, you can keep in mind that around 1900, i.e. before the invention and the massive use of nitrogen fertilizers, only a little over 400 million cattle lived on earth[3]And one more point is important: Not every cow that feeds on grass is climate-friendly: 60 percent of grasslands are moderately or severely overgrazed and threatened by soil destruction[4] Clever, sustainable management is also necessary for pastoralism. 

Word has gotten around that trees are important for climate protection. It is time that the grassland ecosystem was also given the necessary attention.

Cover photo: Nuria Lechner
Spotted: Hanna Faist

[1]    https://www.unep.org/resources/report/agriculture-crossroads-global-report-0

[2]    Idel, Anita; Beste, Andrea (2018): From the myth of climate-smart agriculture. or Why less of the bad isn't good. Wiesbaden: The Greens European Free Alliance in the European Parliament.

[3]    https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/livestock-counts

[4]    Piipponen J, Jalava M, de Leeuw J, Rizayeva A, Godde C, Cramer G, Herrero M, & Kummu M (2022). Global trends in grassland carrying capacity and relative stocking density of livestock. Global Change Biology, 28, 3902-3919. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16174