Bridging the Beef Divide

Vox magazine recently joined the array of attacks on the beef industry with a new critique on major environmental NGOs working on beef sustainability. Vox accuses environmental groups of selling out on climate action, corporations of greenwashing, and of little measurement of progress across the board.

Their most compelling critique is the lack of measurable progress around beef sustainability. Indeed, if companies create sustainability targets or initiatives but do not follow through with meaningful and measurable action, that is certainly greenwashing, even if unintentional. 

Greenwashing critiques can shine light on important issues, but such articles leave readers on all sides feeling angry, frustrated, and powerless. City folk fume at how little progress is being made, and wonder what environmental causes are worth supporting. Ranchers feel exasperated at why the public would rather see beautiful grasslands converted to crops and covered in suburban sprawl or solar arrays, rather than supporting the wildlife, food production and important landscapes they steward. 

Yet there is a middle road in this raging debate around beef, a bridge over the great 'Beef Divide' over which meaningful progress can be made.

For climate action in the beef sustainability actually aligns with one of the key priorities that Vox and others have highlighted: animal welfare. As it turns out, improving animal welfare is a significant climate opportunity, because healthier animals that gain weight faster produce less methane for each unit of beef produced. 

This is a win for animal welfare advocates, ranchers, corporations, and the cow. Why do both ranchers and corporations care about animal welfare?

• Ranchers pay attention to this because not only do they care about the welfare of their cattle, but also healthier animals perform better, gain weight faster, and improve a ranch’s profitability.
• Corporations with climate goals want improved animal management because, if cattle have better nutrition and grass available to them, and avoid diseases and stress, they also have better fertility rates and weight gain, and reduced mortality. This is a more efficient system with a lower methane footprint compared to one where cattle perish along the way, have fewer calves, or take longer to gain weight because of poor nutrition or stress. 

There are two key approaches through which companies and NGOs can support improved cattle welfare on the ranch: 1) provide ranchers with education and technical assistance and 2) support them throughout their climate journey. 

Many ranchers take time to attend educational events about improving cattle welfare and performance, provided through universities, extension service agents, industry associations, or private consultants. There they learn about how to match grazing intensity with grass availability and avoid overgrazing, keeping their grass productive and resilient to drought. They learn to evaluate the body condition of a cow to understand if she’s getting the nutrition needed at different stages of the reproductive cycle. They learn about low stress handling, managing heat events, and how to ensure that cattle always have reliable access to clean and plentiful water. They learn about vaccination protocols, diseases to watch out for, and how to selectively breed for better genetics producing cows that are resistant to disease and heat, more fertile, recover easily from giving birth, and are more resilient within their specific ecological contexts. 

Are ranchers motivated to adopt these practices because of climate change? Maybe, but it’s not the only driving force. Some seek to improve management because it makes their businesses more efficient and profitable. Another motivation is to steward their lands and natural resources so that the next generation can take over a business that is both environmentally and financially sustainable. In fact, this longterm view and land stewardship ethic is often the strongest reason why producers work to improve their management. Ranchers are not typically profit maximizers when it comes down to it, and ranching families typically raise cattle because of the lifestyle and to raise their children in nature, not because it is a financially easy industry to navigate. Indeed in my own academic research, I found that compared to crop farmers, ranchers are much more concerned about stewarding their land for its natural qualities. In reality, most ranching families have to take on additional occupations to make ends meet.

A ranch's financial health and ethic of land stewardship are both critical for preventing grassland conversion, a problem that continues to exacerbate both our climate and biodiversity crises. 32 million acres, an area of grassland the size of New York state, has been plowed up since 2012 to make way for wheat and other crops. California is experiencing similar losses of grassland to crops like almonds and to suburban sprawl. Such habitat loss is not only a disaster for soils, but also for habitat, including driving the stunning 53% loss of North America's grassland birds since 1970.

Beyond motivating and educating ranchers, corporations and NGOs also need to support producers throughout their climate journey, not just at the beginning. I’ve written previously about what real action looks like in the beef sustainability space, including meaningful investment at the ranch level, and the importance of data in proving the progress being made and being able to reward producers for it. 

Are any corporations taking real action to address beef emissions in their supply chains?

Yes, some now are and they are dedicating significant resources to supporting producers. This year, new programs are launching with the backing of some of the largest food companies on the planet, and are meaningfully tackling their climate footprints by providing ranchers with free education and consulting, data collection tools, and paying producers for actual reductions in methane using carbon insets. My team at AgriWebb has developed some of these programs through partnerships established within the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, which brings together NGOs, large corporations and start-ups to develop new approaches, informed by producer voices at the table. 

The Vox piece above is part of a series about ending factory farming. Yet one should not conflate factory farming with where most greenhouse gas emissions from beef come from: cattle grazing on grass. No matter how cattle are finished, whether on grass or in a feedlot, most of their lives are spent on grass, meaning the vast majority of beef emissions happens during that time. The solution here is not to convert these grazing lands to wheat for pasta, and lose our critical soil carbon stocks and habitat in the process. Instead, NGOs, corporations, university extension services, and public funders can partner with ranchers on improving their management. 

We must also track and report on progress through measurement, data collection, and science-based greenhouse gas models.

One of the main reasons that ranchers and companies alike have not been able to report on their progress to date is that there has been a lack of data at the grazing stage of the beef supply chain. Most ranchers, if they document any livestock records, use paper records and notebooks. These prove impossible to analyze, share, or even for the producer to use to understand which animals perform the best and which management practices deliver the best results. This is where the AgTech space is focusing today, including our work at AgriWebb to make data collection digital, easy and streamlined. With granular livestock and pasture data, the industry can begin to not only establish accurate baselines, but also track progress achieved each year and reward producers for what they have accomplished. 

Final Note The Vox piece criticizes environmental NGOs for not making stronger dietary recommendations to the public around meat. Yet it is perhaps unrealistic to expect environmental groups that partner with ranchers to play that role. Would a carrot farmer work with an organization that lobbied for carrots to be canceled? I think not.

A quarter of the planet is grazed by livestock, providing an important source of food and nutrition for people around the world. The majority of rangelands will continue to be actively managed by livestock producers for both food production and the variety of ecosystem services they provide, even if rewilding takes place in some regions. Environmental NGOs will therefore need to continue to play an important part supporting good stewardship of these lands and the wildlife, livestock and people that call them home. 

Let us set aside the cancel culture then, in favor of genuine engagement across sectors, across the political aisle, and across the kitchen table. Together we can achieve real, quantifiable progress on grazing lands, and preserve these landscapes for generations to come. 

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To learn more about the importance of action and stewardship of global grasslands, check out the Valuing Grasslands Report released in December 2023 by BirdLife International, Conservation International, PlantLife International, The Nature Conservancy, and WWF.  

To learn more about how AgriWebb's livestock software enables climate programs in the beef sustainability space, read AgriWebb's Corporate Sustainability brochure.