Cowspiracy Debunked

Meat (including offal) provides the most complete and nutrient-dense food for humans. Some people believe you can be healthy without consuming any animal products, but the long-term health prospects do not seem good, at least for the majority.

No. You don’t need any meat at all. In fact, all meats are relatively unhealthy compared to whole-food plant sources of protein, fats, and complex carbohydrates (see NutritionFacts.org). No serious person disputes the fact that animal agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions. The less meat, fish, and dairy we all consume the better.

It did not need however. There is PLENTY of Brazilian territory that is NOT covered by the Amazon. Extensive huge areas of fields (Pampas and Campos de Cima da Serra) as well as savannah (Cerrado) or even more desertic areas in the northeast, which could very well be better used for agriculture and cattle raising, but are not.

What drives deforastation of the Amazon is simply greed… as the lands are very cheap compared to lands in the Cerrado or other southern areas.

You CAN stop deforastation of the Amazon and at the same time increase by ten fold brazilian agricultural and cattle production.

Hello Anne,

Okay, sure, but are you referring much more in terms of animal welfare, or actually pursuing regenerative agriculture practices that improve the soil and utilizes animals in such a way that gets them out of the barns and onto the land; so that the reliance on fossil fuels and machinery to sow and harvest the crops and to feed the animals and move the manure away from such operations is significantly reduced? Doesn’t regenerative agriculture encourage a much more integral plant-animal relationship on the landscape (which means the animals are there to do the harvesting and the fertilizing and the trampling and the seeding themselves, with the assistance of our management skills and equipment to effectively move them around from place to place), and discourage such a separation of animals from the land and therefore a distinct gap between the natural plant-animal interaction?

I’m not sure what “Kool-Aid” you’ve expressed that I’ve drank, as it seems to me that your assertion that I’ve created some sort of fallacy seems to stem from your erroneous assumption that I’m talking about something that I’m not actually talking about, and that you’ve incorrectly misinterpreted. Am I right? I don’t wish to further insult you by assuming that you don’t know anything about regenerative agriculture because you could make a similar assumption about me knowing nothing about animal husbandry and welfare practices in CAFOs which couldn’t be further from the truth (and you may know more about regenerative agriculture than I could ever surmise from a simple comment from a total stranger). However, it just seemed to me that, from the way you worded your comment, that you have indeed misinterpreted what I said and are reacting in such a manner, which is forgivable.

That said, my comment in making such an assertion is partly justified; while you’re right in that CAFOs can certainly take on certain regenerative agricultural practices (such as more diverse crop rotations and implementing the use of catch polyculture crops in with crop rotations) to help out with healing the soil and sequestering carbon, it’s the animal part that I’m not entirely sure of, hence my rhetorical questions posed above. (And I don’t believe I mentioned anything about farm size, and how that’s “bad” versus small = “good”; again, that may have been more of an incorrectly implied assumption you made which, again, is forgivable.)

I am positive that you’ve seen worse things on small family farms, I don’t doubt that. So have I. But again, is this more in the context of poor animal husbandry and poor management practices, or are you actually legitimately referring to Regenerative Agriculture in such statements? I believe it’s safe to make the assumption that it’s definitely not the latter.

Thank you for your comment.

-Karin

Who said anything about converting land for livestock? The only land that needs to be converted is the vast number of acres that are currently in annual crop production; and those acres should get converted to grassland (and savannah, if the environment supports it) that supports BOTH livestock AND wildlife habitat. Why must it be one or the other? The answer is that it doesn’t have to be. Livestock can be grazed more than well enough and help sequester carbon and promote biodiversity and help prevent fires and so on and so forth without this “need” to convert any land–especially land that’s already wildlife habitat and except land that should never have been put into annual crop production in the first place–to, as you put it, “suit livestock globally.” I’m sorry and no offence but I really don’t agree and think such a sentiment is completely ridiculous.

“Simply” having land with perennial vegetation that is adapted for having grazing animals–which constitutes over 2/3’s of the Earth’s land surface, mind you–and which is managed a whole lot better than it has been in the past (which has lead to problems like overgrazing and overresting) is a far better deal and a far better means to promote and maintain the presence of these so-called “naturally occurring plant and animal species” (or do you mean native rangelands and native wildlife) using a highly useful proxy such as the domesticated herbivore. When you see it THAT way you can really begin to appreciate and realize that land and habitat use as a “major negative” of domestic cattle farming isn’t that at all; as a matter of fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Do you know what a MAJOR negative of conventional agriculture and the kind of dietary recommendations that try to convince us is “better” for the planet? Annual cropland farming. This kind of agriculture destroys soil and wildlife habitat, pollutes waterways with fertilizer runoff and sediment, and kills a lot of life with the use of pesticides. Do you honestly believe that THAT kind of farming is better for the planet than grazing livestock?

Honestly, this land-use argument is rather silly. It seems there’s a lot of confusion between grazing livestock, especially well-managed grazing of livestock that promotes all that I’ve already mentioned, and raising cattle in feedlots. Those are two VERY different things, are you not aware of that? Also, the deleterious effects of grazing livestock and this “not enough land” nonsense–which is implied, I get it–has FAR more to do with MANAGEMENT of the animals than the livestock themselves. Far too commonly cattle have been grazed in a set-stock continuous grazing system that is undoubtedly deleterious for the landscape and undoubtedly takes up more land than it should; also undoubtedly it completely undermines and heavily, heavily underutilizes the potential of a piece of land to grow a lot more forage (regardless if it’s labelled “native” or “tame”) to graze a lot more animals than previously thought. When animals are MANAGED DIFFERENTLY and mobbed up and rotated around in kind of a mimicry to how the old bison herds would move around in response to the presence of predators, I’ve personally known several ranchers who doubled–some even tripled–their stocking rate over what is considered the “norm” for the area.

Really, if this kind of management changed happened everywhere, that argument of “not enough land” would just be a source of knee-slapping jokes at the local grazier coffee shop.

Start thinking outside the box. I understand your concerns but not all are all that valid as others may have you to believe.

~Karin

Hello and thanks for your comment.

I am very interested to know the precise source from which you have found such changes to be true, such as that directly from the FAO itself or a news source that is as recent as the year 2020.

The reason I ask is that, if you check out the two pertinent links in the article above, being the World Greenhouse Gas Emissions of the World Resources Institute, as well as Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock (directly from the FAO itself), such values being 13.8% and 14.5%, respectively, have remained unchanged since publication. Also, after doing a bit of digging thanks to Google, I have not found such updated values that you mentioned, neither from the FAO itself nor from a reliable news source. This leads me to wonder where you may have heard of such recent changes, and if I could see the source from where your allegation came from.

The only notable place which you may have been referring to is on page xii of the FAO document Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock, which reads, “[beef] and cattle milk production account for the majority of emissions, respectively contributing 41 and 20 percent of the sector’s emissions.” The way I read that quote is that the authors are specifically referring to solely the animal agricultural sector itself, not of all anthropogenic emissions.

The erroneous and highly dubious 51% value came from the Goodland & Anhang [2009] World Watch Institute report; such a report was wholly rejected by the wider scientific community, largely because such a value was attained from looking at only half of the carbon cycle–the emissions half–including carbon emitted from the respiration of animals, waste production, and clear-cutting of forests. The other half of the carbon cycle, which is the mitigation half, was completely ignored by Goodland & Anhang in the writing of their report. I will mention again that this report by Goodland & Anhang was widely rejected by the scientific community as outrageous and downright asinine. This is why the producers of Cowspiracy publicly retracted the 51% value in the tweet quoted in this article.

Indeed, the truth certainly does come out in the end, especially when one takes the time to do the research and find the documents to back up their claims–and provide such documents in discussions such as this–rather than make some dastardly, outlandish claim and fail to provide the proof to back it up. I would assume that you are in a clear understanding of such a concept of debate?

As a result of this quick research, the number provided on this website and the article to which you have commented will remain unchanged until you provide ample undeniable proof from the FAO itself that what you claim is legitimate.

Also, we will be happy to wait a year to see if your crystal ball analysis is indeed correct and to prove if we are indeed in denial. For now, the onus is on you to come up with the proof for your allegation.

I look forward to your response.

-Karin

Yes, if You have a credible reference for the 35-40%, please do put a link or article title so others can follow up on the source. I too have not come across such figures, however data from Our World in Data shows that agriculture as a whole contributes 26% to global GHG emissions, but of that 26%, 53% is caused by livestock farming (when the livestock themselves, production of livestock feed and land use for livestock are all combined). So I assume (assuming that similar data was used by the FAO), that that 53% equates to 14.5% of emissions as a whole, as I have not seen any updated figures on the contribution to global emissions by livestock.

https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions

Hello,

Regenerative agriculture actually and most certainly does address all those issues. You must remember that it’s a shift in paradigm thinking, rather than sticking with the old, outdated methods still applied today in industrial agricultural practices, which undoubtedly contributes to all (and more) of what you mentioned here.

By healing the soil (done by increasing organic matter content, encouraging more soil biology [earthworms, mycorrhizal fungi, and other critters and microbes], improving soil aggregate structure, decreasing compaction, keeping soil covered with living and dead plant matter at all times, etc.) we then turn a non-effective water cycle into an effective water cycle. By non-effective I mean that water is running off and evaporating very quickly instead of soaking into the soil, quickly drying out the soil and causing “capping” which exacerbates more runoff and therefore pollution into waterways; on the other hand, an effective water cycle is where water soaks in and remains there for long term for plant roots to use when needed, and water is released with the natural cell respiration and photosynthesis of plants.

Regenerative practitioners improve the water cycle by using methods including no-till agriculture, utilizing diverse multi-species cover crops, grazing animals on these cover crops, improving grazing practices by mobbing up animals and moving them before they’ve eaten plants to the ground (they’re only allowed to eat some, trample and poop on the rest before being moved to the next paddock), allowing for sufficient rest to get plants to recover, and reducing or eliminating tillage. Use of fertilizers and pesticides are also reduced over the years to where they’re not needed anymore.

Regenerative practitioners are also careful to manage their grazing animals on native rangelands so that they’re not overgrazing too much, and leaving the right kind of habitat for a multitude of bird and mammal species that need it for nesting, courting, feeding, and raising young. This is done by using similar grazing principles as I mentioned above, basically mimicking the old bison herds of yore but with cattle or sheep, and temporary electric fences or dogs and horses as tools for daily or weekly moves, depending on the environment, seasonal rainfall (which affects the amount of forage available to graze), etc.

No one in regenerative agriculture advocates for tree removal for making grazing lands. The only exception is in areas where trees and brush have become so ingrown and thick and full of dead material (or dead fall) that it becomes a serious fire hazard. Such areas need to be cleared out or managed so that they don’t become a worry for nearby businesses and homes when it’s fire season.

Also, there’s no need to clear trees to graze animals. Have you ever heard of silvopasturing? I suggest to look it up, as it’s one of the most praised practices of regenerative agriculture encouraged by the likes of Mark Shepard of Restoration Agriculture, and Paul Hawken of Drawdown.

Many of which you mentioned, and more, have already been solved by many regenerative farmers all over the globe. Brown’s Ranch in North Dakota manage grazing on thousands of acres of native rangeland for native plants and natural ecosystems. Blue Nest Beef (Russ Conser) is another ranch to check out, as they graze their animals with native birds and bird habitat in mind, especially since grassland songbirds are losing habitat at a far greater rate than most realize due to grasslands being plowed up to grow industrial monoculture corn, soybeans, wheat, and canola… all for cash cropping, and biofuel/oil (not necessarily CAFO animal feed, as they’re fed the waste products). Then there’s the Markegard’s, there’s the Dimbangombe ranch in Zimbabwe, Colin Seis’s farm in Australia, and many, many more.

It sounds like you have much to research and learn with regenerative agriculture. These are some suggestions here; I also highly, highly recommend to check out our list of resources (books, scientific research articles, and more) that we’ve compiled on here: https://www.ethicalomnivore.org/regenerative-agriculture-works-a-compilation-of-evidence/

I hope this answered your questions and has piqued your curiosity… or rather, heightened it even more so! If the latter, that’s awesome. (We’ve no issue with your dietary choice either, so don’t worry about that.)

All the best,

-Karin

Depends on the farmer. Most feed hay in a corral all winter, others will still continue to graze, but in a different manner than what you have in mind; i.e., bale grazing (putting hay bales out on a field for cows to eat, but not all at once, just select few at a time), swath grazing (similar to bale grazing except the crop is laid down with a swather and kept there until the cows are turned on to it, and controlled by electric fence), stockpile grazing (more similar to swath grazing, except pasture or crop is kept standing [can be perennial pasture, annual cocktail cover crop, or monoculture crop] and grazed by the cattle, which are usually controlled by electric fence) or corn grazing (very similar to stockpile grazing). Most farmers don’t just do one of these types of winter grazing, most will do a combination of two or more because there’s no telling how deep the snow will be or how crusted it will get, and other often-weather-related factors.

How long winter grazing lasts also depends on the location; some winters are mild and short, others long and drawn out, with green grass grazing not actually “beginning” until mid-May. So not only do farmers have to plan for winter, but also for what they’re going to do in the fall and in the spring.

Hope this answers your question.

-Karin

The film was very naive with its regenerative agriculture claims. Regenerative agriculture looks to create closed systems like what is found in nature where plants feed animals and animals feed plants. It can be done on both large and small scales., but there is a wide variety of practices with some not as good as others. In some small scale permaculture/forest gardens you can produce 200x as much food as monocultures of grains or soy beans, but it comes at the expense of labor. It is a huge topic worth learning about especially with local farms and small scale people working within you climate/environment. I think it is the best shot we got even with the learning curve and labor needed. I own a small homestead that I saved up an bought in my 20s seeing food security a top priority for my family (If I could do it anyone could, it just takes will and imagination – rural land is cheap).

I was quite disappointed in the films representation of small scale agriculture. At one point they claimed 1/6 of an acer can provide a vegan family all the food they need and you would need 1.2 acers with animals to do the same thing. This was complete bunk for 3 reasons. First it depends greatly where you live and what your winters are like. Second the animals and plants you grow matter greatly, and if you are going to try to get all your food from that piece of land you need to know what the nutritional value of what you are growing is and what grows well together and what doesn’t. Third, and this is probably the most important issue, where are the plants getting the nutrients to grow? If you don’t have animals you are mining and the land/fossil fuel use jumps way up. Sure you can compost only plants from your plot for a time but you will find after a few seasons your soil will be depleted because you are eating the nutrients and pooping them out without returning them to the soil. Solve this by composting the human waste? You need a lot to get a compost to heat up enough to kill pathogens and human waste is a hot manure so needs years of rest before it can be safely used on plants you are going to eat If you don’t want the costs that come with mining or processing human waste, you need animals for their manure to keep you soil healthy and alive. Very specific animals like rabbits, sheep, goats, and horses that have cold manure and are simplest to work with. You can put it directly on plants to feed the soil without pathogens or chemicals in the manure burning the plants (hot manure). If you are working with rabbits and veggies you can easily produce all the food you need in less than an acre if you know what you are doing, but without the rabbits providing fertilizer your mini farm will quickly stop working. Plants are not vegan so any vegan solution will fail.

Up until the 1920s nearly everyone had a victory garden and a flock of chickens (or more likely a couple of rabbits – they were more commonly consumed than chicken because they breed like you know rabbits) because making your own food was part of the culture. That is no longer the case and the knowledge base is not there, so you are right at one level that this is not a large scale solution, but I would argue that it should be. We need kids to learn home economics, cooking, and basic food skills and then spread out from the cities so there is less of a point source for pollution since so many of these issues come from too many people/cows/industrial whatever concentrated in one place. Yes, this would not be as easy as we have it now and there would still need to be a solemn conversation about human population and planet wide carrying capacity , but would give us the tools to maybe save our planet.

Too bad you aren’t addressing this silly comment to a conventional agriculture page like those vegans rely upon to feed them their industrial monoculture diet. This is a regenerative agriculture page. Please go get more informed about that before making a nincompoop of yourself