There's something about burgers.
Is it the sizzle?
Maybe the crackle?
Just looking at one almost feels savory.
If only forgetting about their impact
was as easy as taking a bite.
But producing food emits nearly
a third of all greenhouse gases.
"And of all food, these buddies are the worst offenders."
Some claim we could do things differently,
"We're gonna be talking about rotationally grazing..."
"Rotationally grazing..."
"Rotational grazing..."
"Rotationally grazing..."
and produce beef that's actually good for the environment
- even carbon neutral.
"Because these same cows can also
improve the soil and help lock CO2 in the ground."
Others say that's complete bullsh***.
Either way, beef is a massive problem
and to slow climate change, we have to fix it.
Is the only solution to all go vegan or is there another way?
Can we eat beef without ruining the planet?
People have been domesticating animals for 10,000 years.
Wolves became dogs, wild goats and sheep
were tamed, and aurochs became cattle.
Today, they are farmed around the world,
with the US and Brazil producing the most.
It's a 400-billion-dollar industry.
Even if you're like me and eat no meat at all,
"I'm a vegetarian."
beef production still affects you,
because it's responsible for 4.3 billion metric tons
of CO2 every year.
That's almost as much as the entire United States.
And fixing this isn't as simple as everyone going vegan.
"There are these two realities, right, that we need to recognize."
Jacobo Arango is a plant scientist
and IPCC author from Colombia
focusing on making livestock more sustainable.
"The first one is in developed countries
where people may choose what they eat.
There is at least another reality for developing countries."
Where people are struggling for nutrients,
animal protein can make a huge difference.
And beefing up our beef production can help.
But what's the best way?
Very simply speaking, there are two ways of raising cattle.
One is grass-fed farms,
like this one in Northern Germany, run by Heiko Gluth.
This is a small operation.
Right now, there are 58 animals here, 80 in the spring.
They roam around 160 hectares
and have a warm barn for the winter.
Raising cattle looks similar to this in many places in the world.
And then, there are feedlots,
that can have thousands, or tens of thousands, of animals.
They live in a confined area and
eat mostly grain instead of grass.
As to which is better, grass-fed or feedlots,
it's actually not that simple.
Let's compare sustainability using these categories.
We'll start with what goes in.
Food for grass-fed cattle doesn't travel far.
"These cows eat a combination of grass and clover,
which contains more protein.
During the summer, this is all harvested
and turned into that for them to eat over the winter."
So, grass-fed beef avoids the emissions
and chemical runoff from producing grain.
It also wins on water.
Grass-fed cattle drink from lakes or groundwater.
Not so for feedlots.
The cows drink water,
and so do the crops grown for their feed.
There is a downside to grass though:
cows have to eat more of it than grain.
And what goes in, also comes out.
"Wherever cows are..."
"All these cows are basically constantly burping and farting,
which generates a lot of methane.
Essentially, the bigger they are, the more methane they make."
Methane is invisible.
So, best detected by satellite.
It's way more potent than CO2.
On a diet of grass, animals grow slower,
so expel more methane than grain-fed cows.
Surprise win for the feedlots there!
What also comes out is manure and urine - lots of it.
In addition to methane, it releases nitrous oxide,
another potent greenhouse gas.
In the summer, the manure decomposes in the field,
and pollution levels are low.
During winter, the manure is handled similarly to a feedlot.
"It all comes out here, and then it's shoveled over there,
where it's eventually turned into liquid, and sprayed on fields."
Except on a feedlot, manure is stored in large pools,
releasing more methane than solid storage.
And the more of it there is, and the longer it's stored,
the more it releases.
Another big difference is what it contains.
On feedlots, antibiotics are used to
keep animals healthy and stimulate growth.
They end up in those manure pools
and can leak into our water supply.
Antibiotic resistance, partially fueled by meat production,
kills around a million people every year.
One big downside to grass-fed farms is that
they are way less efficient at producing meat.
"These cows will live to be two or two and a half,
which is around a year longer than conventional operations.
That means only 10 of them are slaughtered every year."
Cows grow faster on feedlots, which makes them cheaper.
Meat used to be mostly eaten by the very rich.
So, more efficient farming has made it more widely available.
But for grass-fed, you have to pay a premium.
"The cost of this meat is really high, at €22 per kilo.
For comparison, this supermarket meat is 10 Euro."
The difference in price does speak
to a difference in quality though.
Quality is also tied to animal welfare,
as stressed animals make for worse meat.
And on feedlots, stressors are everywhere.
Eating grain can cause ulcers in cattle,
and they are often sick from the close quarters.
Transporting cattle is also stressful.
So feedlots emit less methane and
meat is significantly cheaper.
But grazing systems are better for
quality and the animals, use less water and pollute less.
So far, they're winning on sustainability.
When viewed from a global scale though, it's a different story.
"A lot of discussions focus on the farm level.
But the food system is massive. It's global."
Janet Ranganathan is an expert in calculating
and evaluating greenhouse gas emissions.
"You can't just focus on practices that might
improve things at the farm level.
You also have to look, what is the system level."
And at the system level, land use is
the most important consideration.
Even including the land to grow grain,
feedlots use land more efficiently than grazing systems.
"According to German organic laws,
there can only be one full-grown cow per hectare of land."
For scale, one hectare is roughly two American football fields.
"That's a lot of land."
Which we're running out of.
Globally, we are using two thirds of our land to graze livestock.
As more people eat meat, more land
is deforested to use for pasture.
We're losing three million hectares per year this way.
It's a huge problem, especially in the Amazon rainforest.
40% of tropical forest loss occurs in Brazil,
one of the world's largest beef producers.
Production there is also extremely inefficient,
and that's something that needs to change.
"One of the most important things we do
is to increase the productivity of livestock.
And there's huge climate mitigation opportunity
to do that because the productivity levels
across the globe, can vary by 100 fold."
One of the most hyped ways to increase
productivity is rotational grazing.
It's a practice of intensively grazing an area,
and then moving the animals to let it recover.
It's been used by shepherds around the world for centuries,
and became popular in the 1950s in the US,
as a response to degrading pastureland.
And climate change is putting it in the spotlight again
"...livestock to address climate change and desertification..."
This TED talk has been viewed over eight million times.
There are three key aspects of this technique:
More cattle,
dividing up pastures,
and planning a grazing rotation.
Instead of one cow per hectare, think four.
Their intensive grazing of a smaller area
stimulates plants to grow faster and put down deeper roots.
"When you plan your grazing carefully,
you are able to extract the best nutrients of the forages
and therefore, you are able to reduce
your relative methane emissions.
They will acquire better feed and therefore,
produce more milk or more beef."
Rotational grazing is more efficient,
without the environmental impacts of a feedlot.
Field studies like this one have also shown that it
improves soil quality and sequesters carbon via the cattle.
Grass grows, sucking up CO2, which is eaten by the animals.
As they trample their manure,
the carbon is stored underground.
Proponents claim that by using it,
they're producing carbon neutral beef.
But these calculations don't really add up.
Methane and nitrous oxide are way more potent than CO2.
So, the soil would have to continuously store
way more carbon to make up for
the emissions from the animals.
And that's just not how soil works.
"The amount of carbon that you can store in soils is limited.
So, at some point you will reach a saturation."
Soils are also wildly different around the world.
"Soil carbon is very complex.
When you're implementing practices to increase soil carbon,
you're at war with the microbes and fungus there."
And working perfectly, rotational grazing still uses a lot of land.
Studies have found around twice as much as feedlots.
It's not a silver bullet.
The trouble is, there are some familiar faces painting it as one.
This study was funded by General Mills.
If grazing is carbon neutral,
there's no reason for them to cut down on beef production.
This movie about the benefits of rotational grazing
was funded partially by Shell,
which uses the practice to offset fossil fuel emissions.
But soil is not an endless carbon sink.
So offsetting oil doesn't make sense.
And because rotational grazing uses more precious land,
converting crop fields into pasture doesn't add up either.
Especially in places that produce massive amounts of meat.
Where it does make sense is places where people
struggle to get enough protein,
or places with highly inefficient grazing systems.
"Yes! We absolutely need to use these practices
in places like Colombia and countries in Africa
where these rotational practices actually restore
soil health and increase productivity.
That makes a huge lot of sense."
Another country where it makes a huge
amount of sense is Brazil.
As the world's second largest exporter of meat,
improving efficiency would have a massive impact.
Rotational grazing could decrease deforestation
and restore degraded areas.
Though, if we continue to eat meat,
feed lots also have their place.
But they need fixing.
And they can be more sustainable,
without making meat super expensive.
Restrictions on the number of animals
and requirements for them to have
time outside improves animal welfare.
Feed additives, like algae,
can reduce methane emissions from cattle.
Manure can be treated to release less greenhouse gases,
and not letting it sit for long periods
of time can limit its impact.
And laws limiting antibiotic use in
feedlots reduce antibiotic resistance.
No matter what though,
this needs to go hand in hand with
reduced consumption in some places.
"If we actually limited beef consumption
to about one and one half hamburgers a week,
we could all still continue to enjoy beef."
So we can eat beef without ruining the planet,
sort of.
People in places, like the US and EU, need to eat less of it.
That's the most effective way for them
to lower their carbon footprint.
And whether through better grazing or feedlots,
we can make beef production
more sustainable by improving efficiency.
But even so, producing beef is not good for the environment.
So ensuring we change the current system
is absolutely key to a future livable planet.
"So what do you think?
Friend, or dinner?
Is there a cow over there?"
"Not really."
"Can we eat them and still be sustainable?
And because I got my shoes really dirty, please.
Let us know in the comments,
and don't forget to subscribe,
because we've got new videos every Friday."