Re:The Myth of Regenerative Ranching
by CraigJPerry on Tuesday October 05, 2021 @03:15AM
(#28756379)
I know nothing but in the UK we have a chap with a YouTube channel called Harry's Farm and he regularly makes the claim that grass fed beef is at least carbon neutral and may be even better than that. He claims to have dug into some research on co2 sequestering in grass. I have no idea if true or not, I watch him mostly for his other channel, Harry's Garage, (he's a motoring journalist, with a great car collection)
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I'm a little bit skeptical of this claim, because cows turn the "sequestered" carbon (partly) into methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
Re:The Myth of Regenerative Ranching
by EverywhereTrip on Tuesday October 05, 2021 @10:38AM
(#28760096)
A cow eating grass isn't eating sequestered carbon. It's part of the carbon cycle. It is a living organism eating a living plant. If a ruminant doesn't graze a grassland, it needs to burn...which releases carbon. If neither one of those things happen, the grassland will die and decompose.
Grasslands and ruminants co-evolved.
Sequestered carbon would be underground. If there were no fossil fuels dug out of the ground and burned, there are no amount of cows that could cause a problem with warming.
ALL ruminant animals produce methane. Deer, moose, elk, antelope all do. It is part of fermentation.
A cow eating grass is more carbon neutral than other things people try to pass off like biodiesel.
Re:The Myth of Regenerative Ranching
by EdwardDiego on Tuesday October 05, 2021 @06:29PM
(#28766547)
True, although research is ongoing into minimising this[1] and a product based on the above research is being prepared for the market.
[1]: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...