Reply to “Missing the grassland for the cows: Scaling grass-finished beef production entails tradeoffs—Comment on ‘Grazed perennial grasslands can match current beef production while contributing to climate mitigation and adaptation’ ”

Abstract

Matthew Hayek's response to my commentary (Jackson, 2022) is a valuable contribution to an important conversation about how we can provide for our wants and needs while improving our environment. My commentary purposefully simplified a complex topic to encourage interrogation of whether we have the capacity to meet current beef supply (5.9 billion kg yr^–1) by finishing cattle on grassland rather than grain in feedlots. Hayek and I agree that this would require 7.6 million additional finishing cattle because grass-finished cattle take longer to finish and grow less overall (Hayek & Garrett, 2018). My assessment was that we would need ∼16.1 million ha for all 20 million finishing cattle and that we could use the 4.9 million ha currently growing maize for cattle in feedlots, plus ∼12 million ha growing maize for ethanol, which constitutes a net loss of energy coupled with devastating environmental outcomes (Lark, 2020). We seem to agree that there's enough land for the finishing cattle, but Hayek encourages us to consider the upstream supply chain and its ramifications.

Hayek observes that these additional finishing cattle would require more cows, calves, and stocker cattle (∼23.1 million more animals) to reproduce and replace the finishing cattle (Hayek & Garrett, 2018), resulting in ∼18.6 million more grassland ha needed for grazing these feeder cattle. I argue that we desperately need this increased demand for grassland, especially if it replaces cropping systems prone to soil, carbon, and nutrient loss to the atmosphere and waters, where conservation interventions such as no-till, cover crops, and semi-annual forages (e.g., alfalfa) improve, but do not stop, these losses (Lintern et al., 2020; Osterholz et al., 2019; Roland et al., 2022). Inasmuch as most of this feeder-cattle rearing is currently done on rangelands of the West, nearly half of this could occur on the ∼9 million ha of Great Plains land growing corn, soybeans, and alfalfa irrigated with water that is drawing down the Ogallala Aquifer (Carnes & Sanderson, 2022; Evett et al., 2020). Much of these products are fed to livestock, but according to the Iowa Corn website (www.iowacorn.org), much of the corn grain in the United States is exported (11% or ∼4.4 million ha) and much of it is considered “surplus” for “residual use” (9% or ∼3.6 million ha). It is important to note that the exports are sold by aggregator corporations to relatively affluent countries to build corporate wealth and often the surplus corn grain is “dumped” on global markets to suppress prices elsewhere (Hansen-Kuhn & Murphy, 2017).

In more humid regions where feeder cattle are raised on pastures, most of this is done with continuous grazing, which undermines the yield potential of the pastures compared with well-managed rotational grazing that stimulates forage quantity and quality (Zegler et al., 2018; Oates et al., 2011). And none of this invokes use of the ∼9 million ha of Conservation Reserve Program land, largely grassland without any herbivory, which is critical to grassland ecosystem function (Teague & Kreuter, 2020; Sollenberger et al., 2019). In all cases above, the current land cover and land use would be replaced by land cover and/or land use that has the capacity to restore much, but not all, of the function of the North American prairie, while still providing the livestock products being fed grain, grain by-products, and forages in our current beef system. Displacing these grains and forages does not require us to consider where they will be grown otherwise. While these changes might have other ramifying effects on society and economies, we cannot avoid restoring grassland ecosystem function in one place because it might drive poor land use decisions elsewhere or reduced wealth accumulation by corporations in the export sector.

While my commentary addressed a particular slice of the U.S. beef supply chain (finishing cattle), and Hayek pushes us to look upstream at the ramifications (feeder cattle production), we also must look downstream in a holistic way. If we consider the additional 43% methane sent to the atmosphere by including feeder cattle into the equation as Hayek has done, we also must consider the additional fossil fuel combusted for individual and ecosystem health costs. For example, Hill et al. (2019) estimated ∼4,300 premature human deaths in the United States each year related to elevated airborne particulate matter levels from corn production, which has an unknown but estimable fossil fuel C cost. Growing annual crops in the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin has been linked to increased flooding frequency and intensity (Bendorf et al., 2021), which has resulted in entire communities being moved upslope with tremendous financial and C costs. Continental fisheries have been devastated largely because of nutrient pollution from annual row crop production in the Upper Mississippi River Basin driving billions of dollars and untold C combusted in addressing the problem (Paudel & Crago, 2020). And none of this addresses the devastating social costs of the current model of vertical integration and consolidation in agriculture that exploits labor and drives small- to mid-sized cattle producers out of business with low prices for their products (Bruckner, 2016; Burchfield et al., 2022).

As I mentioned in my commentary, I believe we should consume less industrially produced meat in the United States to reduce our C footprint. I was keen to explore how important the process of soil organic C change is to the C footprint of the beef production system, concluding that it may offset enteric methane emissions from additional cattle. But I also make clear that if soils are not accumulating C, the grass-finishing system will be a net source of C to the atmosphere that is similar to the current system, but still a small contributor relative to fossil fuel combustion that must be reduced for us to address climate change.

Hayek takes me to task in his response for providing an analysis that aligns with past advocacy for policies that incentivize more grassland agriculture. The decades of research findings that I and many others have produced demonstrating the critical need to restore the structure and function of North American grasslands for human health and well-being has resulted in little land use and land cover change. In fact, grassland loss and environmental degradation has increased in recent decades (Lark 2020 et al., 2020; Spawn et al., 2019). If I am guilty of advocating for clean water, stable climate, clean air, reduced flooding, and more habitat for biodiversity with a beef production system that approaches current beef demand while driving grassland restoration and improved management—so be it!