Sustainable Sheep and Cattle Farming?

 

George Monbiot takes umbrage with two reports extolling the virtues of 'sustainable' sheep and cattle farming. One from FAI Farms, sponsored by McDonalds, claims that their cattle farm fixes more carbon dioxide than it generates. It appears to be a very poor study, failing in terms of design and the quantity/reliability of data. A second report from the Sustainable Food Trust, advocates rotating cattle rearing with crop growing on the fields. It claims that this will make cattle farming sustainable. Beef and lamb production are generally very 'land hungry'. The animals need large areas to graze. They also remove tree saplings, preventing a transition to woodland. This reduces biodiversity. It also makes locations store fewer 'greenhouse gases', as well as becoming more fire prone. Fires, of course, release 'greenhouse gases' and particulates. Bad for the environment and bad for human health. Cattle also, in spite of attempts to modify their diet with additives, also routinely burp methane, along with carbon dioxide. Methane has circa 30 times the potency of carbon dioxide in terms of global heating (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/07/cattle-sheep-farming-sustainable-food). As George Monbiot points out, it's far easier to spread a bucolic myth (especially with the help of a rapacious meat industry) than it is to refute it.