This site is under construction 🚧🙂🚧 Message the mods at our Reddit community if you'd like to help. We'd be excited to have it!

Livestock & Soil

Introduction

Scientists warn us that even though rich, healthy soil takes centuries to build, we are losing our top soils at shockingly high rates in large part due to soil-degrading farming methods.

"The processes that generate high-quality, fertile topsoil can take centuries. But the world is ploughing through that resource at an alarming rate. About 40% of the world's land has already been taken over by agriculture, while livestock grazing and expanding urban areas are taking further chunks out of what is left over." - BBC

"A full 90 per cent of the Earth’s precious topsoil is likely to be at risk by 2050, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO."

To help slow down and reverse this trend, we must identify which activities harm soil, what actions stabilize soil, and which actives help rebuild soil.

Healthy soil not only provides us with vital nutrition, but it can sequester or release CO2 depending on how we treat it. Soil also helps in the water cycle, allowing water to filter through into aquifers and springs or allowing water to move upwards through plants which release it as vapor back into the sky to become clouds or fog. This service is interrupted if we pave over or disrupt the functions of our soil.

The following information is listed alphabetically.

Carbon Storage

By now many people have heard that regenerative farming can help put carbon back into our soil. This is absolutely true, but some industries have latched onto this idea and twisted the facts, confusing customers about how this system really works.

In this section we explore the facts, to help you understand the best methods for capturing carbon, vs which practices will release far more than they absorb.

Fact Sheets How Much Carbon Can Soil Store

"The maximum capacity of soil to store organic carbon is determined by soil type (% clay)."
"Management practices that maximise plant growth and minimise losses of organic carbon from soil will result in greatest organic carbon storage in soil."
"... Total OC is the amount of carbon in the materials related to living organisms or derived from them. In Australian soils, total OC is usually less than 8 % of total soil weight (Spain et al., 1983) and under rainfed farming it is typically 0.7 – 4 %. Increasing the amount of OC stored in soil may be one option for decreasing the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas."
"Offtake of OC in plant and animal production is also an important loss of OC from soil. Harvested materials such as grain, hay, feed and animal grazing all represent loss of OC (and nutrients) from soil."
"Improving soil structure can increase the amount of OC stored in soil by reducing losses of OC from soil by decomposition and erosion, e.g. retaining stubble, maintaining ground cover and reducing compaction by vehicles and stock."

Allan Savory's Holistic Management Theory Falls Short on ScienceA critical look at the holistic managment and planned grazing theories of Allan Savory

Saving the World With "Regenerative" Animal Farming? An Unsavory MythThe idea that 'sustainability' requires more livestock, or any domesticated animals at all, is deeply flawed and reflects entrenched, myopic meat-centric biases.

Chemistry Impacts of The Livestock Industry on Soil & Crops

Impacts from Manure

Multiple Effects on Soil from Manure from Cows Administered Antibiotics "A new study found multiple effects on soils from exposure to manure from cows administered antibiotics, including alteration of the soil microbiome and ecosystem functions, soil respiration and elemental cycling."

The ground is on fire at this NT cattle station and no-one can put it outThe owners of a remote station have an unusual problem with their cattle yards — the ground is on fire and extinguishing it is proving nearly impossible.

India: The Toxic Price of Leather"The bubbles which you see are contaminated with chromium, and it is very poisonous." Standing next to a field of wilted crops near his small village of Payundee, Sonalal Yadav carefully hops over a...

Desertification of Grasslands

Asia

Mongolia

"Mongolia is the second largest cashmere producer. A study of Mongolia’s grasslands showed that 65% of them have been degraded due to grazing goats in the cashmere industry and global warming, partially caused by methane release from farmed animals themselves.

A researcher involved in the study, Bulgamaa Densambuu, said that ‘ninety percent of this total degraded rangeland can be recovered naturally within 10 years if we can change existing management. But if we can’t change [this] today, it will be too late after 5 to 10 years." - according to Collective Fashion Justice

"The impact of land degradation can be reversed. In the first half of the 20th century, Patagonia, Argentina was second only to Australia in wool production. The sheep on this land had caused near desertification, with soil quality and health being so diminished that it was impacting plant growth and life.

Patagonia Park ‘destocked’ this land by removing all sheep and allowing native animals to stay without competition for food. Since then, project biologists have said they are ‘impressed with the speed at which these grasslands have regained their vitality’ as those working to restore Patagonia Park ‘watch the land heal and transform at an astounding rate’.

Similar ‘destocking’ has occurred in Australia, positively impacting the native plants and land."

Middle East

Blame it on the goats? Desertification

in the Near East during the Holocene This study includes maps, photos, sketches, and charts.

Oceana

Desertification and Drought in Australia - Integrate SustainabilityIn Australia, we are not foreign to the word ‘drought’, but some of us may not be as familiar with the term ‘desertification’. Despite being closely related, drought and desertification are different. Defining Desertification and Drought Desertification is defined as an extreme type of land degradation, particularly occurring in drylands where poor land management and ...Read More

South America

The Amazon rainforest: could it become a desert?Fire consumed the outskirts of the Amazon rainforest in August. With mortality rates of tropical trees increasing, we ask: could the ecosystem be tipped into a barren desert environment?

Livestock & Erosion

Erosion is a natural process where wind, precipitation, water, and even animals including humans wear, blow, or wash away land masses over time. Stones become soil, and soils become air pollution, or wash into bodies of water becoming silt, or contributing to nutrification. Erosion into water ways can cover up delicate species such as mussels, and clog the gills of species who suffocate when erosion events are too extreme.

Human activities such as stripping the ground bare for urban projects, or mines may be the first that come to mind, for anyone who has seen the amount of bare earth these create. Urban activities take up only around 1% of the planet's surface. However agriculture uses more land than any other human-driven activity at 46% of Earth habitable space. The majority of which (77%) is used for raising livestock and their feed. - Our World in Data

Livestock

Cattle, Sheep, & Goats vs Islands, Mountains, & Grasslands

Global Invasive Species Database: Ovis aries (sheep) "Establishment of feral herbivores like sheep (Ovis aries) have had significant ecological impacts on island ecosystems. Island ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to herbivores as insular plants in these ecosystems evolved largely in the absence of large herbivores, therefore lacking in defences against them. Increased bare ground followed by increased erosion are some of the other impacts (Van Vuren and Coblentz, 1987). Van Vuren and Coblentz (1987) in their study on the ecological effects of feral sheep on Santa Cruz Island, California observe that feral sheep are forage generalists when compared to domestic sheep on mainland. Feral sheep diet include annual grasses, forbs and also a substantial quantity of shrubs. The authors summarise the ecological impacts of feral sheep: consumption of endemic species by feral sheep could potentially cause decline in their population levels; loss of vegetation due to trampling while grazing; compaction of the soil and therefore changes in the soil structure; soil erosion due to removal of vegetration and denudation of the soil; removal of hebaceous vegetation caused changes in the grassland community, reduction of litter and a decline in the recruitment of seedlings. Alteration in the plant community led to decrease in species diversity.

Grazing and browzing of herbaceous vegetation, and stripping of bark by feral sheep and other introduced mammals (cattle (Bos taurus), Mouflon sheep (Ovis musimon), and feral goats (Capra hircus)) have led to exposure of soil to erosion and degradation of forests on Mauna Kea (Scowcraft and Sakai 1983). Welsh (2002) adds that, \"O. aries are extensive and destructive herbivores. They have been found to decrease populations of the mamane (Sophora chrysophylla), an endemic leguminous tree, by stripping the bark off thus facilitating damage from insects and and other disease causing organisms\". Results of a study (Scowcroft and Giffen 1983) which evaluated the regeneration of vegetation and forests inside and outside sheep exclosures located in heavily browsed portions of the mamane forest of Mauna Kea, indicated feral sheep browsing suppresses regeneration of mamane and three other endemic species, Hawai‘ian bent, heu-pueo, and aheahea."

Grasslands

Cattle

Cattle vs Waterways

Cattle have a habit of congregating around and in waterways where their hooves dislodge the soil. Over time the soil and plant roots holding it together become so damaged the soil ends up being washed away, causing significant erosion over time. Nutrient loss on land coincides with waterway pollution from livestock allowed to roam too close. - Cattle Destroy Streams

Waterways

Cattle Destroy StreamsThe downstream and upstream pictures in this post were published by the Bay Journal in William Funk’s article “Virginia Faulted for Handling of Cattle Pollution in Shenandoah“. Cattle Destroy Streams and the Aquatic Ecosystem. Livestock that have access to streams and rivers pollute the water with their manure and urine. […]

Soil Trampling & Degradation

Data also shows that "...high grazing pressure increases soil degradation due to cattle trampling. If there are any benefits to the biodiversity of fens from cattle grazing, these benefits would be realized only at very low stocking densities. Because of the irreversibility of soil degradation..."

Fens

Wetlands

Resources & Guides

By Biome

Wetland & Peatland

Biodiversity Management of Fens and Fen Meadows by Grazing, Cutting and Burning (PDF) "This paper is a review of the literature on the effects of grazing, fire and cutting on fens, to explore the relationship between management and biodiversity in fens."

Organizations

Farm Advocacy & Support Groups

Grants

Affordable & Free Trees

Farm Funding & Grants

North America

USA

Eat The Change "ETC Impact™ is a grant program working to promote and expand access to climate-friendly foods. We're donating more than $1.25 million over three years to support a diverse group of changemaking nonprofit organizations."