George Monbiot at University College London

Hi everyone!

UCL’s Geographical Society invited as their guest lecturer the famous journalist and blogger: George Monbiot. The topic of the talk was ‘Rewilding: the mass restoration of Britain’s ecosystem’ which I found particularly interesting and knowledge enriching in regards to Britain ecosystems.

I thought this would be a great occasion to ask him about what have been writing about for the past few weeks: the desertification debate!

However I did not get the chance to do so as he was only given four questions to answer and as I raised my hand to ask a question, his ‘question time was already’ up.  LLL

After having listened to the talk, I decided to read a bit more on his most recent post and find out if he discussed livestock farming in any of his posts.

I came across an interesting post on animal and dairy production, more precisely on how cow manure was impacting some rivers and streams in Britain. I chose to talk about this today as it will be a topic of discussion my next upcoming posts.

In his talk, Monbiot talked about his passion for hiking and walking amongst Britain nature reserves; However, he noted that the last few months he has experience many expales of a degrading nature. One of them, that is also discussed in his blog, was the increasing pollution of water bodies caused by agriculture and presence of cattle to nearby streams. Some of these impacts are captured in the photos below.

Here, we see the physical and visual impacts of a British dairy farm on different types of water bodies.

In July 2015, the British Environmental Agency published a report (E.A., 2015) on water pollution incidents and showed that the only sector where pollution incident are increasing rather than decreasing like the rest of the trend, is the farming sector. (See figure 1)

Furthermore, in figure 2, we see that the dairy industry has had the most water pollution incidents for three years now, 2012, 2013, 2014.

--> We must not forget that livestock production also includes its bioproducts such as eggs and dairy and have as much as an impact on our environment than beef, poultry farming.

Part 1: From land to sea, though not forgetting freshwater, rivers and streams.

Water Usage and consumption

The more direct and obvious effect of animal agriculture on our environments is the physical use and consumption of water use and comsuption of water essentially used to

Water is needed for the livestock to survive and grow but water is also used to grow feed for these animals. This explains the rather striking statistics on global water consumption where an average of 55 trillion gallons of water are used annualy  for animal agriculture ( an average of it ranging from 34 to 76 trillion gallions). Similarly, to produce one pound of beef, equivalent to your weekly cheese burger, an average of 2500 gallons fo water are needed.

Considering how these statistics only touch on the direct consumption of water that impacts our environment, what other more indirect effects does livestock farming have on our aquatic environments and habitats?

This post represents the first of my ‘water blogpost series’ where I move away from land environments to investigate freshwater and ocean environments in greater detail.

For the first post of this series, I felt it would be particularly interesting to look at how the physical presence of cattle near a water stream can impact water quality. A recent 2014 peer reviewed article (Benskin et al , 2014) examines how cattle in-steam presence has potential impact on Suspended Solid Concentrations (small particles often found in suspension in water bodies due to the movement and flows of water)  which are used as indicators of good water quality. Presence and movements of cattle in streams moved streamed storage around and re-suspend previously deposited sediment loads within the stream thus changing its water quality. In this study, the use of a high resolution water quality data collection showed that 58% of SSC events, where an increase in sediment load was recorded, were accounted for by cattle in-stream presence. Thus it underlined how cattle grazing near a stream and their presence had a considerable impact on water pollution, through changes in nutrients within the water.

Vanishing species

Having had a greater understanding of the effects of livestock farming on land cover, I found it essential to investigate further into how animal agriculture is negatively (and to an extent positively) impacting our ecosystems and biodiversity as a whole.

For the past millennia, humans have transformed ecosystem patterns across most of the terrestrial biosphere. Through the process of deforestation, and other conversions of natural habitats to land used for livestock farming, there has been a global increase in biodiversity loss where systems rich in biodiversity are being replaced with monocultures. The modification of natural habitats caused by farming and agriculture represent a primary factor in growing risk of species extinction (Steinfeld et al 2006).  Natural habitats on arable land have seen their numbers fall by more than 50% (Green et al, 2005), primarily for the land to be used as permanent pasture. In 2013, and under the Red List report, The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) assessed and estimated that almost one third of all existing species in the world are under threat of extinction (IUCN, 2013). Hooper et al (2012) in their global synthesis report suggest that biodiversity loss is the number one factor driving ecosystem change. Indeed, a 20-40% loss of intermediate species is accountable for 5 to 10% reduction in plant production.

Source: Hooper et al, (2012) A global synthesis reveals biodiversity loss as a major driver of ecosystem change

Though literature on the future of livestock farming adn biodiversity loss is relatively lacking, a recent study published in the Science of Total Environmental shows how an expanding global demand for meat will see levels of biodiversity loss rise. By mapping and comparing both global biodiversity hotspots and estimated meat production, Machovina et al (2015) found that the biggest conversion of land-cover to agriculture are situated in 15 of the most mega diverse countries, (countries with a great variety of species). Earlier in 2015, Ceballos et al (2015) concluded that the world was entering a sixth human-induced mass extinction.

A contentious debate

I received an interesting comment on one of my previous post regarding the debate on desertification and how the desertification process could actually be reversed by re-introducing livestock on deserted land. In response to the comment, I decided to extend on the debate and re-evaluate my thoughts on whether Allan Savory should receive any merit at all for his theory. In other words, is Savory’s argument entirely wrong and absurd to be considering as a potential method for reversing desertification?

As mentioned in my previous post, Savory believes in holistic management, which is, in brief, a way for farmers to manage resources through a holistic planned grazing approach that effectively reverse desertification. Many have critiqued his theory by scientifically proving that this would not work whatsoever (see blog). The lack of scientific information and relevant data were also underlined as one of the major talk’s (TedTalk) critique, making his theory and some of his arguments all the more incoherent.

However, after thoroughly researching on the topic, I did find an article (Itskan et al, 2013) that was written in response to the Briske et al(2013) report, previously discussed in my blogpost. The latter report simply proved Savory’s argument wrong, where it was argued that holistic management (and more precisely, intensive rotational grazing, see blog) did not increase vegetation production neither ameliorate soil hydrology. In opposition Itskan et al 2013 paper acted as a rebuttal to re-evaluate Briske et al (2013)‘s argument and noted that their report was in fact not an analysis Savory’s theory but rather of an unrelated method of grazing and thus was “not reflective of its efficacy”. Furthermore, the study showed how ten farmers from around the world had seen their land become increasingly healthier with greater biodiversity when using flexible grazing methods such as adaptive management.

Teague et al 2011, in a peer-reviewed article, evaluate the impact of adaptive management with multi-paddock grazing (a ‘high animal density, short periods of grazing and long term recovery of the land’ method, Savory et al 1980) and the restoration of natural resources and conservation. The findings suggest that ranchers who use the method of adaptive management on their land, experience positive results regarding the long term maintenance of natural resources whilst sustaining economic growth. 

In all, both articles agree that some planned methods of grazing do cause resource degradation that accelerate desertification processes, but insist that it is the chosen method that is most important in determining the environmental condition of the land. They argue in favor of adaptive management grazing (a.k.a holistic management) as the solution for a desirable environment, which supports Savory’s theory on planned grazing and desertification.

What I think of this debate:

The dearth of literature on this topic questions the theory’s efficacy. It is yet to be developed and implementing some of the theory’s suggested methods would be risky. Although holistic management could potentially stop desertification in the world (and at this stage, it consists of a very small chance of doing so) I believe livestock still have a significant impact on our environment, for instance, as an important source methane, deforestation etc… Therefore, scholars would need to consider the full effects of re-introducing livestock and ensure that it would not have any wider consequences and undesirable environmental impacts on our planet

After all, why increase livestock in the world when the rational should be to decrease its already exceeding numbers?