Allen Savory, co-founder of the Africa Centre for Holistic
Management, recently presented a TED Talk about the increasing problem of
desertification consuming the planet. Currently happening to approximately two
thirds of the worlds grasslands, desertification is a process of land turning
into hard packed desert, causing both a lack of vegetation to retain rain and
flood water, but also a lack of vegetation to lock carbon dioxide in the soil,
allowing massive amounts of greenhouse gasses that would otherwise have been
trapped in the earth surface to escape into the atmosphere, greatly
contributing to the current global warming issues.
Historically, desertification was not a
problem because of natural cattle grazing patterns that allowed grasslands to
properly decompose while creating a nutrient rich soil that allowed further growth
while also trapping massive amount of carbon dioxide in the soil. However, due
to over-hunting and current livestock farming methods, these herds of grazing
animals were removed from grasslands long ago, causing the beginning of the
desertification issue, one that, according to Savory, has been in the works for
over 10,000 years. With 10,000 years worth of environmental damage already done
and modern farming methods having decimated the naturally occurring grazing
populations in the grasslands, how are we supposed to combat this huge problem?
Savory supposes a rather unorthodox
and, admittedly, very counter-intuitive method to fixing this problem. On these
desertified grasslands, almost entirely devoid of plant life and holding dearly
onto what they have left, Savory actually proposes that we try to reintroduce
grazing species into these suffering grasslands to try to mimic the original
populations that flourished long ago.
While this method, to me, seems
entirely wrong, it is hard to deny that there has been improvement in the
grasslands Savory showed in his talk, and the amount of vegetation that was
regrowing in the 15 million hectares of land he was regrazing, essentially, was
actually a bit startling to me. I find this progress very promising and while I
want to fully be able to support what Savory is doing, there are a few key
issues I must consider.
The biggest issue I can see with
this proposed method of damage reversal is the use of grazing animals with an
emphasis on, at least from what Savory shows in to his talk, cows. Cows have
been studied and it’s been calculated that cows are one of the leading
producers of methane, globally, a greenhouse gas that is much more toxic to the
atmosphere than carbon dioxide. With the amount of cows needed to reverse the
amount of desertification already taking over the planet, would we then have
also negated the effect of the sequestering of carbon dioxide with a much more
harmful greenhouse gas? There has been some research done into cow diets
associated with amount of methane produced, though, and it has shown that grass-fed
cows do tend to produce less methane than those fed on the typical agriculture
diet of corn and soy. Still, it is an important factor to take into
consideration when trying to argue the greenhouse gas minimization with this
method of grassland restoration.
While I do see some issues with the
strategy Allen Savory is proposing, it is hard to condemn. The fact remains
that desertification of the grasslands of our planet is a huge problem, environmentally
and culturally and anything that can possibly help this issue be resolved is
worth exploring. If there can be a large-scale restoration of grasslands that
seems with the exchange of carbon dioxide for methane, supposing that there is
not a huge increase in greenhouse gasses. If there is no further harm done to
the atmosphere, I would fully support this project, but as of yet, I don’t
think there is any great research that has been done on this portion of the
strategy, so I can’t say I have a strong position on it, one way or the other.
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