The Myth of Regenerative Ranching

This is an interesting article, but offers little concrete data. That grazing cows compete with other animals seems pretty obvious, okay, but to me the questions are: Is grass fed beef better or worse than traditional beef for the climate? Is it better or worse than chicken? Better or worse than soy? Is using "marginal" lands and competing with local wildlife better or worse (for the climate? for the ecosystem as a whole?) than getting the same calories by other means, e.g. more intensive agriculture on non-marginal lands?

Gabriel N. Rosenberg is Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and History.

Jan Dutkiewicz is a lawyer.

Both of the authors are (surprise) vegans. Neither have any background in ecology or agriculture.

They just hate people eating meat.

This myth is pedalled strongly in the recent documentary Kiss the Ground (on Netflix) with Woody Harrelson. It seems that this is Big Ag’s latest attempt to explain why meat eating can be good. It is the only documentary you’ll see about climate change that makes you feel “this is probably going to be OK” which I don’t think is the right sentiment.

Note: Article is specific to the USA and other countries with large grasslands and native grazing animals.

In New Zealand, all our beef is grass fed, in fact, we've never made the distinction between grass fed and not.

Our colonial ancestors spent a lot of time burning tussocklands and clearing native bush, so we have a lot of pasture. (Just under 40% of our land is used for agriculture).

We luckily got the idea that maybe we should think about preserving what wilderness was left in the 1890s, and it went from there, our most recent national park was created in 2002 (national parks are the most protected areas, no dogs, until recently no smallbore hunting, then there's forest parks, conservation areas etc. with lesser protections but still not being farmed), and some formerly grazed marginal land have been returned to the conservation estate (e.g., Korowai Torlesse Tussocklands Park).

But most of our soils aren't suitable for growing crops, so growing corn in the <2% of our land that's arable, to feed cows, when we have so much land that can grow grass, and that's about it, has never made economic sense.

(Although the usage of supplementary feeding by dairy farmers is another kettle of fish...)

Oh, and our endemic grazers (some species of moa) were hunted to extinction by the 15th century.

TL;DR - our grass fed beef and lamb might be far more ethical, please encourage your Congress to actually engage in free trade and drop protectionist subsidies and tariffs - nah just kidding, I know that's never going to happen.