“Eat more beef to save the planet.” - a seemingly contradictory statement given what we are continuously being told by scientists and environmental campaigners. And yet, so-called holistic grazing or regenerative animal agriculture is becoming more commonly discussed as a way to combat climate change. With the latest Netflix documentary Kiss the Ground also claiming that grazing livestock animals is beneficial for the planet.

So, what is holistic management?

Holistic grazing was an idea popularised by Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean born livestock farmer.

Holistic grazing is the idea that by mimicking the rotational patterns of wild grazers and intensively grazing large numbers of animals we can reverse desertification, increase the health of soils and sequester carbon.

Savory boldly claims that if we took just half of the world’s grasslands we could absorb enough carbon to return the world’s atmosphere to pre-industrial levels.

But what does the science say?

What is agreed upon is that grazing animals can sequester carbon back into the soil, however the science contradicts the claims made by Savory. An extensive and detailed two year review by the FCRN, looking at over 300 sources, and conducted by an international team of researchers, including those from some of the most highly respected agricultural institutions in the world, evaluated the claims made by advocates of holistic management. 

The piece of research entitled ‘Grazed and Confused’ discovered that although certain grazing managements can sequester carbon, at best this could only offset 20 - 60 percent of the emissions that would be produced by grazing the animals in the first place. Meaning there would still be significant surplus, making it impossible for Savory’s claims to be true.

Not to mention that it is estimated only 1 gram of protein per person per day comes from grazing systems, compared to the 27 grams of protein per person per day that comes from all terrestrial animal protein, and yet 26% of the earth’s terrestrial land surface is already taken by grazing systems, meaning it is simply not possible for people to consume animal products at the same rate that we are now, with the resources that are available.

Furthermore, after a few decades the soil reaches soil carbon equilibrium, meaning the soil cannot sequester any more carbon, at which point none of the emissions from the animals would be offset. So farmers would either have to start grazing on more land, increasing the land used for animal farming, or stop the farming - meaning that not only are the claims made by Savory untrue, they are also not an effective short term or long term strategy .

If we look at the Drawdown Report, which was the report cited in Kiss the Ground, the documentary failed to mention that shifting to a diet that favours calories from plants is four times as powerful in its carbon capture potential compared to shifting to managed livestock grazing

Plus, a report from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences analysed the 11 studies that Savory displayed on his website at the time of publication, many of which were found to be purely anecdotal, and the reported effects outlined in the others were considered to be small, especially when considered alongside the grandiose claims made by Savory. Even now, several years later, no review study has established that holistic grazing can achieve the claims made by Savory, let alone come close to matching the significant environmental benefits of re-wilding and regenerative veganic agriculture, both of which not only improve biodiversity, but can effectively reduce atmospheric carbon levels.

For example, according to the Sierra Club, a study of grasslands in China reported that carbon levels were as much as 157 percent higher in livestock-free grasslands than in grazed grasslands.

On top of all this, there is an ever-growing list of more organisations, scientific bodies and institutions whose work also calls into question the claims made by Savory, including the International Journal of Biodiversity, which stated that “Leading range scientists have refuted the system and indicated that its adoption by land management agencies is based on anecdotes and unproven principles rather than scientific evidence.”

Also the The Journal of the Society for Range Management, stated that Savory’s claims “are not only unsupported by scientific information, but they are often in direct conflict with it.”

Ultimately if the holistic management approach is about mimicking nature, then wouldn’t the best thing to do be to return the land as much as possible to nature, re-wild the landscapes, introduce natural animals back into those landscapes and let nature do the very thing we stopped it from doing by deforesting and eroding these lands for animal farming in the first place? Why mimic nature, when nature can simply exist there instead?

Furthermore, by removing animals from the landscapes we create open metabolic nutrient cycles. The moment an animal starts grazing, the animal is removing nutrients from the soil and converting them into muscle and fat. When the animal is sent to slaughter, those nutrients leave the system, and the net total productivity of the land decreases. By having natural biodiversity, you instead create closed metabolic cycles and a full recycling of nutrients.

The grazing of animals also increases compaction in the soil, further damaging soil health and disrupts the algal crust which forms on the top of the soil, which although Savory refers to as the “cancer of desertification” actually stabilises the soil, increases organic matter and absorbs water, and the loss of these crusts results in increased erosion and reduced soil fertility.

And to cap it all off, even the images that Savory uses have been scrutinised for misrepresenting the landscapes he presents as evidence of the alleged desertifying effect of removing cattle. With one of the images of a National Historical Park in New Mexico not being desertified from lack of cattle as Savory claims but instead, the landscape was slowly recovering from decades of overgrazing.

In response to the ever growing scientific literature that questions his claims Savory has responded in the past by claiming, “You’ll find the scientific method never discovers anything.” Which is not only paradoxical as he has made appeals to the scientific method himself, but is also a convenient way of disregarding every scientific report that debunks his work.

Whilst we can all agree that we need to rebuild our soils and sequester carbon, as the science continues to show, the best way to do this is to reclaim land that is used for animal farming and re-wild, reforest and restore the habitats, ecosystems and landscapes that have been destroyed for livestock production.