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

Chemistry Impacts of The Livestock Industry on Soil & Crops

Impacts from Manure

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

South America

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

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

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." 

Grants

North America

USA

Further Reading