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Fun fact, properly managed cattle herds can sequester carbon on an industrial scale! Techniques like rotational intensive grazing can help build up the top soil

Fun fact, properly managed cattle herds can sequester carbon on an industrial scale! Techniques like rotational intensive grazing can help build up the top soil and rich root system that used to cover the plains, sequestering carbon and making the soil far more fertile.

52-6F-62 7y ago
To add to that— adjusting the diet of cattle to one of red algae has proven to reduce their methane emissions dramatically. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-shrink-livestocks-global-carbon-hoofprint/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-...
- village-idiot 7y ago
  Methane release from cattle is largely a by-product of nitrogen fixing fertilizers putting natural methane eating bacteria in the soil into an inactive state. If we stopped using synthetic (and oil based!) fertilizers at least on where the cattle poop, a lot of that methane will get sequestered into the top soil too. Which also explains why the flatulence of 60-100m buffalo before the industrial era didn’t warm the planet.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    Interesting. I haven’t looked that deeply into the problem, but I’ll have to read about that. I imagine some locales might be worse for that problem than others, yeah? Do you have any info you can share?
    - village-idiot 7y ago
      https://aem.asm.org/content/72/2/1346 https://aem.asm.org/content/72/2/1346
      - 52-6F-62 7y ago
        Well that’s great, thanks! So it (at a high level, barely read place) sounds like standard fertilizer proves to have negative effects at scale when used where there might be the need for methane breakdown. Do I have that about right? I’ll have to read that at length later, but it seems so simple that I feel I have it wrong. Because otherwise it seems like an easy fix—even if it means production has to decrease and price has to go up for cattle meats.
        village-idiot 7y ago
        That's pretty much my read as well.
        52-6F-62 7y ago
        It really makes me wonder if, funny enough, places like Alberta and Texas are actually low methane producers because they allow their cattle to simply wander in large natural pastures much of the time to graze...

52-6F-62 7y ago

To add to that— adjusting the diet of cattle to one of red algae has proven to reduce their methane emissions dramatically. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-shrink-livestocks-global-carbon-hoofprint/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-...

village-idiot 7y ago
Methane release from cattle is largely a by-product of nitrogen fixing fertilizers putting natural methane eating bacteria in the soil into an inactive state. If we stopped using synthetic (and oil based!) fertilizers at least on where the cattle poop, a lot of that methane will get sequestered into the top soil too. Which also explains why the flatulence of 60-100m buffalo before the industrial era didn’t warm the planet.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  Interesting. I haven’t looked that deeply into the problem, but I’ll have to read about that. I imagine some locales might be worse for that problem than others, yeah? Do you have any info you can share?
  - village-idiot 7y ago
    https://aem.asm.org/content/72/2/1346 https://aem.asm.org/content/72/2/1346
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      Well that’s great, thanks! So it (at a high level, barely read place) sounds like standard fertilizer proves to have negative effects at scale when used where there might be the need for methane breakdown. Do I have that about right? I’ll have to read that at length later, but it seems so simple that I feel I have it wrong. Because otherwise it seems like an easy fix—even if it means production has to decrease and price has to go up for cattle meats.
      - village-idiot 7y ago
        That's pretty much my read as well.
        52-6F-62 7y ago
        It really makes me wonder if, funny enough, places like Alberta and Texas are actually low methane producers because they allow their cattle to simply wander in large natural pastures much of the time to graze...