12 ms·

Portugal trials use of goats to clear vegetation for reduction of wild fire risk

133 points by blue_devil 7y ago

wtdata 7y ago
This is the comment made some days ago in the news about meat and CO2 emissions. This idea that animals just eat the produce of intensive farming (or that grazing pastures are planted by men specifically for that purpose) is wrong in many parts of the world. We have the obvious example of Argentina, where free grazing cattle uses the naturally available grass to get fed. In the case of Southern Europe, there are also goats that have been used to clean the forests for a long time in order to prevent fires, and that provides for most or even all of their feeding requirements (besides fulfilling the important role of fire prevention). The idea going around how animals are so inefficient per Kg of food/Kg CO2, fails to take into account (basically all the time) that part of those animals, only consume naturally occurring flora that is in no way planted by men. P.S.: As an interesting related side note, there are a lot of cooking recipes for old goat in Portugal (the meat needs to be cooked differently).
- jacobush 7y ago
  Unfortunately very little of produced meat is produced that way. And even in South America often forest is cleared to make room for grass, but in that soil the grass is not sustainable.
  - EdwardDiego 7y ago
    > Unfortunately very little of produced meat is produced that way. That is true. Question is why. In NZ our beef is still exclusively reared on pasture (with hay and winter crops like brassicas for winter feed), I've never understood why there's such a move to feeding grain to cattle overseas.
    - ctack 7y ago
      It's the farmers trying to raise too many cattle on too little land. Also feedlots.
      - EdwardDiego 7y ago
        I had to google feedlots. They seem a tad unsustainable.
    - rjf72 7y ago
      - In the US we have vast surpluses of corn, and it's heavily subsidized by the government. - Feed lots can fit a whole lot more cows per acre. - Corn tends to fatten up cows more (and more quickly) than grazing. - Increased fat content = meat that grades higher and tends to sell for more meaning you also earn more $/lb on top of the other reasons.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      US subsidy policy encourages huge over-production of grain, so ways have to be found to get rid of it such as feeding it to animals or making ethanol out of it, or making HFCS and putting it in drinks.
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      There was a policy decision made in the Nixon era. Basically, it was determined that corn was the cheapest way to generate certain caloric targets. This achieved that objective and also secondarily helped with certain political objectives. So there's a whole subsidy and trade system around corn growth that basically stifles everything else. The outcome for agriculture has overall been devastation for all but the largest operators. The "scale up" makes it impossible for all but the largest farms to compete. When my parents were kids in the 60s, a diversified, smallish farm was a sustainable thing. When I was a kid in the 80s/90s, they concentrated on bigger dairy or corn operations. Today, they're going out of business or make money selling doughnuts.
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  > P.S.: As an interesting related side note, there are a lot of cooking recipes for old goat in Portugal (the meat needs to be cooked differently). I'd love to get hold of some, it'd be good for cooking chamois and tahr in my country. Fun fact, goat is the most widely eaten meat in the world.
  - wtdata 7y ago
    I can help you, but, they are in Portuguese. This is the wikipedia page talking about the most famous dish: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanfana https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanfana This is one of the recipes: https://aldeiasdoxisto.pt/artigo/531 https://aldeiasdoxisto.pt/artigo/531
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mpranjic 7y ago
    > Fun fact, goat is the most widely eaten meat in the world. Do you have a trusted source for this? A quick search query using my favorite search engine tells otherwise. But that's just random internet information.
    - EdwardDiego 7y ago
      Aww damnit. :( https://www.huffpost.com/entry/most-consumed-meat-in-world_n_593562eae4b02478cb9d42dd https://www.huffpost.com/entry/most-consumed-meat-in-world_n... Although to be fair, pork makes way more sense.
      - mikorym 7y ago
        most widely eaten != most eaten by weight The article does not disprove the (somewhat vaguely) stated hypothesis.
  - DoingIsLearning 7y ago
    'Chanfana de Cabra' or 'Chanfana de Borrego' is probably the most famous recipe as wdata pointed out. I am not sure there are a lot of recipes for this type of meat as it is claimed. Mostly it is either slow roasted in an oven or slow cooked in a stew with some variations on stew ingredients. The main difference is in the longer cooking time and in preparing the meat. Traditionally people remove the lymph nodes from certain areas under the legs and some of the nearby fat tissue. Otherwis this tissue will give a really unpleasant taste/smell to the cooked meat.
- superpermutat0r 7y ago
  https://wwf.panda.org/wwf_offices/argentina/environmental_problems_argentina/ https://wwf.panda.org/wwf_offices/argentina/environmental_pr... Naturally available grass that previously had rainforests over it? I mean, yes, livestock eats grass but there's still a lot of livestock that eats beans.
- SocratesV 7y ago
  This whole thread by Dr. Sarah Taber is quite interesting on how it's all about the context when it comes to growing meat vs. growing crops. https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1006363775723888640 https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/100636377572388864... She summarises it in a single tweet at the end: In places where there's limited land and a surplus of water, it makes a lot of sense to optimize for land. So there, grow & eat crops. And in places where there's a lot of land and limited water, it makes sense to optimize for water. So there, grow & eat ruminants. P.S.: There are also other things to take into account, but think that already shows how we should balance our view and not advocate for a single form of subsistence everywhere.
hawski 7y ago
I'm reminded of pasturing animals plowing the soil causing it to be less dry and fertilizing it at the same time. It was discussed here within this year, but I can't find the discussion page. One possible link: https://returntonow.net/2017/11/30/cows-can-turn-desert-back-grassland-save-planet/ https://returntonow.net/2017/11/30/cows-can-turn-desert-back...
- arethuza 7y ago
  I recently read a really good book about the 'rewilding' project at Knepp in Sussex in the UK - they emphasise the role of large animals in maintaining a 'healthy' landscape: https://knepp.co.uk/home https://knepp.co.uk/home Review of the book: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/28/wilding-isabella-tree-review-farm-return-nature https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/28/wilding-isabel...
- spiderfarmer 7y ago
  The approach is called holistic management. Basically, you make sure cows stay in one place until they've grazed (or trampled, doesn't matter) the tall grasses away. Then you move the cows to another place and let nature do its job. On average, the places where tall grasses were converted to natural fertilizer, do much better vs. ungrazed places. It's all about the thickness of the humus layer and the presence of the accompanying microorganisms. He received a lot of criticism, but the evidence shows it's working. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/aug/19/grazing-livestock-climate-change-george-monbiot-allan-savory https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/aug/19... The places where it's not working are usually overgrazed or missing other elements that prevent erosion. The problem of desertification can be solved everywhere, though it's not always easy. You need to: - prevent wind erosion by adding the right grasses - prevent wind erosion by creating terraces - make sure leaves, branches and other dead materials are added to the humus layer - protect the vegetative cover by adding trees - cycle nutrients through grazing - trap water in the humus layer, pits, ditches Also, look up the work of John D. Liu, he did great work in the Löss plateau in China and Jadav "Molai" Payeng, who created a 300 hectare forest mostly by himself.
  - 7y ago
pvaldes 7y ago
Farmers are behind a lot of fire forests that aim to replace trees in public (and private) spaces by meadows for cattle Last years half Portugal and big chunks of Spain suffered of a big fireforest's wave in a global attack from Cadiz to the North of Spain. Fireforests started in the same weekend by what can be only called as "organised crime". We are talking about 1.485 billion in damages for Europe, 10.000 hectares burnt down intentionally and even a few people killed burnt alive. This is terrorism, in uppercase letters. Now the area has ben cleared and the cattle has been allowed to enter again and munch the remaining tree saplings and regenerating vegetation. In this war for the public resources and territorial uses, politicians are surrendering to criminals and giving them what they wanted. Is a humongous mistake.
- ctack 7y ago
  What do the criminals want? Less trees and more grazing? Why?
  - mosselman 7y ago
    Because they earn (more) money from the cattle that grazes?
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Land. It's quite hard to steal, but the old way of occupying it by force still works in areas that are remote and lawless enough. America has had a few high-profile cases of this, but with more guns and less fire. I'm surprised to see it happening in Spain.
    - pvaldes 7y ago
      Is more common that you think. The quota system implies that Europe/ Portugal/ Spain will pay you subsidies only if you can justify rights of use over a minimun number of hectares of pasture (calculated for your declared number of animals). Easy money. You have benefits even it you let the animals die later. Space is limited, and forests (and climate change figthing) always get in the way. Two years after the crime, nobody had seen anything, everybody closed their mouths and nobody cares anymore. Ka-ching!. You had assured that the money will keep flowing
dotancohen 7y ago
This is very common in Israel. Every year my settlement actually invites local Beduins, with whom we have terrific relations, to come set up tent and graze. It is win-win for everyone, besides being a win for relations.
- derekdahmer 7y ago
  Goats are also used in the hills around the SF Bay Area to keep brush levels down. It's way more common than the times article implies.
- tamizhar 7y ago
  > my settlement actually invites local Beduins, with whom we have terrific relations That is a nice thing to hear. Is this common or is it an exception?
  - yosamino 7y ago
    It's propaganda. The settlement is on land that belonged to the bedou in the first place - throwing them scraps and interpreting them taking those as "terrific relations" is just trying deflect from the question of why there are settlements by the occupying country on occupied land.
    - nerdponx 7y ago
      My only point of reference for this kind of thing would be like an American landowner in the Southwest allowing a Navajo rancher from the reservation to graze on their property. Is it basically the same thing, or is it somehow "different"?
      - dotancohen 7y ago
        > My only point of reference for this kind of thing would be > like an American landowner in the Southwest allowing a Navajo > rancher from the reservation to graze on their property. Is > it basically the same thing, or is it somehow "different"? It is similar and it is different. One difference is that Arizona was founded as a state earlier than Israel, so people feel that "it's older, so it is OK now". Another difference is that America decided "all the land is ours", then herded the Navajo into reservations. In Israel we built in specific places and the Bedouins continued to be nomadic around us. Note also that the Bedouins were until recently very nomadic, but today few Bedouin are nomadic. When the Bedouins were nomadic they would roam huge areas, but "occupy" only a small area at any one time. From what I understand, the idea "this land is OURS" didn't pop into anyone's mind, each family (Hamula) would roam and they pretty much did not need to bother fighting over land. Only when permanent settlements started being built, and thus land was removed from the common pool, did this become an issue. Another issue is that today, a sort of "land war" is happening between some Bedouins and the state of Israel. I actually believe that the state stared the problem and then it escalated. In a nutshell, the state is forcing Bedouins off some settled land and in response the Bedouins are starting to claim more lands as "permanent settlements". In one particular case that I'm aware of, the Bedouins have been pushed off a parcel of land and then returned over 100 times. We're not talking about grazing land, which there is enough of for everybody to share and build on. We are talking about tents and stables and families. There is a huge difference between the state building a town on a corner of the grazing land, and the state forcefully remove people from these places. The former is the case 99% of the time, but the latter is happening and any decent person will, as I am, oppose it.
pvaldes 7y ago
Same pattern repeating again and again. 2019-Aug. Canary Islands: Three big fireforests in 2 weeks in turistic peak season. "Don't worry, Spain and Europe will inject lotta money for fix our s*t. We did the correct and we feel justified". Goats win. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49388823 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49388823
- gamedori 7y ago
  In English the word is forest fires.
  - kwhitefoot 7y ago
    I'm English and I rather like fireforests even though this is the first time I've seen it. To me it gives an impression of a bigger problem than forest fire. To me it works like this: a forest fire is a fire in a forest whereas a fireforest is a whole forest on fire, much scarier.
    - gamedori 7y ago
      That's an interesting point, but I was confused for about 15 seconds. Maybe it's because I studied Korean instead of Spanish.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nudpiedo 7y ago
It is very common in Spain to use goats and sheeps to clean the low vegetation from forests and and reduce the wild fire risk. I heard that first time 10 years ago, I cannot imagine why the neighbour country wouldn't do the same until nowadays.
- PedroBatista 7y ago
  We've being doing it for years, I don't know why this is news now. Probably some friend of a friend of a NYT journalist learned about it now.
  - cowmoo728 7y ago
    NYC had some goats this summer to clear vegetation. There was a big launch party and lots of media attention. It probably put goats on the radar of some NYT journo.
- rjtavares 7y ago
  The article is about a specific government program of "firefighting goats" ("Cabras Sapadoras") that was launched last year. The concept itself, of course, is not new.
flurdy 7y ago
Australian (Victoria) Alpine region seems to flip flop between banning grazing [1] to protect the vulnerable high mountain fauna and the water quality as it is a source for many rivers. Then allowing grazing again as forest fires go nuts down there. Even their bushes and trees are encouraging fires as a vector for growth. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_National_Park#Agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_National_Park#Agricultu... [2] https://www.livescience.com/40583-australia-wildfires-eucalyptus-trees-bushfires.html https://www.livescience.com/40583-australia-wildfires-eucaly...
rafaelturk 7y ago
My experience with Goats: They will even eat fire if it's in front of them...
atilaneves 7y ago
CERN has sheep on the site because it's the cheapest way to get the grass cut. It was weird having meetings that were punctuated by "baaah!" every now and again.
cascom 7y ago
There used to be a guy in my town that had a portable electrical fence and a small heard of goats and you could have him set up on your property and clear out areas. Much cheaper + environmentally friendly than having someone come over with a gravely.
hugoromano 7y ago
The catalyst of Portugal forest fires is the extense eucalyptus plantations. Eucalyptus is an introduced pyrophyte species and it doesn't stay confined to the initial plantation areas, reducing endemic forest, which is generally "fire-resistant", such as Sweet chestnut Castanea sativa.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  I understand what you want to say, and a better planning definitely wouldn't hurt, but blaming the tress because are flammable is like saying that the problem of school shootings is that people is shootable and wore shirts instead bullet-proof vests. Spain has Eucalyptus also. Curiously the private plantations burn often less than the public areas adjacent or the nature parks. Talk about weird statistics. Without a hand that starts the fire, several times, in several places, in the middle of the night, in the most windy and dry day of the year, with devices specially designed for it... without this hand, there is not fire.
  - gota 7y ago
    > Curiously the private plantations burn often less than the public areas adjacent or the nature parks. Talk about weird statistics. Less people wandering around in private areas than public, smoking, making campfires, or generally just throwing flammable litter around?
  - tumetab1 7y ago
    It has been proven in the USA, Canada, Australia that the damage caused by fires is not reduced by trying to stop ignitions, reducing the impact of the ignitions is a better strategy. Remember that ignitions by error or malice will always happen. > Without a hand that starts the fire, several times, in several places, in the middle of the night, in the most windy and dry day of the year, with devices specially designed for it... without this hand, there is not fire. There are also other explanations that do not require "mafias". Smokers, which many smoke inside the cars, and car/motorcycles backfires can explain many cases. Pay attention if the fires don't start at Friday and Saturday nights near rural roads.
  - 7y ago
bitbckt 7y ago
This is not a new practice. For one - admittedly odd - example of training goats for this purpose: http://yogoats.org/ http://yogoats.org/
greggeter 7y ago
Cows are great for this, too.
coleca 7y ago
I rented a house on Martha's Vineyard one time and the owner had a company come in and fence off the backyard and put a bunch of pigs in there to clear it out. It was heavily overgrown with grass, brush, small trees, and shrubs. In a week the pigs had completely cleared the whole area out, even ripped out the roots of the shrubbery / small trees. Quite impressive.
- codyb 7y ago
  I read an article somewhere, maybe the New Yorker, maybe the NY Times (a new found goat obsession?) which talked about some, I guess herders upstate who take in goats and then rent them out all around the North East to eat grasses. Seemed like a neat businesses, and I guess if I’d have been lucky I might have seen them in NYC happily eating grasses in Central and Inwood parks. Sometimes you just gotta eat away your problems before they eat away at you I suppose :-).
- bluejekyll 7y ago
  San Francisco has been doing this with goats for a while now in many hard to maintain areas: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_4981073 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_4981073 Was always strange to wake up in the morning and wonder why I was hearing “baaa”ing from outside.
turk73 7y ago
Right down the street from my house a neighbor hired up some goats to eat through a bunch of overgrowth. A truck pulling a livestock trailer showed up, they ran a 4 foot high electric fence around some of the property, and in went about 6-8 goats. They've been working for a couple of days now, we'll see how they do. I've been wanting to start the exact same business because there are so many older folks living on suburban properties that are hopelessly overgrown with buckthorn and all manner of nasty weeds. Not sure what I would do with the goats all winter, though.
garyclarke27 7y ago
Typical NYT - they can’t resist blaming warmer summers (always climate change). WRONG Portugal has been quite cool last 2 summers, I moved to Cascais 2 years ago from UK, my wife constantly complains how cold it is here especially because I promised her warm weather! eg today has been typical, only 21 degrees C in August. However has been sunny and incredibly windy, I suspect the wind contributes more to fire risk than high temperature.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  Holidaymakers in Spain and Portugal have been warned to stay out of the sun as the region approaches the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe. Eight Portuguese regions have already smashed their local records as a warm blast of air from North Africa sweeps the continent. August 2018 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/weather-heatwave-latest-record-temperature-europe-spain-portugal-warning-hot-met-office-a8477181.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/weather-heat...
- pvaldes 7y ago
  Cascais is a coastal area. It enjoys some cooling and microclimate for the Atlantic Ocean influence. A lot of sea breeze is also expected
sillyquiet 7y ago
We raised goats growing up. We lived in a heavily forested area of rural Texas. When it came time to build a new chicken pen, we temporarily fenced our goats in the area we wanted the pen, and in a week or three, there was no underbrush or scrub left (except for yaupon, even goats don't touch that one) - just the trees.
- stinos 7y ago
  we temporarily fenced our goats This sounds so much easier than it practically is - unless you're talking electrical fence or have something really decent you can setup temoporarily? Our goats destroy, both willingly and unwillingly, any simple fence in hours or days. no underbrush or scrub left - just the trees We have a rather large species of goats (maybe largest, something Nubian) and they eat the bark of trees so unless you get them away from the tree or the tree has a sufficient diameter which makes it hard enough to get their teeth on it, at least 30cm or so, the trees also don't survive :)
  - sillyquiet 7y ago
    Pine trees the primary tree we had present, they have rather resinous bark the goats did not eat. The fence was pretty robust - the only 'temporary' part of it was the actual fencing. The posts were bedded in cement with sturdy chain-link fencing. After the goats were done, my father and older brothers removed the chain-link and substituted it for chicken wire to form the basis for the new chicken pen.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  I have to search yaupon, is a holly. It seems that is the only North American native plant with caffeine. Is interesting that Mate drink cames also from another holly producing caffeine, so it makes sense. The genus is pretty poisonous, but it even the goats respect it its chemical defenses must be really impressive. There are not a lot of plant species that goats avoid.
blackflame7000 7y ago
Here in San Diego, they are doing the same thing.
pvaldes 7y ago
After the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), is obvious that Portugal has a problem with wildfires https://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/static/effis_stats/ https://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/static/effis_stats/

133 points by blue_devil 7y ago

This is the comment made some days ago in the news about meat and CO2 emissions. This idea that animals just eat the produce of intensive farming (or that grazing pastures are planted by men specifically for that purpose) is wrong in many parts of the world. We have the obvious example of Argentina, where free grazing cattle uses the naturally available grass to get fed. In the case of Southern Europe, there are also goats that have been used to clean the forests for a long time in order to prevent fires, and that provides for most or even all of their feeding requirements (besides fulfilling the important role of fire prevention). The idea going around how animals are so inefficient per Kg of food/Kg CO2, fails to take into account (basically all the time) that part of those animals, only consume naturally occurring flora that is in no way planted by men. P.S.: As an interesting related side note, there are a lot of cooking recipes for old goat in Portugal (the meat needs to be cooked differently).

jacobush 7y ago
Unfortunately very little of produced meat is produced that way. And even in South America often forest is cleared to make room for grass, but in that soil the grass is not sustainable.
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  > Unfortunately very little of produced meat is produced that way. That is true. Question is why. In NZ our beef is still exclusively reared on pasture (with hay and winter crops like brassicas for winter feed), I've never understood why there's such a move to feeding grain to cattle overseas.
  - ctack 7y ago
    It's the farmers trying to raise too many cattle on too little land. Also feedlots.
    - EdwardDiego 7y ago
      I had to google feedlots. They seem a tad unsustainable.
  - rjf72 7y ago
    - In the US we have vast surpluses of corn, and it's heavily subsidized by the government. - Feed lots can fit a whole lot more cows per acre. - Corn tends to fatten up cows more (and more quickly) than grazing. - Increased fat content = meat that grades higher and tends to sell for more meaning you also earn more $/lb on top of the other reasons.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    US subsidy policy encourages huge over-production of grain, so ways have to be found to get rid of it such as feeding it to animals or making ethanol out of it, or making HFCS and putting it in drinks.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    There was a policy decision made in the Nixon era. Basically, it was determined that corn was the cheapest way to generate certain caloric targets. This achieved that objective and also secondarily helped with certain political objectives. So there's a whole subsidy and trade system around corn growth that basically stifles everything else. The outcome for agriculture has overall been devastation for all but the largest operators. The "scale up" makes it impossible for all but the largest farms to compete. When my parents were kids in the 60s, a diversified, smallish farm was a sustainable thing. When I was a kid in the 80s/90s, they concentrated on bigger dairy or corn operations. Today, they're going out of business or make money selling doughnuts.
EdwardDiego 7y ago
> P.S.: As an interesting related side note, there are a lot of cooking recipes for old goat in Portugal (the meat needs to be cooked differently). I'd love to get hold of some, it'd be good for cooking chamois and tahr in my country. Fun fact, goat is the most widely eaten meat in the world.
- wtdata 7y ago
  I can help you, but, they are in Portuguese. This is the wikipedia page talking about the most famous dish: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanfana https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanfana This is one of the recipes: https://aldeiasdoxisto.pt/artigo/531 https://aldeiasdoxisto.pt/artigo/531
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mpranjic 7y ago
  > Fun fact, goat is the most widely eaten meat in the world. Do you have a trusted source for this? A quick search query using my favorite search engine tells otherwise. But that's just random internet information.
  - EdwardDiego 7y ago
    Aww damnit. :( https://www.huffpost.com/entry/most-consumed-meat-in-world_n_593562eae4b02478cb9d42dd https://www.huffpost.com/entry/most-consumed-meat-in-world_n... Although to be fair, pork makes way more sense.
    - mikorym 7y ago
      most widely eaten != most eaten by weight The article does not disprove the (somewhat vaguely) stated hypothesis.
- DoingIsLearning 7y ago
  'Chanfana de Cabra' or 'Chanfana de Borrego' is probably the most famous recipe as wdata pointed out. I am not sure there are a lot of recipes for this type of meat as it is claimed. Mostly it is either slow roasted in an oven or slow cooked in a stew with some variations on stew ingredients. The main difference is in the longer cooking time and in preparing the meat. Traditionally people remove the lymph nodes from certain areas under the legs and some of the nearby fat tissue. Otherwis this tissue will give a really unpleasant taste/smell to the cooked meat.
superpermutat0r 7y ago
https://wwf.panda.org/wwf_offices/argentina/environmental_problems_argentina/ https://wwf.panda.org/wwf_offices/argentina/environmental_pr... Naturally available grass that previously had rainforests over it? I mean, yes, livestock eats grass but there's still a lot of livestock that eats beans.
SocratesV 7y ago
This whole thread by Dr. Sarah Taber is quite interesting on how it's all about the context when it comes to growing meat vs. growing crops. https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1006363775723888640 https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/100636377572388864... She summarises it in a single tweet at the end: In places where there's limited land and a surplus of water, it makes a lot of sense to optimize for land. So there, grow & eat crops. And in places where there's a lot of land and limited water, it makes sense to optimize for water. So there, grow & eat ruminants. P.S.: There are also other things to take into account, but think that already shows how we should balance our view and not advocate for a single form of subsistence everywhere.

hawski 7y ago

I'm reminded of pasturing animals plowing the soil causing it to be less dry and fertilizing it at the same time. It was discussed here within this year, but I can't find the discussion page. One possible link: https://returntonow.net/2017/11/30/cows-can-turn-desert-back-grassland-save-planet/ https://returntonow.net/2017/11/30/cows-can-turn-desert-back...

arethuza 7y ago
I recently read a really good book about the 'rewilding' project at Knepp in Sussex in the UK - they emphasise the role of large animals in maintaining a 'healthy' landscape: https://knepp.co.uk/home https://knepp.co.uk/home Review of the book: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/28/wilding-isabella-tree-review-farm-return-nature https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/28/wilding-isabel...
spiderfarmer 7y ago
The approach is called holistic management. Basically, you make sure cows stay in one place until they've grazed (or trampled, doesn't matter) the tall grasses away. Then you move the cows to another place and let nature do its job. On average, the places where tall grasses were converted to natural fertilizer, do much better vs. ungrazed places. It's all about the thickness of the humus layer and the presence of the accompanying microorganisms. He received a lot of criticism, but the evidence shows it's working. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/aug/19/grazing-livestock-climate-change-george-monbiot-allan-savory https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/aug/19... The places where it's not working are usually overgrazed or missing other elements that prevent erosion. The problem of desertification can be solved everywhere, though it's not always easy. You need to: - prevent wind erosion by adding the right grasses - prevent wind erosion by creating terraces - make sure leaves, branches and other dead materials are added to the humus layer - protect the vegetative cover by adding trees - cycle nutrients through grazing - trap water in the humus layer, pits, ditches Also, look up the work of John D. Liu, he did great work in the Löss plateau in China and Jadav "Molai" Payeng, who created a 300 hectare forest mostly by himself.
- 7y ago

pvaldes 7y ago

Farmers are behind a lot of fire forests that aim to replace trees in public (and private) spaces by meadows for cattle Last years half Portugal and big chunks of Spain suffered of a big fireforest's wave in a global attack from Cadiz to the North of Spain. Fireforests started in the same weekend by what can be only called as "organised crime". We are talking about 1.485 billion in damages for Europe, 10.000 hectares burnt down intentionally and even a few people killed burnt alive. This is terrorism, in uppercase letters. Now the area has ben cleared and the cattle has been allowed to enter again and munch the remaining tree saplings and regenerating vegetation. In this war for the public resources and territorial uses, politicians are surrendering to criminals and giving them what they wanted. Is a humongous mistake.

ctack 7y ago
What do the criminals want? Less trees and more grazing? Why?
- mosselman 7y ago
  Because they earn (more) money from the cattle that grazes?
- pjc50 7y ago
  Land. It's quite hard to steal, but the old way of occupying it by force still works in areas that are remote and lawless enough. America has had a few high-profile cases of this, but with more guns and less fire. I'm surprised to see it happening in Spain.
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    Is more common that you think. The quota system implies that Europe/ Portugal/ Spain will pay you subsidies only if you can justify rights of use over a minimun number of hectares of pasture (calculated for your declared number of animals). Easy money. You have benefits even it you let the animals die later. Space is limited, and forests (and climate change figthing) always get in the way. Two years after the crime, nobody had seen anything, everybody closed their mouths and nobody cares anymore. Ka-ching!. You had assured that the money will keep flowing

dotancohen 7y ago

This is very common in Israel. Every year my settlement actually invites local Beduins, with whom we have terrific relations, to come set up tent and graze. It is win-win for everyone, besides being a win for relations.

derekdahmer 7y ago
Goats are also used in the hills around the SF Bay Area to keep brush levels down. It's way more common than the times article implies.
tamizhar 7y ago
> my settlement actually invites local Beduins, with whom we have terrific relations That is a nice thing to hear. Is this common or is it an exception?
- yosamino 7y ago
  It's propaganda. The settlement is on land that belonged to the bedou in the first place - throwing them scraps and interpreting them taking those as "terrific relations" is just trying deflect from the question of why there are settlements by the occupying country on occupied land.
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    My only point of reference for this kind of thing would be like an American landowner in the Southwest allowing a Navajo rancher from the reservation to graze on their property. Is it basically the same thing, or is it somehow "different"?
    - dotancohen 7y ago
      > My only point of reference for this kind of thing would be > like an American landowner in the Southwest allowing a Navajo > rancher from the reservation to graze on their property. Is > it basically the same thing, or is it somehow "different"? It is similar and it is different. One difference is that Arizona was founded as a state earlier than Israel, so people feel that "it's older, so it is OK now". Another difference is that America decided "all the land is ours", then herded the Navajo into reservations. In Israel we built in specific places and the Bedouins continued to be nomadic around us. Note also that the Bedouins were until recently very nomadic, but today few Bedouin are nomadic. When the Bedouins were nomadic they would roam huge areas, but "occupy" only a small area at any one time. From what I understand, the idea "this land is OURS" didn't pop into anyone's mind, each family (Hamula) would roam and they pretty much did not need to bother fighting over land. Only when permanent settlements started being built, and thus land was removed from the common pool, did this become an issue. Another issue is that today, a sort of "land war" is happening between some Bedouins and the state of Israel. I actually believe that the state stared the problem and then it escalated. In a nutshell, the state is forcing Bedouins off some settled land and in response the Bedouins are starting to claim more lands as "permanent settlements". In one particular case that I'm aware of, the Bedouins have been pushed off a parcel of land and then returned over 100 times. We're not talking about grazing land, which there is enough of for everybody to share and build on. We are talking about tents and stables and families. There is a huge difference between the state building a town on a corner of the grazing land, and the state forcefully remove people from these places. The former is the case 99% of the time, but the latter is happening and any decent person will, as I am, oppose it.

pvaldes 7y ago

Same pattern repeating again and again. 2019-Aug. Canary Islands: Three big fireforests in 2 weeks in turistic peak season. "Don't worry, Spain and Europe will inject lotta money for fix our s*t. We did the correct and we feel justified". Goats win. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49388823 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49388823

gamedori 7y ago
In English the word is forest fires.
- kwhitefoot 7y ago
  I'm English and I rather like fireforests even though this is the first time I've seen it. To me it gives an impression of a bigger problem than forest fire. To me it works like this: a forest fire is a fire in a forest whereas a fireforest is a whole forest on fire, much scarier.
  - gamedori 7y ago
    That's an interesting point, but I was confused for about 15 seconds. Maybe it's because I studied Korean instead of Spanish.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

nudpiedo 7y ago

It is very common in Spain to use goats and sheeps to clean the low vegetation from forests and and reduce the wild fire risk. I heard that first time 10 years ago, I cannot imagine why the neighbour country wouldn't do the same until nowadays.

PedroBatista 7y ago
We've being doing it for years, I don't know why this is news now. Probably some friend of a friend of a NYT journalist learned about it now.
- cowmoo728 7y ago
  NYC had some goats this summer to clear vegetation. There was a big launch party and lots of media attention. It probably put goats on the radar of some NYT journo.
rjtavares 7y ago
The article is about a specific government program of "firefighting goats" ("Cabras Sapadoras") that was launched last year. The concept itself, of course, is not new.

flurdy 7y ago

Australian (Victoria) Alpine region seems to flip flop between banning grazing [1] to protect the vulnerable high mountain fauna and the water quality as it is a source for many rivers. Then allowing grazing again as forest fires go nuts down there. Even their bushes and trees are encouraging fires as a vector for growth. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_National_Park#Agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_National_Park#Agricultu... [2] https://www.livescience.com/40583-australia-wildfires-eucalyptus-trees-bushfires.html https://www.livescience.com/40583-australia-wildfires-eucaly...

rafaelturk 7y ago

My experience with Goats: They will even eat fire if it's in front of them...

atilaneves 7y ago

CERN has sheep on the site because it's the cheapest way to get the grass cut. It was weird having meetings that were punctuated by "baaah!" every now and again.

cascom 7y ago

There used to be a guy in my town that had a portable electrical fence and a small heard of goats and you could have him set up on your property and clear out areas. Much cheaper + environmentally friendly than having someone come over with a gravely.

hugoromano 7y ago

The catalyst of Portugal forest fires is the extense eucalyptus plantations. Eucalyptus is an introduced pyrophyte species and it doesn't stay confined to the initial plantation areas, reducing endemic forest, which is generally "fire-resistant", such as Sweet chestnut Castanea sativa.

pvaldes 7y ago
I understand what you want to say, and a better planning definitely wouldn't hurt, but blaming the tress because are flammable is like saying that the problem of school shootings is that people is shootable and wore shirts instead bullet-proof vests. Spain has Eucalyptus also. Curiously the private plantations burn often less than the public areas adjacent or the nature parks. Talk about weird statistics. Without a hand that starts the fire, several times, in several places, in the middle of the night, in the most windy and dry day of the year, with devices specially designed for it... without this hand, there is not fire.
- gota 7y ago
  > Curiously the private plantations burn often less than the public areas adjacent or the nature parks. Talk about weird statistics. Less people wandering around in private areas than public, smoking, making campfires, or generally just throwing flammable litter around?
- tumetab1 7y ago
  It has been proven in the USA, Canada, Australia that the damage caused by fires is not reduced by trying to stop ignitions, reducing the impact of the ignitions is a better strategy. Remember that ignitions by error or malice will always happen. > Without a hand that starts the fire, several times, in several places, in the middle of the night, in the most windy and dry day of the year, with devices specially designed for it... without this hand, there is not fire. There are also other explanations that do not require "mafias". Smokers, which many smoke inside the cars, and car/motorcycles backfires can explain many cases. Pay attention if the fires don't start at Friday and Saturday nights near rural roads.
- 7y ago

bitbckt 7y ago

This is not a new practice. For one - admittedly odd - example of training goats for this purpose: http://yogoats.org/ http://yogoats.org/

greggeter 7y ago

Cows are great for this, too.

coleca 7y ago

I rented a house on Martha's Vineyard one time and the owner had a company come in and fence off the backyard and put a bunch of pigs in there to clear it out. It was heavily overgrown with grass, brush, small trees, and shrubs. In a week the pigs had completely cleared the whole area out, even ripped out the roots of the shrubbery / small trees. Quite impressive.

codyb 7y ago
I read an article somewhere, maybe the New Yorker, maybe the NY Times (a new found goat obsession?) which talked about some, I guess herders upstate who take in goats and then rent them out all around the North East to eat grasses. Seemed like a neat businesses, and I guess if I’d have been lucky I might have seen them in NYC happily eating grasses in Central and Inwood parks. Sometimes you just gotta eat away your problems before they eat away at you I suppose :-).
bluejekyll 7y ago
San Francisco has been doing this with goats for a while now in many hard to maintain areas: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_4981073 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_4981073 Was always strange to wake up in the morning and wonder why I was hearing “baaa”ing from outside.

turk73 7y ago

Right down the street from my house a neighbor hired up some goats to eat through a bunch of overgrowth. A truck pulling a livestock trailer showed up, they ran a 4 foot high electric fence around some of the property, and in went about 6-8 goats. They've been working for a couple of days now, we'll see how they do. I've been wanting to start the exact same business because there are so many older folks living on suburban properties that are hopelessly overgrown with buckthorn and all manner of nasty weeds. Not sure what I would do with the goats all winter, though.

garyclarke27 7y ago

Typical NYT - they can’t resist blaming warmer summers (always climate change). WRONG Portugal has been quite cool last 2 summers, I moved to Cascais 2 years ago from UK, my wife constantly complains how cold it is here especially because I promised her warm weather! eg today has been typical, only 21 degrees C in August. However has been sunny and incredibly windy, I suspect the wind contributes more to fire risk than high temperature.

ComputerGuru 7y ago
Holidaymakers in Spain and Portugal have been warned to stay out of the sun as the region approaches the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe. Eight Portuguese regions have already smashed their local records as a warm blast of air from North Africa sweeps the continent. August 2018 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/weather-heatwave-latest-record-temperature-europe-spain-portugal-warning-hot-met-office-a8477181.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/weather-heat...
pvaldes 7y ago
Cascais is a coastal area. It enjoys some cooling and microclimate for the Atlantic Ocean influence. A lot of sea breeze is also expected

sillyquiet 7y ago

We raised goats growing up. We lived in a heavily forested area of rural Texas. When it came time to build a new chicken pen, we temporarily fenced our goats in the area we wanted the pen, and in a week or three, there was no underbrush or scrub left (except for yaupon, even goats don't touch that one) - just the trees.

stinos 7y ago
we temporarily fenced our goats This sounds so much easier than it practically is - unless you're talking electrical fence or have something really decent you can setup temoporarily? Our goats destroy, both willingly and unwillingly, any simple fence in hours or days. no underbrush or scrub left - just the trees We have a rather large species of goats (maybe largest, something Nubian) and they eat the bark of trees so unless you get them away from the tree or the tree has a sufficient diameter which makes it hard enough to get their teeth on it, at least 30cm or so, the trees also don't survive :)
- sillyquiet 7y ago
  Pine trees the primary tree we had present, they have rather resinous bark the goats did not eat. The fence was pretty robust - the only 'temporary' part of it was the actual fencing. The posts were bedded in cement with sturdy chain-link fencing. After the goats were done, my father and older brothers removed the chain-link and substituted it for chicken wire to form the basis for the new chicken pen.
pvaldes 7y ago
I have to search yaupon, is a holly. It seems that is the only North American native plant with caffeine. Is interesting that Mate drink cames also from another holly producing caffeine, so it makes sense. The genus is pretty poisonous, but it even the goats respect it its chemical defenses must be really impressive. There are not a lot of plant species that goats avoid.

blackflame7000 7y ago

Here in San Diego, they are doing the same thing.

pvaldes 7y ago

After the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), is obvious that Portugal has a problem with wildfires https://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/static/effis_stats/ https://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/static/effis_stats/