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Regenerative agriculture th solution to climate change

Regenerative Agriculture, the Solution to Climate Change

Caroline Grindrod Uncategorized 0

Part 1: Carbon and The Carbon Soil Sponge

On the left is a graph of global Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels since 2016. The black line is the mean, and the red line the actual, which shows the natural fluctuations through the year. We can see from this graph, how the planet takes a breath in and out each year. CO2 levels peak in April at the start of the northern hemisphere spring (there is a far greater land mass in the north), so the peak comes right before everything starts growing and absorbs carbon back into matter, which is only possible via photosynthesis.

Figure 1. Global Atmospheric Carbon Levels – annual fluctuation and overall rise. Graph thanks to NASA:https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2636/Rise-of-carbon-dioxide-unabated

What is evidently unnatural about this graph is the fact that levels are increasing year on year. The planet draws down 120 billion tons of carbon a year, but 130 billion tons end up back in the atmosphere. The additional 10 billion tons coming largely from the combustion of fossil fuels (7,8).

The jump in atmospheric CO2 in 2019 and 2020, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was probably due to an increase in extreme weather events – rainstorms and droughts causing floods and fires; and because our oceans, which are warming and acidifying, are less able to absorb excess CO2 (1). The world’s oceans act as a huge buffer to atmospheric CO2, there is currently 30,000 billion tons more CO2 dissolved therein than normal.

But let’s go back for a moment to this idea that the world breathes in and out on an annual basis. This shows us how important and powerful the growth of life is in regulating the earth’s atmosphere. This fact is the gold at the end of the rainbow, it is the key to solving our climate crisis, but in order to understand how we can help nature to help us, we must first gain some understanding of the relationships and cycles between our atmosphere, climate and land management.

For this reason we have put together this 3 part article on Climate and Agriculture, we hope you enjoy reading it. Welcome to part 1.

How do we Help the Earth Breathe More Deeply

Crucial to earth’s annual ‘breath-in’, is the functional condition of her ecosystems and soils, and we will return to this point in a moment, but first we must distinguish between ‘ancient’ and ‘current’ carbon.

Are Cows Causing Climate Change?

Animals breathe Oxygen in and Carbon Dioxide out, and plants do the opposite, so it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the best thing we can do to help the situation, is plant lots of trees and stop eating meat. Animals also emit Methane (CH4), so cows are further demonised as part of the problem (we will cover this in detail in part 2). But blaming cow farts for climate change is a gross red herring, because it ignores the role of animals in cycling carbon into the soil (which we will come on to), and it detracts from the important distinction between ‘current’ and ‘ancient’ sources of carbon.

Fossil fuels are ‘ancient carbon’, mostly accumulated in the carboniferous period when there were much higher levels of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere. At that time mega-flora with huge photosynthetic capacity evolved. These plants sequestered vast amounts of carbon which eventually became the stable solid (coal), and liquid (crude oil) forms, buried underground, the power of which we harness today. The mega-flora that locked carbon into the earth, led to increasing oxygen levels, and eventually created the stable climate we humans now benefit from.

‘Current carbon’ is what was left in circulation, the stuff that the world breathes in and out each year. So whatever aspect of ‘the problem’ of climate change we are looking at, it is essential that we ask, are we pumping ‘ancient carbon’ into the system as a shortcut to productivity? Or are we working with ‘current carbon?’

If we look again at the beef industry for example, then yes, intensively farmed beef has ancient carbon pumped into the system on many levels. All feed that isn’t pasture, will be dripping in ‘ancient carbon’. Animals kept indoors or in feed-lots require a lot of machinery to move food around. So intensive beef is a serious problem, but then so is all intensive agriculture: Soya, wheat, chicken, you name it, it is all saturated in ‘ancient carbon’.

100% grass-fed meat however has a very small ‘ancient carbon’ footprint. Very little if any machinery is required, mostly these farms manage to get away with just a quad-bike and no tractor. The animals never receive any additional feed, so apart from animal transport to slaughter and quad-bike fuel, the carbon is almost entirely ‘current,’ sequestered by the grasses and herbs in the pasture.

How the Earth Breathes Deeply

You know how elderly people often have a shortness of breath, their bodily functions are not quite what they were, and they are unable to breathe deeply and easily like in their younger days. Well, the earth’s ability to breathe deeply also depends on the state of her body. It depends on the functional condition of her ecosystems and soils.

The earth breathes CO2 in through photosynthesis by plants and trees, but the earth retains carbon (locks it in long term), by incorporating it into soils. Every living thing is made largely from carbon, so it is through all life forms that carbon gets cycled ultimately into the soil. These are the main 3 ways:

Through animals who eat those plants and then defecate on the ground which soil microbes incorporate into soil.
Dead organic matter from either plants or animals, which soil microbes and fungi incorporated into the soil.
A less apparent route is that plants directly feed soil microbes and fungi via root sugar exudates.

So while it is an excellent idea to plant trees to try and stabilise the climate, it remains largely unacknowledged that soils are the ultimate carbon sink. There is no limit to carbon accumulation in soils, as long as they are well managed. This is where the debate about grazing animals heats up, because these walking bio-digesters are a key component to effective carbon draw.

Lands managed under intensive production on the other hand, be it livestock or crops, are only oxidising carbon into the atmosphere. These soils are unable to sequester carbon, because such soils are no longer alive.

Living Soils

Agri-Culture still mostly works off a chemical model for how plants receive nutrients from the soil. If plants are short in potassium, we add soluble forms of potassium. But this is a far cry from how nature cycles nutrients. In a natural living soil there is an inexhaustibly complex web of interactions between life and mineral soil, and nutrient deficiencies do not exist.

Plants exude sugars from their roots which feed bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms. Plants commonly expend around 30% of their energy in this way, feeding all soil microbiota, which in turn cycle minerals back, in forms that the plant can absorb.

This process is grossly inhibited in intensive production systems because the plants are fed with water soluble inputs, so no-longer need this symbiotic relationship with soil microbiota; and because fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, etc, kill soil life. In livestock farming intestinal parasite treatments are death to soil organisms from dung beetles to bacteria, so the form of farming system is an essential detail when we talk about the relationship between agriculture and climate change.

In regenerative livestock farming systems the land and animals are managed in a way that breaks the life cycle of intestinal parasites, removing the need for intestinal treatments. Farmers who convert to regenerative methods are astonished by the return of life to their farms. This surge in biodiversity however is just a symptom of what is going on underground – the return of living soils, which rapidly draw down carbon and create the carbon soil sponge.

The Soil Carbon Sponge

The sheer enormity of soil microbiota, itself living and dying, as well as drawing down dung and other organic matter into the soil, builds up as a carbon matrix within the mineral structure of soil. Without this organic matter soils are simply dusty dirt, able to hold little water, and once dry are extremely difficult to rehydrate. However living soils, rich in organic matter have a sponge like texture, are springy under foot and can hold large amounts of water, all due to carbon.

For every gram of carbon present in the soil, it can hold 8 grams of water (7,8). So we start to see that soil carbon is not just key to climate stabilisation and biodiversity, but also water management. Over time, carbon rich soils just get deeper and deeper, and it is from such soils that we can grow the best, nutrient-dense foods.

Mobile bio-digesters

Vast areas of the world are naturally grassland-scrub: The great plains of North America once grazed by buffalo; the Savannahs of South and East Africa grazed by a myriad of ungulates; Europe thousands of years ago, where wild horses, aurochs, elk, bison and deer maintaining wood-pastures.

These animals and their grassland-scrub homes are synonymous. Originally predators like wolves and lions would have managed their behaviour, keeping them moving in dense bunches, grazing, trampling, pooing and peeing, then moving on. This animal impact is essential to grassland regeneration. Without them, especially in dry climates, grass stays standing up and can only decompose through oxidation; bare ground soon appears underneath, the start of desertification, where carbon only goes up, not down. Animals in dry grasslands are the only thing that can put carbon back into the soil.

So while overgrazing is a huge problem across the world, especially in drylands, this is only due to the mismanagement of animals. Animals can be the problem, but also are the solution, because their correct management (mimicking the action of predators), is about the only thing that can reverse desertification which is all about locking carbon into the soil and restoring dense plant cover.

The following examples show just how effective pastureland is at locking in carbon,
if managed correctly:

Texas A&M University study demonstrated 1.2 tons of carbon per acre per year (1.2 tC/ac/yr) drawdown via proper grazing methods (2).
University of Georgia study demonstrated 3 tons of carbon per acre per year (3 tC/ac/yr) drawdown via a conversion from row cropping to regenerative grazing (3).
Michigan State University study demonstrated 1.5 tons of carbon per acre per year (1.5 tC/ac/yr) drawdown via proper grazing methods and demonstrated in a lifecycle analysis that this more than compensated for natural enteric emissions of methane (4).
The drawdown potential on North American pasturelands is 800 million tons (megatons) of carbon per year (800 MtC/yr) (5).

To Conclude

Whenever we look at a carbon footprint we must also look at whether the carbon involved is ‘ancient’ or ‘current.’
Agricultural soils are an enormous potential carbon sink, but due to intensive farming methods and mismanagement of pastoral animals, agricultural soils are mostly oxidising carbon into the atmosphere and causing desertification.
Taxing meat as a way to try and cut the number of animals in farming, is an oversimplification of the problem that could lead to disastrous consequences by resulting in more grassland being ploughed up for high protein foods like soya.
We are currently running at about 50% of the carbon drawdown capacity of the earth (7,8). Yes! We could double the size of the earth’s breath-in each year, if we changed land management worldwide.
Supporting regenerative agriculture is one of the best ways to help our climate and biodiversity crises.
A billion hectares of land globally, under regenerative grazing management, would have the potential to tip the balance of climate change the other way (6).

This is part 1 of a three part series of articles about farming and climate change.

References

Grass-fed meat – so much more than a source of omega-3.

Caroline Grindrod Uncategorized 1

06Apr

It’s very true that all meat, regardless of how raised, is an important nutrient source – especially for developing children. 1

However, some serious ethical and environmental concerns are associated with factory-farmed animals reared to produce cheap meat. These concerns give fuel to the argument that meat no longer has a place in a modern diet.

Exciting new science has, however, further highlighted why grass-fed and factory-farmed meat should not be treated equally. In fact, beyond the legitimate and convincing environmental and ethical arguments, it now turns out eating grass-fed meat could be an efficient way of eating your greens!

At the root of most of the global issues we face today is our tendency to apply a mechanical mindset to our management of natural systems – both the outer environment and our inner ecosystem (our bodies).

In farming or human health, if you want to benefit from the vast productive capacity of functional natural systems and their inherent ability to balance and suppress disease, you need to work with nature rather than quantify, separate, and understand it by the individual components. We cover this topic in more depth here.

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

In my work as a consultant in regenerative agriculture, to benefit from these natural processes, we manage land and livestock with principles rather than prescriptions. The further you wander from these laws of nature, the more costly the economic, ecological and social consequences. This has always been the case, forever, for everyone. And it won’t change just because we have invented a new technological revelation such as chemical fertiliser or lab-grown meat.

Living by these principles does not mean you’re anti-science. Not at all. It simply helps you understand that the science currently available is only a partial view of a far larger picture. True scientists understand this completely – this is why they do what they do. There’s always more to discover and understand.

Because I live by these principles, I have always known that meat from animals raised within a healthy functional ecosystem is better for the planet, people and worth the extra price. But, in a western society that makes decisions primarily based on empirical evidence, it is frustrating that there’s not more good science to confirm what I already know to be true. This is starting to change.

The many health benefits of grass-fed meat.

What we do already know about the health benefits of grass-fed meat is thankfully pretty compelling 2:

Meat from animals reared in functional ecosystems on a diverse pasture is higher in omega 3. It has a healthy ratio between omega 3 and 6, which allows us to benefit from omega 3 essential fatty acid’s potent anti-inflammatory properties. As inflammation has been scientifically proven to be associated with nearly all modern chronic disease, this is a pretty big deal. 3

Grass-fed meat is rich in conjugated linoleic acid – CLA. CLA is associated with a lowered risk of heart disease and may help prevent and manage type 2 diabetes. 4 5

CLA has also been shown to reduce cancer risk by blocking the growth and metastatic spread of tumours. 6 7

Some research suggests that CLA can help reduce body fat and promote weight loss. 8

For many years, we have understood that grass-fed meat, compared to grain-fed meat, contains a powerhouse of minerals and vitamins, including bioavailable protein, zinc, iron, selenium, calcium/or B12. All of these nutrients are critical for fighting disease and maintaining health – especially in a world where our fruits and vegetables contain fewer nutrients with every passing decade. 9

We know – although often choose to ignore – that animals reared in factory-farmed systems are more likely to suffer from disease (and therefore be routinely treated with antibiotics and medication) and live in low welfare conditions. Their production has a vast and negative impact on the environment. (We cover this in-depth in our free introductory course on eating meat.)

Powered by plants.

We have for a long time known and studied the critical role of phytonutrients in promoting health and fighting disease in plants, animals and humans. ‘Phytonutrients’ or ‘phytochemical’ are primary or secondary metabolites found in plants and recognised to have nutritional quality attributes and powerful potential health benefits.

Beyond the protective qualities they provide the plants themselves, these compounds have been known from ancient times to elicit positive biologic responses in human and animal systems. These elicitors have been shown to reduce the risk of many chronic diseases that plague modern society, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, diabetes and many more. 10

The need for food rich in phytonutrients to help tackle our ill-health epidemic has led to a push towards plant-based diets. It has also accelerated interest in the metabolic engineering and the genetic modification of plants to ‘create’ – and presumably patent – varieties that are higher in these disease suppressive nutrients. 11

Nature had this whole issue worked out a very long time ago – and without the need for a potentially disastrous intervention from modern technology.

Wild plants are a powerhouse of beneficial plant nutrients. However, it takes healthy soil and healthy ecosystems to brew – through complex interactions between plant and the soil food web – the range of natural medicines found in our native wild plants.

Wild dandelions, for instance, contain seven times more phytonutrients than spinach, a plant considered a superfood among the sad array of factory-farmed vegetables proudly displayed on the supermarket shelves.

Wild food wins.

Certain wild apple species contain a whopping 100 times more phytonutrients than the golden delicious you will find at your local convenience store. 12

The dramatic loss of phytonutrients in our modern plant foods comes from a combination of factors;

Plant breeding for flavour, size and texture above and beyond health properties.

The fact that the main plant foods we eat come from growing systems that are the antithesis of a healthy functioning ecosystem. Lifeless soils and reliance on damaging chemicals lead to vegetables, grain, and fruits unable to perform the basic processes required to synthesise the plant nutrients that offer us health benefits. 13

The long gap between harvest and digestion. How we harvest, transport and cook food can have a degrading effect on our food’s nutrients.

But did you know that striking new scientific evidence shows that grass-fed meat contains the very disease-fighting phytonutrients we hope to find in plants?
Health-promoting phytonutrients are higher in grass-fed meat and milk

Researchers have found that healing phytochemicals such as terpenoids, phenols, carotenoids and anti-oxidants with anti-inflammatory, cardioprotective and anti-cancer effects are found in the meat and milk of livestock who have access to healthy, diverse pastures.

‘’Grazing livestock on plant-species diverse pastures concentrates a wider variety and higher amounts of phytochemicals in meat and milk compared to grazing monoculture pastures, while phytochemicals are further reduced or absent in meat and milk of grain-fed animals. ‘’
HEALTH-PROMOTING PHYTONUTRIENTS ARE HIGHER IN GRASS-FED MEAT AND MILK

This revelation is perhaps shining a light on why many traditional meat-eating cultures and modern carnivores see such dramatic health benefits from eating a diet high in grass-fed meat – when on the face of it, the diet seems to conflict with the natural principle of diversity. 14 15

By eating meat grown on healthy ecosystems – either hunted from wild landscapes or reared on regenerative farms – we leverage and upcycle the herbivores’ foraging behaviour.

These herbivores freely graze and browse on the thousands of species of the most phytonutrient dense plants of all – wildflowers, grasses and legumes – growing on healthy soil or wild landscapes.

Foraging phytonutrients for you.

Many of these native plants are inedible or unpalatable to humans, but as part of the pastures and woodlands they form, they are the foundation of a biodiverse food web. These plants create drought and flood-resistant landscapes that sequester carbon from the atmosphere. By eating the animals that eat these plants, we provide food and nutrition security in a highly vulnerable foodscape of monoculture grown vegetables and grains.

Healthy pasture could legitimately be considered the only truly functional ecosystem that remains a part of conventional modern farming systems.

So I feel reassured. From my own experience of nature’s principles, I know that eating animals who have spent their entire lives grazing and browsing herb-rich pastures is better than eating meat from animals fed on grain.

Eating animals that are part of a fully functional ecosystem – such as the regenerative farms that supply the meat we sell – is better for the animal, better for the environment, and better for my health.

I am excited about what new incredible scientific revelations will further demonstrate that nature has the complete picture – the best and brightest human efforts still only represent a tiny piece of the puzzle.

Caroline Grindrod

The number one issue today in health, food and farming.

Caroline Grindrod Uncategorized 0

18Mar

Modern humans have a mind-boggling capacity to create complicated things. From bikes, cars and trains, to quantum computers that ‘think’ and learn for themselves. We are on the verge of combining robots with humans, and creating vaccines in record-breaking time.

Yet, we are the only species which has consciously and actively destroyed its own habitat. Today’s world is plagued with problems: Climate emergency, biodiversity collapse, viral pandemics, human trafficking, escalating conflict and mass migration all of which we tackle in ever more sophisticated ways.

Are we so drunk on our masterful achievements that we no longer think we have to live by universal laws? Do we see ourselves as entirely outside and beyond nature? Natural law, no longer relevant, living in a world where all is out-sourced and out of sight?

Cheap food for example, is grown on intensively managed land where the fertility comes from fossil fuels, and the ‘pests,’ also known as ‘wildlife’, are killed with toxic chemicals. These intensive systems are fraught with destructive, direct and indirect consequences.

Results are decoupled from problems, so costs are kept low for the polluter, the tab, picked up by the citizen, under the guise of seemingly disconnected issues. Issues such as: adapting to climate chaos; cleaning up ocean dead zones; pollinating by hand due to insect population collapse; the huge social and environmental cost of human migration due to an area half the size of the European Union, turning to desert each year.

In human health, the outsourced costs are vast: Since 1990 global cancer rates have almost doubled; autoimmune rates skyrocket, coeliac disease alone increases up to 9% each year; a tenfold increase in obesity; and now in the UK 1 in 54 children have autism. Rampant viruses from covid 19 to swine flu sweep through the world population, the latter of which resulted in the slaughter of 10 million factory-farmed pigs.

I believe that the most significant challenge we face today is not climate change, world hunger or a killer virus – these are all symptoms – it’s our inability to understand and work with complexity or find the real root cause of an issue.

There are approximately 370 million indigenous people in the world occupying or using up to 22% of the global land area, which is home to 80% of the world’s biological diversity.

Indigenous cultures understand/understood complexity. They live/lived as part of their ecosystem, watching and learning from the patterns of nature; knowledge handed down, through storytelling, rituals and the guidance of elders.

But this ancient wisdom is sadly all but gone. Meanwhile we worship the gods of economics and technology. Distracted by soundbites of a marketable world, a far cry from any universal truths. ‘Meat is murder’ takes just a second to say but several hours to debunk – and that’s if you can get anyone to listen!

Getting to the root cause of a wicked problem requires the ability to see the complex, interconnected, ever-evolving picture; it takes time, patience, a willingness to learn and think critically.

Who’s paying for that new scientific study? Who is really benefiting most from that new wonder drug? Are we asking these critical questions?

So, where did it all go wrong?

During the ‘enlightenment,’ Rene Descartes mechanistic thinking – the idea that everything can be taken apart like a machine, became the predominant way of looking at the world. Applied to living systems, such as human health and natural ecosystems, this is frankly disastrous.

Living systems are complex, interwoven, self-organising and emergent. The ‘whole’ system has properties that cannot be understood by separating and studying them.

But evolution continues and beyond ‘mechanos’ has emerged ‘systems thinking,’ a new, ‘holistic’ paradigm. A way of seeing the world, that really can solve our most pressing problems, be it in our inner ecosystems (our bodies), or our outer ecosystems (our farmland and wild spaces).

It is time to say, ‘enough is enough’, to rebel intelligently and quietly by taking the time to develop your own capacity to see the whole picture. This is the age of complexity. A new set of skills are required to work alongside ‘specialists’ – the capacity to see the world as the living, complex intertwined system that it is.

In this series of posts, I plan to cover a wide range of issues. In each example, I will show a problem and how systems thinking can help to solve it. I hope to illustrate how every separate issue from crop failures to cancer, is utterly connected because it is all one system.

Below is the first of these, a short video looking at the issue of intestinal parasites in livestock. In a mechanistic paradigm, these are treated with chemicals, which have a chain of destructive knock-on effects. Within a holistic paradigm, we show how we can deal with this problem in a different way.

Primal Promise

Caroline Grindrod Uncategorized 0

09Mar

So what do we stand for? What can you expect from us in terms of standards and assurance?

P – Pasture for life.

Cows and sheep should eat pasture and only pasture, that’s what they’re designed to do. Feeding grain to livestock has negative consequences for animal health, and brings with it many environmental concerns.

So we are committed to 100% pasture fed, and to assure you of our commitment, we use the ‘Pasture for Life’ certification, for all our herbivore meats. This includes a tracks-traceability system.

Our omnivore (poultry and pork) meats, will eat an appropriate diet for optimal digestion and nutrient requirements. We will choose the most sustainable option available to each farm, based on a sourcing primarily from local farms, then UK grown organic feeds, and lastly, only if necessary, imported organic feeds.

We will also be exploring, and funding projects to develop the genetics for livestock that can thrive on more natural, and sustainable diets.

R – Regenerating soils.

The farmers that supply our meat, farm in a way that regenerates soils. In order to tackle climate change, with its resulting extremes of weather, we need to farm in a way that takes more carbon out of the atmosphere than it emits. By using regenerative practices, our grazing systems are actively sequestering carbon into stable forms that are locked into the soil.

Farms supplying us are monitoring carbon sequestration so we can demonstrate over a five-year timescale, a net-negative trend. Farmers also use ‘Soil Mentor’ annually, to show that the soils’ physical structure is getting healthier. This is a practical and straightforward proxy indicator, to show that the soil is sequestering carbon.

I – Improving ecosystem processes.

While carbon is important, so are farming practices which enhance biodiversity, rehydrate landscapes and rebuild the soil food web, so minerals can be passed from healthy soils, to healthy animals, and regenerate the health of the people eating the meat.

Farmers supplying us are trained to monitor their land for the effectiveness of their ecosystem processes. From noting species diversity, to doing infiltration tests and worm counts, we use several simple, but scientifically proven ways of monitoring for improvements in these ecosystem processes.

The farms that supply us with meats never use artificial fertilisers or herbicides.

M – Mature Meat.

Our culture is sold on the idea that only meat from young animals is tender and tasty. This is not true, in fact, some of the tastiest and most celebrated types of meat around the world, come from more mature animals. Before the war, these meats were traditionally eaten in the UK as well.

This prejudice has led to the devaluing of perfectly prime protein, resulting in the long-distance transport of live animals to foreign countries for slaughter in abattoirs with lower standards than our own.

Although younger animals may have a more tender texture and delicate flavour, older animals produce meat of a deep, rich flavour, and delicious texture if dry-aged on the bone.

We have created a ‘Prime and Mature’ range to help celebrate this forgotten delicacy. All the meat from beef and sheep is dry-aged on the bone for optimal periods.

A – Animal Health.

The farmers that supply our meat are proactive with regards to the health of their livestock. Farmers always aim to prevent diseases, by designing farm systems that address the root cause of why livestock get sick. They do this by leveraging the power of the natural ecosystem processes. Healthy ecosystems support healthy animals. In this way we can significantly reduce the need for medical intervention.

The livestock on our supplying farms are never routinely treated with antibiotics.

We give you assurance of this, because we personally work with each farmer to design a whole-farming-system livestock-health-plan, that addresses any recurring health issues.

L – Living Naturally.

We believe livestock should be able to express their natural behaviours. Cows and sheep should be grazing on pasture, chickens need to scratch in healthy soil, alive with invertebrates, and pigs need to be able to root and nest.

The breeds of animals that our supply farmers choose, are appropriate for their climate, topography, and reflect the cultural heritage of the region.

As meat-eaters, we have a great responsibility to ensure a quick and humane death for the animals that we eat. We work with a hub system to ensure livestock are transported only short distances to slaughter, and we aim to support small, local, family abattoirs where possible. The kill process is quick and appropriate for the animal, conducted under veterinary supervision and will always include livestock being rendered unconscious before slaughter.

Your Immune System is Not Alone in Facing Viral Infections

Caroline Grindrod Feature, Nutrition coronavirus 0

24Mar

Your Immune System is Not Alone in Facing Viral Infections.

We are not as helpless in fighting viral infections as we would first suppose, because the ecosystem that is our body, has a lot of support and adaptive responses working alongside our immune system. Let me explain.

‘Our immune system is not our bodies only line of defence.’

What if I told you that the human body is literally covered in and chock full of trillions of microbes producing various immune supportive compounds twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and that these organisms are responding to your bodily ecosystem, (including bacterial, viral and fungal infections and foreign organisms), on a continual basis.

The current estimate is that 43% of the cells in your body are human and the rest is made up of microbes, also known as the microbiota, that are capable of altering your gene expression, your immune function and even of producing anti-viral compounds and natural anti-biotics such as bacteriocins. Talking in terms of genes, we have approximately 20,000 that make up the human genome, (essentially an instruction manual on how to build a human body), but we contain between 2-20 million microbial genes, which affect how our body works in ways that are really rather remarkable. We essentially carry two genomes, (two instruction manuals), one is for how to build a human body and the other is the genetic material of our microbiota, known as our microbiome. This microbiome is a complex DNA instruction manual for building microbial cells and how they augment our system to create one complex ecosystem.

Our microbiota produce natural immune supportive compounds and are capable of rapid adaptation, but we don’t yet have enough information to confidently suggest how they may help our immune systems fight infections such as the common cold, the flu and other viruses. So for now it would be wise to utilise a pragmatic and reasonable approach. If you knew that you could make choices that supported your microbiome instead of damaging it, wouldn’t it make sense to do so?

I became fascinated with the microbiome over ten years ago when I had a personal experience of using microbes to improve my families health. As a Healthcare Professional I was shocked that nobody was talking about this back then, but things are now changing….rapidly.

The conversations about the importance of our microbiome are being had the world over and leading scientists and medical professionals are all hot on the heels of this paradigm shifting level of understanding.

The microbiome have many functions and it is interesting to note that some bacteria appear to exert anti-viral activity through various mechanisms, including direct interaction, production of inhibitory metabolites and regulation of the immune system(1). Lactic acid bacteria as an example produce bacteriocins that have been shown to display antiviral activity(1),(2),(3) as have myxobacteria that inhabit our gut as well as the soil, tree bark, oceans and even the desert(4).

There are countless examples of micro-organisms displaying anti-viral activity in the scientific literature, but the problem we have on relying on this data is that no-one knows how any one individuals unique microbiome will respond in any given scenario.The workings of the ecosystem that is the human body are complex beyond our comprehension and we would do well to see that we keep it in as harmonious a state as possible.

With so much still to discover about the workings of our bodies, a dose of humility is sometimes life’s best medicine.

It is for this reason that we must allow ourselves to be humbled by the intelligent design of nature, for we will never know enough to be as ignorant as we currently are in being led solely by science and not considering the intelligence of natural design within its correct context. Science provides useful sign posts, but if the reason we use science is to progress and evolve, then we must also accept that we will always need to work alongside nature and not attempt to separate our understanding from it.

How our bodies respond to viral infections, will be impacted by our unique biology, including our microbiome and many other yet to be confirmed factors. It is also entirely possible that our microbiome could turn out to be one of a number of factors, in explaining the large deviation in symptomatic responses and predisposition to contraction of, various viral infections, including novel ones.

It is now our job to ensure we support our immune systems by being as robust and resilient as possible. There are many ways we can do that, but taking care of our microbiome is a great place to start.

Every time you eat/drink processed foods and beverages containing chemical residues, preservatives, sweeteners, additives, stabilisers, added sugars, etc you can potentially damage your bodies delicately balanced ecosystem and all the little microbes that call it home. It requires no jump in scientific discoveries to work out that compounds added to food that are designed to stop the growth of, or kill bacteria, or cause imbalanced growth of specific species, are going to have a detrimental impact on the balance of microbes that make up a healthy bodily ecosystem. So it follows that leaving these processed foods out of our diet is essential in supporting our microbiome to support us.

With that being said, eating an unprocessed, varied diet, grown or reared the way nature intended on healthy soils, within healthy ecosystems is the most respectful and harmonious lifestyle approach we can recommend.

I hope this article has allowed you to see how our immune system does not fight any infection alone and we have way more support than we might think.

Let’s be grateful for and look after nature’s ecosystems and the resilience that is created through their complexity within and without our own bodies, they may just help us all get through challenging times in ways we have yet to understand.

I hope you enjoyed this article, please help us spread the word by sharing

Teri Clayton

References

Antiviral potential of lactic acid bacteria and their bacteriocins. Al Kassaa I1, Hober D, Hamze M, Chihib NE, Drider D. 2014, Probiotics and antimicrobial compounds, pp. Dec 6(3-4)177-85.
Bacteriocins and Bacteriophages: Therapeutic Weapons for Gastrointestinal Diseases? Loris Riccardo Lopetuso, Maria Ernestina Giorgio, Angela Saviano, Franco Scaldaferri, Antonio Gasbarrini,and Giovanni Cammarota, s.l. : International Journal of Molecular Science, 2019, Vol. 20. 10.3390.ijms20010183 .
A novel eukaryotic cell culture model to study antiviral activity of potential probiotic bacteria. Tanja Botića, Trine Danø,´Klingbergb Hana, Weingartlc, Avrelija Cencičad, s.l. : International Journal of Food Microbiology, 2007, Vol. 115.
Antiviral Compounds from Myxobacteria. Stadler, Lucky S. Mulwa and Marc, s.l. : Microorganisms, 2018, Vol. 6.

Is ‘Vegan’ a Dirty Word?

Caroline Grindrod Uncategorized 0

15Feb

Take a listen to this podcast in which I am featured talking about my views on veganism. It may be a surprise to know that as the owner of a meat business I welcome the movement as an important catalyst for change.

I hope you enjoy it. Caroline x

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-vegan-a-dirty-word/id1490590788?i=1000461549444

Livestock are not the global warming enemy.

Caroline Grindrod Research 0

19Oct

ffinlo Costain is the chief executive of Farmwel, a think tank working on climate and food security.

Farmers own and manage more than 70 per cent of land in the UK. Unfortunately, many of them feel marginalised and threatened by the current focus on ruminant methane in causing global warming. However, this focus is ill-informed and runs the risk of alienating precisely the constituency we must inspire in the race to mitigate and adapt to climate change, restore biodiversity, and increase our food security. It could also drive dangerously unsustainable land use and the further intensification of animal and arable agriculture.

New science, by a team of researchers for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based at the University of Oxford, categorically shows that methane from the UK’s ruminants is not causing global warming – instead ruminants provide a viable pathway to net zero emissions from UK agriculture by 2030.1,2,3

Although livestock produce methane almost constantly, the focus on their emissions is misleading – it’s the warming impact of those emissions that actually matters.

Grass-based cattle and sheep systems can be climate neutral by 2030, and help to restore biodiversity and soil health

Far from being unsustainable, as many people have argued, grass-based cattle and sheep systems can be climate neutral by 2030, and they can help to restore biodiversity and soil health.

For the full article https://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/185/14/449.full

New Improved Methane Methodology.

Caroline Grindrod Research 0

03Aug

A solution to the misrepresentations of CO₂-equivalent emissions of short-lived climate pollutants under ambitious mitigation

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0026-8

In June 2018 new research was published by International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists from Oxford Martin School, Oxford University. The research improves upon the methodology currently defining the global warming potential of different greenhouse gases.

The researchers said, “Current climate change policy suggests a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to dealing with emissions, but there are two distinct types of emissions. We must treat these two groups differently.” (Professor Dave Frame)

“Long-lived pollutants, like carbon dioxide, persist in the atmosphere, building up over centuries. The CO2 created by burning coal in the 18th Century is still affecting the climate today.” On the other hand, “Short-lived pollutants, like methane, disappear within a few years. Their effect on the climate is important, but very different from that of CO2.” (Dr Michelle Cain)

While cumulative carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions dominate anthropogenic warming over centuries, temperatures over the coming decades are also strongly affected by short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), complicating the estimation of cumulative emission budgets for ambitious mitigation goals. Using conventional Global Warming Potentials (GWPs) to convert SLCPs to “CO₂-equivalent” emissions misrepresents their impact on global temperature. Here we show that peak warming under a range of mitigation scenarios is determined by a linear combination of cumulative CO₂ emissions to the time of peak warming and non-CO₂ radiative forcing immediately prior to that time. This may be understood by expressing aggregate non-CO₂ forcing as cumulative CO₂ forcing-equivalent (CO₂-fe) emissions. We show further that contributions to CO₂-fe emissions are well approximated by a new usage of GWP, denoted GWP*, which relates cumulative CO₂ emissions to date with the current rate of emission of SLCPs. GWP* accurately indicates the impact of emissions of both long-lived and short-lived pollutants on radiative forcing and temperatures over a wide range of timescales, including under ambitious mitigation when conventional GWPs fail. Measured by GWP*, implementing the Paris Agreement would reduce the expected rate of warming in 2030 by 28% relative to a No Policy scenario. Expressing mitigation efforts in terms of their impact on future cumulative emissions aggregated using GWP* would relate them directly to contributions to future warming, better informing both burden-sharing discussions and long-term policies and measures in pursuit of ambitious global temperature goals.

Livestock: on our plate or eating from our table.

Livestock: On our plates or eating at our table? A new analysis of the feed/food debate.

Aside Caroline Grindrod Research 0

03Aug

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013

86% of the global livestock feed intake in dry matter consists of feed materials that are not currently edible for humans

Contrary to commonly cited figures, 1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics

Livestock consume one third of global cereal production and uses about 40% of global arable land

Livestock use 2 billion ha of grasslands, of which about 700 million could be used as cropland

Modest improvements in feed conversion ratios can prevent further expansion of arable land dedicated to feed production.

Livestock contribute to food security by supplying essential macro- and micro-nutrients, providing manure and draught power, and generating income. But they also consume food edible by humans and graze on pastures that could be used for crop production.

Livestock, especially ruminants, are often seen as poor converters of feed into food products. This paper analyses global livestock feed rations and feed conversion ratios, with specific insight on the diversity in production systems and feed materials.

Results estimate that livestock consume 6 billion tonnes of feed (dry matter) annually – including one third of global cereal production – of which 86% is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans. In addition, soybean cakes, which production can be considered as main driver or land-use, represent 4% of the global livestock feed intake.

Producing 1 kg of boneless meat requires an average of 2.8 kg human-edible feed in ruminant systems and 3.2 kg in monogastric systems. While livestock is estimated to use 2.5 billion ha of land, modest improvements in feed use efficiency can reduce further expansion.

Why a Meat Tax will lead to faster climate breakdown.

Caroline Grindrod Feature, Nutrition, Sustainability 6

08May

Introduction

Our reactions to issues and emergencies are a reflection of our predominant world view and beliefs. In the case of climate breakdown, we are finally seeing a willingness from politicians and governments to respond to the looming and potentially catastrophic threat from the collapse of the natural world and its climate regulating functions.

But the response we are witnessing is based on ‘safer’ lagging climate science that comes from a reductionist scientific perspective which is mostly performed out of context. By separating and reducing data and findings you do not get a true or full explanation of how it relates to, and acts within, the whole system.

From this type of science, we often get useful correlations that can and should be used to influence better systems science to verify their findings. Instead this has resulted in the adoption and promotion of partial conclusions by those with a vested interest in such incomplete results.

With a longer timescale in which to operate, such misinformation would not be particularly concerning. Inevitably better science will, and already is, giving us a more complete view of the situation.

Here is an example of recent scientific findings that will lead to a complete revaluation of the contribution of ruminants to GHG emissions. Adoption of this methodology could invalidate all previous studies that include the use of GWP100 :

In June 2018 new research was published by International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists from Oxford Martin School, Oxford University. The research improves upon the methodology currently defining the global warming potential of different greenhouse gases.

The researchers said, “Current climate change policy suggests a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to dealing with emissions, but there are two distinct types of emissions. We must treat these two groups differently.” (Professor Dave Frame)

“Long-lived pollutants, like carbon dioxide, persist in the atmosphere, building up over centuries. The CO2 created by burning coal in the 18th Century is still affecting the climate today.” On the other hand, “Short-lived pollutants, like methane, disappear within a few years. Their effect on the climate is important, but very different from that of CO2.” (Dr Michelle Cain)

1, 2, 3

But we are running out of time with most scientist believing we have under 12 years to address this issue before we are tied into consequences beyond our ability to resolve.

4, 5

The science and thinking that has led to the demonization of meat comes from reduced scientific findings that are incorrect when considered within whole ecosystem function.

This is no small misinterpretation.

Responding with policies that will influence public buying habits will inevitably lead to faster and more dramatic climate breakdown and a realisation soon, that such flawed policies were behind the rapid deterioration.

In fact, all the credible science any government or influencer could require is already in existence to justify an alternative plan that can, and will, recover the planets ability to maintain conditions congruent with human survival.

What is required is a different perspective from which to view it.

Context

2.1 Carbon

In the context of climate change, we consider carbon in two forms;

Stored forms such as fossil fuels. This was mostly accumulated into sinks in the carboniferous period when there were much higher levels of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere due to the vast swamps and wetlands that were a feature of this period. Large mega flora with huge photosynthetic capacity sequestered the CO2 into stable solid and liquid forms buried underground which led to high oxygen levels and eventually the stable climate we humans benefit from today.

Cycling carbon. Carbon is the building block of life and can cycle in many forms and within the biosphere moving easily between states. As gas it cycles as CO2 or CH4 in the atmosphere and as a liquid and solid it cycles through all living, dead and decaying organisms.

As carbon cycles though living organisms such as humans or cattle, it is ingested in the solid and liquid form of plants, or meat from animals that ate plants, and contributes to the growth and reproduction of that organism. Partly respired as CO2 and CH4 it is eventually released and recycled through the process of death and decay. An organism cannot excrete or exhale more carbon that is originally inhaled or ingested so the carbon in this scenario does not represent a net increase in the atmospheric load.

Historically a larger portion of the carbon cycling through the biosphere would be in more stable solid states, such as humus in soils or the biomass of trees, than as a gas state in the atmosphere and this is contributing to the greenhouse gas effect. This issue can be simply resolved by using the very same mechanisms nature previously applied in times of high CO2 and CH4 levels – by increasing the longevity and effectiveness of photosynthesis across the planet. We now have tried and tested methods of managing grazing animals in ways that increase photosynthesis and rapidly sequester significant volumes of CO2 into stable solid forms.

When stored carbon is released in the burning of fossil fuels it is added to the carbon that is being cycled through the atmosphere in its many states.

Reductionist science has been using a partial understanding of the impact of cycling carbon in the form of methane for a large part of our climate science history. This has led to the overreliance and use of stored carbon; the true external cost of this use has not been paid by the companies profiting from it, it will instead lie as a debt humanity will inherit.

7, 8, 9, 10

We must recognise and account for the life-threatening true cost of our reliance on cheap materials and inexpensive foods subsidised by a fossil fuel industry who do not pay for their externalised expenses.

Carbon that is taken from stored sinks then added to the cycling net carbon load should be considered differently to carbon already in the atmosphere that is simply changing states though living processes.

Priority should be given to mediation methods that can increase the time that cycling carbon spends in solid and stable forms and decrease the time it spends in gaseous form where it contributes to warming.

2.2. Methane

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and is currently considered to have 28 times the ‘global warming potential’ of carbon dioxide.

It has been acknowledged for decades that the methodology used to calculate the CO2 equivalent for methane is flawed and hides the fact that 1Gt CH4 has a strong warming influence when it is first emitted, which due to chemical reactions in the atmosphere, rapidly diminishes over a decade. Over the 100 years used to asses GWP100, the methane emitted has almost all been destroyed.

By comparison, a 28Gt “equivalent” emission of CO2 would continue to warm the planet over a hundred-year period at the same rate it did when released. The two emissions must be treated differently to ensure policy changes reflect a more accurate impact of methane – including enteric methane from herbivores and other living organisms – on climate.

It is also important that we better understand the role of ecology in assisting the oxidisation of methane so that its time in the atmosphere remains short lived – this is not a static mechanism and is significantly influenced by land use. A shift from grazed pastures to conventional cropping to supply an increase in plant food could reduce the biosphere’s capacity to oxidise methane.

13, 14

The complexity and feedback variations of different habits on the effectiveness of the Hydroxyl Radical ‘cleaning’ process is not something that can currently calculated accurately or predictably. Our understanding of these processes is in its infancy and many of our current assumptions were influenced and informed by the stabilisation of atmospheric methane levels at the beginning of the 21^st century.

In 2007 methane levels once again started to rise at an alarming rate leaving the scientific community in disarray and disagreement as to the mechanisms that have led to them. The debate will undoubtedly continue well beyond the timescale we have to take effective remedial action.

What can be agreed upon is that the atmospheric rise in methane has been caused by an increase in methane emissions, and or, a reduction in the effectiveness of the planet’s ability to oxidise and ‘sink’ the methane. Probably both.

17, 18

If we are to attribute most of the atmospheric observations in 2007 onwards to an increase in emissions, there must have been a statistically significant change in total CH4 emissions around the year 2007 to explain it.

Some recent studies have pointed to an “upturn” in global concentrations of ethane (C2H6), coincident with the recent rise in CH4, which may imply an increase in CH4 emissions caused by an increase in oil and gas extraction.

19, 20, 21, 22

Unlike earlier rises in methane which was enriched with the heavier carbon stable isotope (13C) of methane, the recent atmospheric surge has been attributed to bio-genic sources (microbial) as it shows a depletion in 13C which is more commonly associated with enteric methane from ruminants or microbial activity in anerobic soils.

There are suggestions that at least part of this is due to an increase or change in tropical wetlands, especially the increase of rice paddies and adoption of alternative rice production methods.

This is probably exacerbated by global warming which has influenced weather patterns in the tropics leading to an increase in methane emitting wetlands and hotter temperatures that has stimulated methanogen activity in saturated soils.

This comprehensive NASA study indicates that both fossil fuels and an increase in wetlands in the tropics are responsible for the increased atmospheric levels post 2007.

What has recently come to light is that globally more than half of the increase in natural gas production has come from shale gas which happens to be somewhat depleted in 13C when compared to natural gas and is likely to be a significant contributor to methane increase puzzle.

25a

What we can say with some confidence is that enteric methane from livestock alone is not responsible for the statistically significant rise in emissions as the changes in livestock numbers through this reference period have been gradual and although ruminant numbers have increased in the developing world they have stabilised or reduced in the developed world. Cattle numbers saw their steepest increase between 2000 and 2006, when methane levels were flat.

On the counter side of the argument it is likely that we have also reduced the capacity of the biosphere to supply the necessary ecosystem services to induce the oxidisation process of methane through the ‘hydroxyl ion’ pathway and in aerated soils by methanotrophs.

Methane is normally held in check by the hydroxyl radical (OH), which is responsible for the shorter lifespan of methane in the atmosphere.

Formed in the presence of sunlight by water vapor and pollutants like ozone and nitrogen oxides, hydroxyl ions are hard to measure because they persist for just a second in the air before reacting away.

Scientist rely upon proxies – chemicals that react with hydroxyl – to measure the presence of hydroxyl in the atmosphere. The proxy studies indicate that OH levels have been relatively constant, a conclusion that is assumed within most models of methane increases.

The carbon atoms in atmospheric methane molecules have shifted toward lighter isotopes which has influenced scientists towards the conclusion that a higher proportion of the post 2007 rise in atmospheric methane is due to microbial activity such as the afore mentioned increase in wetlands.

But there is another explanation.

OH prefers to react with lighter carbon so less OH production due to land management changes that reduce transpiration or block sunlight – such as pollution haze – will lead to higher concentrations than have previously been recorded of light carbon in the atmosphere.

Has the increase in light microbial methane been due to increased emissions or is it simply more abundant due to the breakdown of the process that would normally remove this from the atmosphere?

It could be both, but unfortunately there is no science to verify this due to a lack of meaningful historical data.

29, 30

To compound the issue there are multiple and interrelated feedback loops that are so complex and localised that their accurate study is currently impossible.

These complexities could have a significant negative influence on the effectiveness of the hydroxyl radical oxidisation process which relies upon water vapour and direct sunlight to react with pollutants.

Here are a few examples:

Reduced sunlight levels in the lower troposphere due to pollution, a significant increase in heat haze and dust particles from desertification and or large-scale arable operations. 31
Pollution from accidental and managed fire smoke, fossil fuel burning and other industrial sources utilising the OH oxidisation pathways therefore reducing the OH available to oxidise methane.
Over 75% of the Earth’s land area is already degraded, and over 90% could become degraded by 2050. Degraded soils hold less water and grow fewer transpiring plants therefore reduce the water vapour available to support the oxidisation of methane. 32 Globally, a total area half of the size of the European Union (4.18 million km²) is degraded annually, with Africa and Asia being the most affected. This corresponds with the increase of light methane found in the tropics.
A shift from naturally and managed grazed pastures and woodland to ‘rested’ or re-wet environments where grasses go rank and reduce vigor slow the rate of transpiration.

It is essential we take action on all counts now, rather than wait for scientific confirmation of the exact process that is leading to the significant increases in methane levels in the atmosphere.

We need to reduce all methane sources but focus first on those which come from stored forms rather than become distracted by the sources related to cycling carbon such as enteric methane from livestock – especially when the flip side of these production systems may also be critical for continuing the production of OH. As all oxidised methane becomes carbon dioxide and oxygen it is important that we respond to any possible explanation for the atmospheric increases in methane with measures that address CO2 in the atmosphere.

Equally importantly we need to increase and enhance the capacity of our biosphere to produce hydroxyl ions and sequester carbon into stable forms through increased longevity of photosynthesising plants on aerated soils so that carbon can be quickly sequestered into stable forms and transpiration can take place.

Regenerative agriculture and the protection of our natural habitats are the most effective way of achieving this while also producing nutrient dense food for a growing population.

Texas A&M study demonstrated 1.2 tons of carbon per acre per year (1.2 tC/ac/yr) drawdown via proper grazing methods. 33

University of Georgia study demonstrated 3 tons of carbon per acre per year (3 tC/ac/yr) drawdown via a conversion from row cropping to regenerative grazing. 34

Michigan State University study demonstrated 1.5 tons of carbon per acre per year (1.5 tC/ac/yr) drawdown via proper grazing methods and demonstrated in a lifecycle analysis that this more than compensated for natural enteric emissions of methane. 35

The drawdown potential on North American pasturelands is 800 million tons (megatons) of carbon per year (800 MtC/yr) 36

2.3. Water vapour.

Water Vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere however, changes in its concentration have up until recently been considered to be a result of climate feedbacks related to the warming of the atmosphere rather than a direct result of industrialisation.

Unfortunately, due to the complexity of measuring water vapour in space and time it is as yet poorly measured and understood.

What is becoming apparent to a growing number of climate scientists is that, as with CO2, the time this greenhouse gas spends in different states is critical to how it interplays and supports several cooling mechanisms within the atmosphere.

38, 39

Significant changes in land management such as desertification and deforestation have caused an increase in heating humid hazes and a reduction in cooling latent heat fluxes along with several other negative hydrological shifts.

40, 41

As we are discovering, the most serious impacts of climate change are related to the hydrology of the atmosphere. It is not the CO2 or CH4 in the atmosphere that will directly harm human life (at predicted levels) it is the drought, violent and unpredictable weather, wild fires and floods that will lead to mass human migration, poverty and hunger, all creating the perfect conditions for civil unrest which will inevitably lead to further loss of life.

Regardless of whether the warming influence of water vapour is considered feedback or forcing, we can agree on the cooling influence of several hydrological processes. All are accepted in the scientific community and are well understood in the field of climatology.

It is critical that our management of our agricultural systems and natural habitats is designed to support the cooling hydrological process that have for millennia ensured that most of the 342 watts per square metre of incident solar energy we receive from the sun is returned back out of our atmosphere into space.

Based on internationally recognised climate scientist and soil microbiologist Walter Jehne’s practical plan ‘’Restoring water cycles to naturally cool climates and reverse global warming’’.

These include natural processes to;

1.Restore the Earth’s soil carbon sponge and thus its capacity to infiltrate, retain and make available rainfall to sustain green plant growth for longer and over wider areas of land.

2.Sustain the area and longevity of transpiring green growth across the land to dissipate vast quantities of heat from the land surface into the upper air via latent heat fluxes.

3.Maintain plant covers on land surfaces so as to enhance their albedo and reflection of incident solar radiation back out to space as well as aid their retention of soil moisture.

4.Limit the level of dust and particulate aerosol emissions so as to limit the formation of the persistent humid haze micro-droplets that absorb solar energy and aridify climates.

5.Reduce the surface heating of covered moist soils and thus their re-radiation of the long wave infra-red heat that drives the natural and enhanced greenhouse effect. This can safely turn down the main variable governing the natural and enhanced greenhouse effect.

6.Reduce the length of time that transpired or evaporated water vapour is retained in the atmosphere either as a gas able to absorb re-radiated infra-red heat in the greenhouse effects or as liquid haze micro-droplets able to absorb incident short-wave solar energy.

7.Convert the increase in persistent humid hazes that warm and aridify climates into dense high albedo cloud covers able to reflect incident solar energy back out to space thereby rapidly and safely cooling regions and collectively the global climate.

8.Induce the formation of raindrops from these clouds to remove the humid hazes but also re-supply the Earth’s soils carbon sponges with the water they need to sustain active green plant growth, transpiration and its latent heat fluxes and cooling effects.

9.Reopen night time radiation windows that were blocked by the persistent humid hazes and are responsible for over 60% of the observed global warming effects to date. In doing so we can cool night time plant surfaces so as to enhance the condensation of dew that can contribute to much of the plant’s water needs and survival, particularly as climates aridify.

10.Restore regional rainfalls by inducing the formation of low-pressure zones over cooler moist landscapes to aid the inflow of further humid air often from marine regions.

As with methane, the role of water vapour on the warming of the planet is widely debated and locally influenced so hard to measure.

What is certain is that it is the hydrological extremes of climate change such as drought, flood, and dramatic or unpredictable weather patterns that will have the largest impacts on the ability of humans to thrive.

Destroying water retentive landscapes is in and of itself a major cause of changing climatic patterns which is in turn heavily influenced by agriculture – especially conventional plant agriculture.

Any move towards food systems that drives deforestation, creates bare soil and poor soil health from tillage, use of inorganic fertilisers and pesticides is likely to have the biggest destabilising effect on water cycles and therefore climate security.

We must prevent an increase in the use, and therefore production, of conventional grain and vegetables and instead promote the need for regenerative and organic arable production that promotes water retention in the ecosystem.

We must dramatically reduce the inefficient practice of feeding conventional grain foods to livestock.

2.4. Nitrous Oxide

N20 is produced by activities such as agriculture, fuel combustion, wastewater management, and industrial processes and is increasing in the atmosphere.

Nitrous oxide is also naturally present in the atmosphere as part of the Earth’s nitrogen cycle and has a variety of natural sources which are balanced and regulated by natural ecosystem processes.

The CO2 equivalent of N2O is 300 so it has a very high impact on global warming. Nitrous oxide molecules stay in the atmosphere for an average of 114 years before being removed by a natural sink or destroyed through chemical reactions in the atmosphere.

Nitrous oxide can result from various agricultural soil management activities, such as synthetic and organic fertiliser application and other cropping practices, the management of manure, or burning of agricultural residues.

45, 46

Nitrous oxide emissions occur naturally through many sources associated with the nitrogen cycle, which is the natural circulation of nitrogen among the atmosphere, plants, animals, and microorganisms that live in soil and water. Nitrogen takes on a variety of chemical forms throughout the nitrogen cycle, including N2O. Natural emissions of N2O are mainly from bacteria breaking down nitrogen in soils and the oceans. Nitrous oxide is removed from the atmosphere when it is absorbed by certain types of bacteria or destroyed by ultraviolet radiation or chemical reactions.

As with methane, the natural ‘cleaning’ processes that remove this toxic gas are being compromised and altered by our land use which may result in an increased longevity of this gas in the atmosphere.

The use of synthetic fertilisers in agriculture must be reduced dramatically as it impacts the planet two-fold; it increases levels of N2O in the atmosphere and has a damaging impact on soil health rendering it less able to contribute to the natural oxidisation of both N20 and CH4.

47, 48

3.0. Response and mitigation.

Although the complex and ever shifting influences of these greenhouse gasses on our climate are hard to measure and map, what we can be certain of and agree upon, is that planet earth – through natural processes – has successfully regulated our atmosphere and climate for millions of years.

In the face of our looming crisis and in support of an urgent response, we must ensure that while the various details of the exact mechanisms of climate change are being debated, that we only take remedial actions that support these natural ecosystem processes.

By viewing policy and land management decisions though this window it becomes clear that supporting agricultural practices that are responsible for clearing natural habitats to produce food from eroding bare soil that requires high levels of fossil fuel intensive products and practices is not supportive of natural climate cooling processes.

Conventional intensive plant agriculture does exactly that and is in direct conflict with natural processes.

Taxing meat will trigger a shift in eating habits towards more plants so will expand the land base on which this damaging form of agriculture is practiced. This will lead to an increase in the use of fossil fuels and further reduce the capacity of the planet to mitigate warming.

Grass fed animals reared on healthy soils and managed in a regenerative system are a critical part of the solution to climate change whilst still providing sustainable nutrition security.

On the other hand, livestock reared in ecologically decoupled systems that inefficiently rely upon conventional plant agriculture and other intensive management practices are highly damaging to climate function.

To tax ‘meat’ is to miss this important distinction. A meat tax is a blunt instrument that does nothing to address the underlying drivers of climate change.

Instead we must penalise the most damaging ‘outs’ in the form of emissions that come from stored sources of carbon such as fossil fuels. Then we must support the ‘ins’ in the form of land management that enhances our planets multiple GHG regulation mechanisms.

Assessing the impact of land management on ecosystem processes is very challenging at global level due to the importance of regional and local contexts, but it can be achieved effectively and objectively on a farm by farm basis.

Methodologies such as Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV), developed by the Savory institute, take a systems science approach to monitoring ecosystem health. EOV offers a way of measuring the complexity of nature, through empirical and tangible outcomes, which in turn provide the farmer with ongoing feedback from which to make better management decisions. EOV measures and trends key indicators of ecosystem function, which in the aggregate indicate positive or negative trends in the overall health of a landscape.

Suggested alternative actions to a meat tax that would address the root cause of the climate change problem;

Heavily tax fossil fuel use to prevent stored carbon being added to the cycling atmospheric carbon load. This will serve to influence the economic drivers that lead to many other associated climate harming outcomes such as deforestation, pollution, use of ecologically damaging fertilisers, and the use of biocides in agricultural systems.

Drive adoption of regenerative agricultural practices and innovation in plant and animal food production systems by assessing food based on their positive or negative impact on natural climate regulating processes. This could form the basis of a subsidy system or be included within carbon offset or reward schemes.

Meat from Regenerative Agriculture – The Next Big Food Trend

Caroline Grindrod Sustainability 0

29Apr

Our soils are going bust, it’s a fact. The FAO say we have only 60 global harvests left and water security could fail on a global scale by 2050. (1) (2) (3)

The more obvious outcome of this degradation of the worlds soils will be an increase in food prices followed by mass human migration as large areas of the worlds agricultural lands become desertified to the point they can no longer produce food. This symptom is already well underway.

If this wasn’t bad enough when soil degrades it loses Carbon into the atmosphere accelerating the greenhouse effect. On carbon degraded soil, the cooling benefits gained from a well vegetated, transpiring soil surface are exchanged for the global heating impacts of a hot dry radiator like soil surface over billions of hectares increasing the likelihood of life-threatening hydrological events such as wildfire, drought, huge storms and floods. (4)

This is serious folks, and the time to act is now.

But an unlikely saviour in this scenario is good nutrition. While the fanatical vegans and carnivores are arguing in the back streets of Facebook and Twitter, the more objective among us has realised that the decline in human health has more to do with the dramatic drop of nutrient density in our foods. Coupled with the steep increase in industrial farming and processing methods this has an enormous impact on our health whether you’re; vegan, vegetarian, fruitarian, paleo or full-blown carnivore. (5)

Science is moving fast in the world of both nutrition and soil health and what is becoming evident is that we know only a fraction of the true whole picture. Nutrition science is in its infancy so to base a diet on even credible science (6) will leave us flip-flopping our eating habits in a way that won’t benefit our health.

What we can be sure of is that our ancestors didn’t start getting the diseases that plague our modern society until agriculture got into full swing. The process of taking a plough to the soil and reducing our diet to less nutrient-dense foods was a big step backwards in evolution.

The first mistake was killing the life in the soils and lacing plants with chemicals to respond to the various pests and other symptoms of a damaged soil and food web.

The second was encouraging people to swap nutrient dense foods prepared in traditional ways for cheap, convenient and processed filler foods that contain high levels of anti-nutrients and toxins. (7)

It’s all about how plants achieve their nutrition.

In a healthy soil that hasn’t been ploughed, fertilised or sprayed with pesticides there is a near-miraculous process where plants can access the full range of 42-72 nutrients they require for disease resistance and optimal health. If we eat plants grown on these functional soils we too benefit from the full spectrum of nutrients along with some rather helpful phytochemicals too. (8)

The bacteria and fungi in the living soil are able to solubilize minerals from the rock structures that are not in a form the plant can easily take up. In order to access these nutrients, the plants release liquid carbon exudates (yummy sugars) into the root zone to attract these microorganisms.

These bacteria and fungi in turn then attract the attention of predator microorganisms who eat them releasing the nutrients held in the biomass of their bodies in a plant available form, right next to the roots so there is no waste, no leaching onto rivers. It’s an inexhaustible supply supplied by water, CO2 and sunlight.

In a healthy soil and food web, everyone gets what they need to thrive and carbon is taken out of the atmosphere and locked safely underground.

When the soil food web is disrupted, as is the case in most agricultural soils especially those used for plant production, the ‘microbial bridge’ breaks down and the plants can no longer easily access the nutrients in anything other than a plant available ‘soluble’ form.

Soluble nutrients leach from soils very easily causing havoc in our rivers and seas. The remaining soluble nutrients soon get used up quickly, leaving the farmer no choice but to feed his plants using chemical fertilisers that are fossil fuel based and require vast amounts of energy to produce.

The result is food – plants or meat produced from grain-fed animals – that only reflects the tiny spectrum of limited nutrients applied by the farmer to the crop.

The ‘sick’ crop or animal is then plagued with a range of diseases and pests which have to be treated with yet more harmful pesticides or medications all of which further kill the soil and end up in your gut harming your own health-promoting microbes too. (9)

No wonder we’re all sick!

If we eat meat then our choice is easier. If we choose 100% grass-fed organic meats we know the animals have been reared on soils more likely to have a functional soil food web and therefore a wider range of nutrients. (10)

Even better is grass-fed meat from farms using holistic planned grazing and other regenerative methods. These soils, plants and animals are the superheroes of nutrition; the meat from these systems are likely to be a powerhouse of health and healing nutrients. (11)

Regardless of our eating preferences, we need to join forces and demand production methods that regenerate soils and ecosystems not degrade them. It’s a simple way of securing our future on this planet and dramatically improving our health.

To learn more you can join the Wildervore Approach or become a member on Primal Meats to get access to a free course covering the subject.

1 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/

2 https://www.ecowatch.com/global-water-access-quality-2549813548.html

3 http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/283255/icode/

4 http://www.globalcoolingearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Regenerate-Earth-Paper-Walter-Jehne.pdf

5 http://amazingcarbon.com/JONES-LightFarmingFINAL(2018).pdf

6 https://chriskresser.com/why-you-should-be-skeptical-of-the-latest-nutrition-headlines-part-1/

7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_VC4Ya6i1I

8 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27160996

9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-29376-9

10 https://www.primalmeats.co.uk/grass-fed-meat-does-it-really-matter/

11 https://www.amazingcarbon.com/PDF/JONES-NewFrontiersInAg(Sept13).pdf

https://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/blog/healthy-soil-is-crucial

https://www.amazingcarbon.com/PDF/JONES-RecogniseRelateInnovate.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46537053_Soil_degradation_as_a_reason_for_inadequate_human_nutrition

Why You Should Try Nose to Tail Eating

Caroline Grindrod Feature, Nutrition, Sustainability, Welfare 0

05Mar

Did you know In 2007 almost 1.4 billion hectares of land were used to produce food not consumed? This represents a surface larger than Canada and India together. One-third of all the food we produce globally goes to waste when 870 million people go hungry every day. 28% percent of the world’s agricultural area – is used annually to produce food that is lost or wasted.¹

Running an ethical meat business is REALLY hard and is why many high street butchers no longer buy animals from local farmers or abattoirs. Many butchers now go straight to massive wholesalers where they can just order what they know they can sell. But with this comes consequences…

When we talk about the environmental issues around eating meat we focus on the inefficient use of land or cows farting! There is, however, a simple solution available to everyone that could make a HUGE difference:

Eat everything you buy.

In 1950 approximately 40% of our wage went on our household shopping and nowadays it is less than 10%. We have driven down the cost of production of our food – the supermarkets say we demand it! Then we attach so little value to it that we throw it in the bin! But the problems start before we even get the food on the shelves.

I have been running meat business for nearly ten years, and I can tell you the biggest issue we face by far, is what we call ‘carcass utilisation’. This is the art of making sure you sell all the bits of one animal before moving on to the next. If you have a lot left over all your profit is gone. This problem is made worse by the fact that you only have about 5 days in which to sell all these cuts.

Running an ethical meat business is REALLY hard and is why many high street butchers no longer buy animals from local farmers or abattoirs. Many butchers now go straight to massive wholesalers where they can just order what they know they can sell. But with this comes consequences loss of accountability, and knowledge of provenance.

Ten years ago in our butchery we filled several wheelie bins a week with beef bones and offal that nobody would buy. Now 100% grass-fed beef bones are in such demand at Primal Meats we have a waiting list!

So what is that all about? Well, overall a meat business has to achieve a certain profit margin on the sale of every carcass – this is straightforward business. The complicated part is that there are many different cuts of meat in vastly different quantities but they all need to sell equally. Out of a carcass that weighs 300kg you may only get 3kg of fillet steak but trust me there is a whole lot of mince and stew to sell before you can move on to the next animal. Yes you can freeze some to delay the issue but ultimately you still have to sell it.

The meat business decides on the price of the cut of meat depending on how much people demand it. You think that you pay more for the fillet because it is the ‘best’ but it has a lot to do with the fact that it is scarce too. In reality some of the most delicious and nutritious parts of the animal have become undervalued by the public because they are cheap.

What is even funnier is that 100 years ago we were valuing this stuff and eating it as a treat. In Eastern cultures the offal meat, connective tissue, joints and heads are highly prized and used in many celebrations. We have forgotten the value in our own wise traditions.

Offal meat is considerably more nutritious than muscle meat. Including ‘bone broths’ (formerly known as ‘stock’ by your Grandma) and ‘cheap’ cuts with connective tissue in your diet you can add considerably more important nutrients to your diet than just eating muscle meat.

Take a look at our ‘cow share‘ boxes which utilise a good range of the cuts in a carcass to prevent waste and provide a good range of amino acids.

We often use evidence of native populations and anthropological data to back up our meat eating habits and there is good reasons to assume humans are designed to be ‘meat eaters’. But ‘meat’, in these cultures and throughout our early history, means the WHOLE animal; brains, liver, kidney, blood, head, eyes – okay you get my point. The muscle meat was probably dried and used for rations during the lean seasons.

In fact perhaps we should be a bit more cautious about eating muscle meat with gay abandon! There are some credible concerns over the possible toxic effects on our bodies of eating too much of the amino acid methionine in human subjects. Evidence to suggest that a diet excessive in muscle meat could cause a rise in plasma homocysteine.

Homocysteine is used as an index of the susceptibility to disease. The great news is that if we eat enough glycine (found in offal and connective tissue) and get the ratio’s in better balance, this risk negates.3

This is why foxes who get into your chicken shed only take the heads – they have got what they came for – the vital bit that has all the nourishment – they will only take the muscle meat if they are starving!

The other issue with eating muscle meat is that when amino acids, sugars, and creatine react to high temperatures harmful compounds called Heterocyclic Amines (HAs) can form. If you allow charring to occur when cooking your meat from flaring flames or dripping juices then another harmful compound Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) is created. PAHs can result in DNA mutations after being metabolised by specific enzymes, these have been associated with cancer in animal studies. Muscle meat is mostly cooked at high temperature – grilling, frying, and roasting so this issue is more common in this type of meat eating.⁴

Joints and cuts of meat with a lot of connective tissues tend to require long slow cooking at a lower temperature; this allows the fats and tendons to melt down into a delicious sticky gravy. Happily this way of cooking is not associated with the harmful compounds PAHs and AHs.

So you see throughout the development of man we have adapted to eating the whole animal carcass and our bodies don’t do well when we cherry pick the steak!

We want to support farmers who grow food this way and encourage people to demand it. But at the moment 100% grass-fed meat animals reared on regenerating soils are very scarce. Only approximately 50 farms in the UK are rearing to this grain free ‘Pasture for Life’ standard; we need to make sure we utilise every bit of these precious carcasses.

We can help here by buying the ‘cheaper’ cuts of grain free 100% grass fed animals and expanding our horizons beyond the need for fillet, sirloin and rump steak. Some of these farms have small farm shops or sell meat by mail order, you can find these here. Many of the pasture farms are in remote locations or don’t have farm shops. It is not a good idea to transport live animals for hundreds of miles to reach the abattoirs of the small number of meat businesses already selling ‘pasture for life’ produce, so these animals often ‘dissapear’ into the food chain unmarked.

This could actually make me cry!

If we want to be in control of what we eat for the good of our health and environment we need to vote without pound and stop being led by convenience. And anyway what is more convenient than having a freezer stocked up with nutritious meat for every occasion?

By being more conscious about the process of meat eating from the field to our fork, we can get a sense of responsibility for what we demand and the processes involved in getting it. A better awareness will hopefully make the food we eat more valuable and appreciated so less will ultimately end up in the bin.

References

Marsh, E. (2013, Sep). Ten food waste facts to make you stop and think. In Love Food Hate Waste. Retrieved from http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com/blog/2013/09/ten-food-waste-facts-make-you-stop-and-think
Kresser, C. (2013, Aug). How to eat more organ meats. In Chris Kresser. Retrieved from http://chriskresser.com/how-to-eat-more-organ-meats/
Garler, P. J. (2006, Jun). Toxicity of Methionine in Humans. In Journal of Nutrition Vol. 136 no. 6 1722S-1725S. Retrieved from http://jn.nutrition.org/content/136/6/1722S.full.pdf+html
Minger, D. (2013, March). Denise Minger Meet Your Meat: An Objective at a Controversial Food. In YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaEBMoHFrQA

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Part 1: Carbon and The Carbon Soil Sponge

How do we Help the Earth Breathe More Deeply

Are Cows Causing Climate Change?

How the Earth Breathes Deeply

Living Soils

The Soil Carbon Sponge

Mobile bio-digesters

To Conclude

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The many health benefits of grass-fed meat.

Powered by plants.

Wild food wins.

Foraging phytonutrients for you.

P – Pasture for life.

R – Regenerating soils.

I – Improving ecosystem processes.

M – Mature Meat.

A – Animal Health.

L – Living Naturally.

‘Our immune system is not our bodies only line of defence.’

A solution to the misrepresentations of CO2-equivalent emissions of short-lived climate pollutants under ambitious mitigation

Introduction

Context

2.1 Carbon

2.2. Methane

Regenerative agriculture and the protection of our natural habitats are the most effective way of achieving this while also producing nutrient dense food for a growing population.

2.3. Water vapour.

2.4. Nitrous Oxide

3.0. Response and mitigation.

Suggested alternative actions to a meat tax that would address the root cause of the climate change problem;

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A solution to the misrepresentations of CO₂-equivalent emissions of short-lived climate pollutants under ambitious mitigation