Journalist and author Judith D. Schwartz discusses how cows play a crucial role in cultivating healthy soil, emphasizing the diversity and richness of the soil they enrich. She highlights the minerals found in the soil that are essential for human health. The podcast explores the positive impact of ruminant animals in shaping landscapes and restoring ecosystems, as well as the importance of regenerative farming practices and healthy soil in sustainable agriculture. The interconnectedness of resources and the invitation to support the foundation are also mentioned.
Healthy soil teems with micro and macro diversity, such as earthworms and other wildlife, which provide essential minerals for human health.
Animals, including cattle and other ruminants, play an active role in shaping landscapes and contribute to vegetation growth, soil building, and seed germination through their grazing and movement patterns.
Deep dives
The Importance of Healthy Soil and Biodiversity
In this podcast episode, Judith Schwartz emphasizes the importance of healthy soil and biodiversity. She explains that healthy soil teems with micro and macro diversity, such as earthworms and other wildlife. Schwartz highlights that the minerals we seek for our health are found in the soil, and she connects the health of the earth's body to our own bodies. She also emphasizes that animals, including cattle and other ruminants, play a crucial role in changing and improving the soil.
Cows and Wildlife as Landscape Creators
Judith Schwartz explores how animals, including cows and their wild counterparts, contribute to shaping landscapes. She points out that wildlife, such as buffalo and antelope, have historically created grasslands and savannas, while forests are shaped by other forms of wildlife. Schwartz explains how these animals influence vegetation growth, soil building, seed germination, and ecological processes through their grazing and movement patterns. She challenges the conventional perception of animals as passive objects in the landscape, highlighting their active role in ecosystem creation.
The Negative Impact of Confining Animals
The negative impacts of confining animals are discussed in this episode. Judith Schwartz explains how confining animals, including livestock, turns what could be resources into pollutants. When animals are not allowed to roam and interact with the land, their waste becomes a problem rather than a valuable contribution to the soil. The confinement reduces the positive ecological and soil-building effects that animals can have. Schwartz suggests that blaming cattle for climate change is a result of our collective disconnection from the land and emphasizes the importance of observing and understanding the impact of animals on landscapes.
The Role of Animal Impact in Land Management
Judith Schwartz describes the role of animal impact, specifically through grazing and movement, in land management. Animal impact, facilitated by their response to predators, leads to trampling, seed dispersal, nutrient cycling, and imprinting on the landscape. Schwartz explains that these actions kickstart various ecological processes and help maintain healthy landscapes. She challenges the perception of a 'tame' landscape and highlights the importance of action and disturbance in natural systems. The episode emphasizes the significance of balancing biological and biochemical cycling and the ecological benefits derived from well-managed animal impact.
Cows have gotten a bad rap in recent years. Their flatulence and burps have been cited as contributing to climate change. But what if that's not the case? What if, in fact, cows are actually helping save the planet?
Judith D. Schwartz is a journalist and the author of “Cows Save the Planet.” Today, she sheds light on how much we need for cows for healthy soil. She describes the diversity of such soil (that the cows enrich) in detail, highlighting the soil's micro and macro diversity (including "mega fauna" such as earthworms)! She reminds us that the very minerals we seek for our children (often in the form of multivitamins) are found in the soil. Judith points out the critical role cattle play in cultivating such richness and how it benefits the world both today and tomorrow.