Regenerative Farming And Carbon Negative Beef | Will Harris | Escaped Sapiens #75

In this conversation I speak with Will Harris, who is a fourth generation cattle farmer. Will originally ran a standard industrial farm, but increasingly became dissatisfied by the welfare of his animals. That started a journey to change the way his farm ran, and over the years he has converted his operation piece by piece into a regenerative farm. That means no more grain feed, no more confined feed lots, no more hormones, no more pesticides. The basic idea is to focus on improving the land in order to leave it better each year. Will has come up with a system that is not only better for the cattle and the consumer, but which also appears to be significantly better for the environment.

Its quite common to hear about the environmental problems caused by Beef production, including chemical runoff, loss of top soils, and methane from belches. But these problems are usually associated with intensive farming, where cattle are densely packed, and fed on grain. What does the story look like for regenerative practices? The claim is that when cattle are optimally rotated through paddocks,  their impact on the land is dispersed, and it reduces the need for pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and other pharmaceuticals (both in feed production, and within the herd itself). Solar energy goes into growing the grass, which captures carbon as it grows. Carbon is then processed by the herd on the field, and without wormer, and insecticides and other chemicals being used, a living soil is able to develop, which increases in carbon content over the years, drawing down carbon and fixing it in the soil. But what about methane production? Methanotrophs that metabolize methane are also found within healthy soils - and it might be the case that these species account for the methane produced by cattle.

Third party assessments appear to show that White Oak Pastures does significantly better than conventional intensive farming,  and within the margin of error of the study, there is a potential that the beef production is climate positive, storing more carbon in the soil than the pasture-raised cows emit during their lifetime: https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/blog/carbon-negative-grassfed-beef

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These conversations are supported by the Andrea von Braun foundation (http://www.avbstiftung.de/), as an exploration of the rich, exciting, connected, scientifically literate, and (most importantly) sustainable future of humanity. The Andrea von Braun Foundation has provided me with full creative freedom with their support. As such, the views expressed in these episodes are my own and/or those of my guests.