Reversing global warming with livestock?: Seth Itzkan at TEDxSomerville
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- Опубліковано 23 тра 2012
- Global warming may be mitigated by the most unlikely of sources, cattle. How is this possible? How can this vilified creature be an ally in the fight against climate change? Seth Itzkan shows us how.
Seth is President of Planet-TECH Associates, a consultancy that investigates innovations for a regenerative future. He has consulted on trends and innovations for The Boston Foundation, The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, and The US Census Bureau. Seth is a graduate of Tufts University College of Engineering and the University of Houston-Clear Lake Masters Program in Studies of Future. He works in Somerville, and recently spent six weeks at the Africa Center for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe. - Наука та технологія
Great talk.
This is in no way a new form of livestock management. This is the heritage form of livestock management that has been practiced for thousands of years. The feeding of grain to herbivores only began with the industrial revolution and was only the industry standard after WWII.
thanks for making that clear! We need to take a few steps back from industrialization and do it the old-school way as it was supposed to. But keep in mind that in order to feed so many people we kind of need the industrialization of life stock and agriculture to meet the huge demand for food. As the population is growing so much faster since a couple decades, the industries have to grow with it.
We need better management. The returns from planned grazing are substantial... leading to a healthier ecosystem; including improved soil conditions; over a fairly brief period of time. The result is increased food production. These grazed lands can be used for growing various edible crops, wherever and whenever conditions are most favourable.
Grassfed cows provide also for healthier and tastier meat then grainfed cows. In a way they can't properly digest grains and therefor become sick and pass this on to us. So overall this method is best for the soil, the cattle and in the end for us. Loved the TEDX talk by Allan Savory too.
You misunderstood him, livestock is not the problem. Human mismanagement of livestock is the problem. The world did pretty well until we starting working against mother nature. How would you grow all your vegetables when your soil is depleted because you have removed livestock from the cycle?
Attend a holistic management grazing school if you need to see proof and statistics.
Hi. Great to see discussion about the role of fire. Also vital and not properly appreciated. Unfortunately, fire tends to dominate the discussion where, of course, it needs to also be paired with rumination. They are part of the whole, but you almost never hear about the role of ruminants in the evolution of grasslands, you only hear about fire, so we need the proper balance. It's not one or the other.
The massive growth AND how we've lived. This video shows how we could actually IMPROVE the air, soil, water, and plant and animal life in an area with proper care. There are still inherent problems with a huge population, certainly a constantly growing one, but we could be having some net positive impacts on global warming.
It only took me 4 years to see you comment Eli, but that's for making it. ;-)
And that understanding is incomplete. Regardless of the number of animals you have, fire has some benefits that grazing alone cannot offer. Tree control, solar heating of blackened ground, and there are even chemicals in smoke that germinate new seeds. Fire and grazing are a paired party of the historic system; removing one or the other is an error in a grassland landscape. Both are necessary for grasslands to truly thrive.
actually I think most of those would be replaced with a properly managed grazing system. Tree control via the trampling that's so much a part of this system (the mammoth step was tree free due to this system until the mammoths died out).
Solar heating I assume would be addressed by the mulch that the trampling creates.
Most seeds that germinate due to fire are really just needing scarifying & being processed through a cow's gut will do this, not all, some may need fire as well, I'm not sure. It would be interesting to study actually. I know most propagators don't bother with smoke chemicals because it only marginally increases germination, they use PGR's like GA3 instead, which is naturally occurring & may even be present in the crushed folliage in this system or the bacteria in the animal guts. The heat part of fire is definitely very easily replaced by damaging the seed shell as would be occurring naturally in this system.
In saying all that, this system's designed to fix problems humans have caused by tampering with nature, so obviously it would be wrong to assume we can just tamper with nature & remove fire & not have any consequences from it
I would just like to point out that the assumption in this video that pre-European North America was some kind of natural utopia untouched by human hands is false. Native Americans all over North America were using many methods of environmental management for centuries before Europeans arrived. The Native Americans in the central part of what is now the U.S. deliberately used fire to push back forestation and increase grassland, in order to manage the prey animals they depended on for food. Likewise, Native Americans in forestlands used fire to burn off undergrowth and to make room for deliberately planted fruit and nut trees. Even in the Amazon, archaeologists have found evidence of tree agriculture and deliberate environmental management being practiced by multiple cultures in the region over the millenia before European arrival.
They didn't plow or use fences which the Europeans did. That is when the destruction of the land began.
And when they did this, California didn't burn to the ground every few years...
Hi Multi, Thanks for your reply and being civil. This conversation we're having runs at the heart of the problem and the misunderstanding. It isn't the cattle that are the problem - it's their management in unnatural feedlots. They should be on the land eating grass and fertilizing the soil. The CO2 number you talk about refers to the damage caused by the cattle INDUSTRY - which we all agree is terrible and must stop. But the livestock need to be on the land, like the buffalo were. Got it?
It is in fact far superior. ... full balance of nutrients (not just nitrogen for instance), it is free, it is spread automatically, it helps with water retention, and it adds to the microbial community within the soil.
And, lamb is one of the healthiest meals you can eat provided it is not over cooked :))
AMEN Seth
Animals (live stock aren't the problem), just 200 years ago there was a wild bison herd in america almost as large as today's current cattle herd in america. so the amount of livestock isn't the problem, it's how they are utilised. factory farming is terrible but it's actually grain agriculture that is destroying this world's land/climate etc.
Partially true, indeed, the number of cows always have been pretty high, but it's now quadrupled worldwide
Thank you for your response. Fire ecology does indeed provide some elements unavailable with grazing alone.
excellent talk
For more info and to download slides from this talk, please visit
Planet-TECH Associates.
To learn more about Holistic Management and the Center in Zimbabwe, please visit
Savory Institute and the Africa Center for Holistic Management
grain agriculture (economically speaking), may be the single worst thing humanity has ever done. i say economically as obviously nuclear weapons etc. are terrible but that's another converation
I agree with some of what was stated here, mostly that grazing is vital to grassland landscapes, but you are missing a key piece: fire. These grasslands were shaped with grazing AND fire and to leave out one of those pieces is just flat wrong. Patch burn grazing, a system from Oklahoma State University, espouses burn driven grazing and is a better all around model for landscape health, diversity, and wildlife. Wild herds followed burns to utilize fresh green grazing and now cattle do too.
Provided you recognize fire was unusual not a regular event. Artificialy (by man) fire the grass too often, then there will not be enough litter and the carbon literaly is gone in puffs of smoke.
👏👏 See also Allan Savory ✊👍
So more grasslands equals coller earth
2nd misunderstanding: vegan is the answer. No, although it can be part of the solution because it helps counter the terrible effects of the cattle industry. However, just killing the (grain fed) cattle industry as we know it and going vegan won't replenish the degraded grasslands. The only way to restore those lands is by recreating the herd ruminant impact it evolved with - either with natural herds (and predators), or livestock manged as a proxy for the wild herds - moving and no overgrazing.
Is this Show on Television??
it jolly well should be !
100000 thumbs if i could give it.
Interesting points, I really enjoyed how cows can regenerate arid environments. However, he ignored how cows are mostly impacting the environment from their methane. Methane is a 30x stronger greenhouse gas emission than CO2. It seems like so far the only option to mitigate this would be to add red algae or other substances to their diets.
Edwin Dean White Oak Pastures has shown that holistically grazed livestock can sequester more carbon than the cattle emit. Their beef in an independent audit was shown to be carbon negative.
there is more methane in the atmosphere from natural sources, for example, wetlands, peat bogs, rice, all other living things producing flaluants including you, horses etc... Methane also evaporates after a few years, and therefore, posses less of a problem.
Only in the corporate farms does this problem occur. Corporate farming is unhealthy for the people eating it and the earth. The only way we can save this planet is by realizing that “Big Farm” has to go.
Healthy grasslands... yes we want that, and paddocks full of grain fed cattle don't help that. Can grasslands sequester carbon at sufficient rate that will reverse global warming? I really doubt it.
Hand-wavy "lots of grass roots" doesn't quantify. The premise needs support from examples of well-managed grasslands growing over deep piles of carbon-going-nowhere. Something more like the tundra, or peat bogs.
The fossil carbon our industrialisation consumes was similarly sequestered in very wet environments.
So where have you attempted to even answer the primary question? Does livestock reverse global warming? It would be nice if you had at least attempted to answer this question but you don't even touch it. You make two points at the end, takeaways if you will at 7:23, but go no further. This is where you should have focused your talk on with data and peer reviews articles, if it exists, that livestock can reverse global warming. We know that this is not the case. Does the CO2 trapping and absorption from vegetation offset the amount of methane produced from cattle?
The issue is not whether certain methods of grazing on semi-desertified land can form part of an animal agricultural system for the future, but the idea that holistic management on will help reduce global warming on a global scale. It seems like a fantasy of agri-business. Can this method reduce global warming while satisfying the current demand for beef?
exactly my doubt
its just mimicking nature buddy.
Not looking to hate, just give some perspective. Do you think it's really a valid point to say that this is a good idea because it's the natural way, when the whole planet arround it has changed?
Excellent points.
Methane degrades within 10 years of being in the atmosphere. It’s not a long term concern.
We don't live in some utopia where all the world's demand for beef can be met by free-range cattle, there's simply not enough land for it. Demand is set to double (as so many other things are) and the only way to meet that demand is through more factory farming and more deforestation to clear land for more cattle ranching (both extremely detrimental). How then are cattle going to be an 'ally in the fight against global warming'? Because a fraction of cattle ranching can be done in a theoretically sustainable way? Meanwhile the skyrocketing demand is being met by more and more grain-fed cattle and forests are disappearing faster than ever? Right.
actually there's a tonne of land in the world that's desertifying due to animals being removed that can be restored with this system & there's also a tonne of land on this planet that has been so badly damaged by inappropriate attempts at crops that what was good grazing land is now barely able to do anything.
There's HUGE amounts of semi-arid & marginal land on the planet that's not currently being used effectively for any purpose that can be drafted into this use, WAY more than enough to feed people all the meat they want! 70% of the entire continent of Australia is unsuitable for anything but animals, Africa's not much different. Add to that, this is the most effective carbon sink possible with vegetation, leaving forests for dead! So all those "carbon credit" trees being planted & using space can also be turned into this. (I agree this video's really bad at attempting to explain it, check out one with Tony Lovell if you want to see the figures that explain exactly how this does reverse climate change)
There's ample land, however if you look at phosphate supplies it's a different story, because with the current rate of use, they will run out in less than 50 years, at which point there's going to be a huge drop in productivity for all crops, whether for animal or human food! This system needs NO phosphate fertiliser added!
Thank you Lilac Lizard. You get it. Please write me.
Doing it correctly is actually more profitable, it just requires more labor. Big ag only exists because the government subsidizes it. The world does not need the amount of beef it is asking for. The actual cost of this cheap destructive beef is being artificially hidden from the people. People will pay more for less if they have to, which they will eventually. You're talking about demand like it's not connected to price and subsidies. The demand is growing artificially.
This is the coolest stuff around !! and its similar to Alan Savory stuff. Use considered grazing on annual and multi annual basis' to get what mother nature has in store for us. Thank you Thank you so much. we are all indebted to your intelligent presentation. ( just because it may not be "good" for the current interests that have come about over the last couple of generations of peoples business interactions does not mean that mother nature should be forever shut out of our way of doing things. zing. )
oh yes it can. and added bonus: at the same time keeping money in your pocket.
Homeboy gets to the Buffalo genocide at 6 minutes and helps us all understand how horrible it is that this is the end of the Buffalo, the other prairie animals, and the beginning of desertification with NO mention of the end of Indian people, rights, and access to their ancestral homelands and foods. NEVER CHOOSE SYMPATHY FOR THE ECOSYSTEMS WITHOUT MENTIONING THAT THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE, WHO KNOW HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT CREATING THESE PROBLEMS, HAVE BEEN WIPED OUT BY WHITE COLONIZATION AND ALL ITS RELATED UNSUSTANINABLE SYSTEMS. Total fail when you don't get how important and central THAT reality is in global ruination.
You are absolutely right about the genocide of the native people. But there is a place and time for everything. Seth is not what you trying to portray him.
@@xas22 , I am not trying to portray him in any way. He is portraying himself and he, and SEVERAL other white environmentalists, ignore and de-center land based Indigenous people all over the world when they should be centering them and supporting them - FROM BEHIND.
The myth of the Noble Savage strikes again.
Remember how the Easter Island culture died out after it cut down all the trees on Easter Island? Or the Anasazi and Mississippi Mound-Builder civilizations collapsing because of overpopulation? Or the Classical Mayan culture declining because of environmental degradation?
Anyone who knows the meaning of those names understands that natives living "in harmony with nature" was a Colonialist narrative invention.
@@strategicgamingwithaacorns2874 You never watched the video lol. Seth clearly stated that ecological degradation started as soon as the first human came to the stage.
@@xas22 My addressee obviously didn't listen to that part of the video.
Hi Multimotola44,
I'm not sure if you'll see this reply, but your comment illustrates a deep seeded misunderstanding that my lectures hopes to help correct. Going vegan won't return the grasslands. They need the ruminant impact they evolved with. That's the point. This solution isn't obscure, in fact, it's just replicating the natural system. Without animal impact in the way nature intended, grasslands become desert and global warming increases. End of story. Going vegan isn't a solution.
the solution humans should be less
And!.....Cows are tasty!
the more you produce live thing it will produce more co2
The more plants will grow
Are you financed by the livestock industry?
Corporate grain-fed beef is as much opponent of holistic management as ecologically-illiterate vegans are.
Ridiculous nonsense.
Excellent response. Perhaps it was too smart for you to understand.
Please, spare us the suspense, and enlighten us all on you expert opinion all about how this talk is as you claim, "ridiculous nonsense." Should we dig out the Vegan Arguments 101 manual for you to help you out? :) Or maybe you need someone the likes of Joey Carbstrong to come hold your hand as you work up the courage to attempt to say anything more intelligent than you were capable of here?