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Pasture-For-Life beef
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<blockquote data-quote="The Ruminant" data-source="post: 7330327" data-attributes="member: 487"><p>This is a common mistake made by many.</p><p></p><p>When considering carbon, you need to start off by asking where the carbon comes from. If you have an animal grazing unfertilised grass for 365 days a year then every single molecule of carbon that cow emits comes from the forage it eats and the forage gets every single molecule of carbon from the air, as it photosynthesises. The carbon just goes round and round (and is called the carbon cycle).</p><p></p><p>Add in some fertiliser and you’re increasing the carbon footprint - “new” carbon (gas, oil etc) will have been burnt to manufacture the fertiliser, to transport it and and to spread it on the fields too.</p><p></p><p>Add in grain and it gets worse. Cultivations, drilling, fertiliser, spraying, harvest, transport, manufacture, feeding etc all have a fossil fuel-derived carbon footprint.</p><p></p><p>Likewise housed cattle: straw baling and transport, bedding up, mucking out, spreading muck, all bad for the environment from a carbon emissions point of view.</p><p></p><p>The ideal way to keep cattle, if your land and management skills are up to it, it to graze them outside for as many days as possible through the year. Pasture For Life standards don’t specify this, but they have a lot of members who are pushing the envelope for keeping cattle outside all year round (I’ve two groups outside at the moment, including 3 cows with calves that were born outside last February and haven’t seen a shed or had anything other than grazed forage for their whole lives.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Ruminant, post: 7330327, member: 487"] This is a common mistake made by many. When considering carbon, you need to start off by asking where the carbon comes from. If you have an animal grazing unfertilised grass for 365 days a year then every single molecule of carbon that cow emits comes from the forage it eats and the forage gets every single molecule of carbon from the air, as it photosynthesises. The carbon just goes round and round (and is called the carbon cycle). Add in some fertiliser and you’re increasing the carbon footprint - “new” carbon (gas, oil etc) will have been burnt to manufacture the fertiliser, to transport it and and to spread it on the fields too. Add in grain and it gets worse. Cultivations, drilling, fertiliser, spraying, harvest, transport, manufacture, feeding etc all have a fossil fuel-derived carbon footprint. Likewise housed cattle: straw baling and transport, bedding up, mucking out, spreading muck, all bad for the environment from a carbon emissions point of view. The ideal way to keep cattle, if your land and management skills are up to it, it to graze them outside for as many days as possible through the year. Pasture For Life standards don’t specify this, but they have a lot of members who are pushing the envelope for keeping cattle outside all year round (I’ve two groups outside at the moment, including 3 cows with calves that were born outside last February and haven’t seen a shed or had anything other than grazed forage for their whole lives.) [/QUOTE]
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