Understating the Power of Grazing

When it comes to the politics of food and climate change, headlines rarely offer nuance. We’ve heard that raising cattle produces methane and carbon dioxide, how meat is murder, and that we all have to go vegan. We’ve even seen fake meat companies cut out the livestock step & direct market highly processed corn and soy derived alternative proteins to consumers - all with the same negative aspects: burning diesel fuel, land degradation, & pesticide use. At home, many of these same aspects - like high fuel and fertilizer costs - burden producers. Many producers bear the extra weight alone.

But what if there was another way to view raising livestock? A way that acknowledged what ranchers all across the country intuitively recognize. Without grazing animals, grasslands don’t work to their full potential. Without the stockman, the herd goes untended and the land unfulfilled. 

Graziers Key Role in History Can’t be Ignored

Cattle and other grazing animals in grasslands ecology can be what’s called a keystone species. Across vast grasslands that already store gigatons of carbon, well managed herds of cattle can be used to jump-start biodiversity.

Where producers develop managed, holistic, and other regenerative grazing strategies graziers are able to deliberately cultivate a diverse set of grasses, legumes, and other plants on vast land areas. By rebuilding functional biodiversity, water storage and capture, and tempering the lashes of extreme weather, ecology advances. Grass locks in extreme weather’s free energy in living plant materials. We can’t simply pick and choose which parts of nature are good and bad without considering their interactions - and for the grass to grow, grazing animals embedded in diverse landscapes are key.  

Unlock the secrets of sustainable ranching: Learn from Matt Ricketts about mastering grazing practices, forage management, and boosting animal health for a thriving ranch.

Indeed, grasslands contain the potential to sequester all of the annual emissions of the entire Fortune 500 (circa 2018, totalling ~13 gigatons).

So, climate problem solved?! 

Well, not so fast. Ranching to achieve these carbon drawdowns is a work in progress. It doesn’t resembling the confined animal feeding operations that comprise the majority of animal protein produced today. 

Part of how we get there is related to new markets that pay livestock producers to work closer to natural cycles with managed grazing. These carbon and biodiversity incentives attempt to pair food production with ecological restoration. Getting producers to adopt these practices is constrained by low labor availability and the high expense of moving cattle around to jump start regeneration - problems that Kateri helps solve. 

At Kateri, we team producers up with expert ranch advisors like Jim Gerrish, Alejandro Carillo, Vern Smith, and Matt Ricketts to consider the full ecology of grasslands and graziers: pastures, watering holes, animal numbers & weight, and operational rotations through the landscape. We work together to develop a plan and invest in technology like virtual fencing to help mimic natural cycles on grasslands that lead to regeneration and SOC increases. Using this technology, we can track animal movements to verify cause and effect as grassland function is restored. We also provide new tools that track natural capital as it is produced on ranches. 

Virtual fencing in particular reinvigorates managed grazing. It helps producers tune in the two things that matter most - how long a quantity of animals graze a specific area and how long to wait until they return. Kateri’s role is to support the development of these managed, regenerative grazing programs and then issue soil carbon payments to participating producers. 

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Combined, grasslands ecology combined with keystone graziers facilitate the drawdown of soil organic carbon. But not only cattle can work in this way to regenerate the landscape. Pairing other animals - like bison, goats, sheep, or poultry, and pasture broadly allows for more stable soils that temper weather extremes and sequester carbon.  We also know that pasture holds soil in place better than cropland. Consider that soil stability index averaged 0.64 and 0.91 mm mm−1 under cropland vs pasture, respectively, suggesting that pastures had a more stable soil surface that was resistant to erosion and allowed for more complete & rapid water infiltration (a good thing) . Analyses in 2008 demonstrated that silt & clay soils from pastures under planned grazing exhibited 25% higher levels of soil carbon than pastures with traditional set stocking practices, thus making soils able to hold millions of additional gallons of water. Soil organic carbon levels have also been found to be more than 37% higher in pasture than cropland in similar sites (North Carolina 2024).

Scientifically, here’s how it works. solar energy is captured by plants and converted into carbon in plant cells - i.e the grass grows. Because of a high carbon to nitrogen ratio in the grass, it decomposes slow enough to aggregate, creating soil.  Nitrogen, heat, and moisture speed decomposition building a thick  skin for biological hierarchies to emerge, adapt, and flourish. The sheath of grass holds soil moisture: the most important indicator of net primary productivity. Where we can sustain increases in net primary productivity we can begin to harness natural capital. More corn and soy - the basis for CAFO’s and many alternative proteins - won’t help build the healthy soil we need to weather the storm. 

Since grasslands cover more than 40% of the ice free terrestrial surface - and their exposure to short term droughts is acute - they are, in many ways, the front line for natural climate solutions where low cost intervention can have an outsize impact.  

Photo Credit, Antelope graze the intersection of the earth and sky in the Okavango Delta/. Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC-BY-SA

Grasslands abound around the world and serve different roles - some are deliberately grazed, while others are grazed as wildlife preserves. Preserves have worked to maintain the ecological function of grazed land via wild graziers in places like the Okavango Delta or Yellowstone National park. Australia has led the globe in formalizing carbon markets but regenerative cattle management was a feature there before that and helped undue ecological decline from traditional cropping systems in the dry continent down under. 

All grasslands are critical to advancing natural climate solutions. Graziers and other animals harvest, mow, stimulate, spread, and refurbish them. They are Ecological Intelligence (EI) in action. They are the great movers and shakers of the soil - some bearing special stomachs and  behavioral preferences that combine with myriad other life to create the world’s grasslands capital surplus. 

Where managed grazing leads to regeneration, other economic benefits of grazing for ranchers and communities begin to emerge. Stackers income opportunities from  hunting, higher net productivity, and other benefits abound. Water gets cleaner, and fish in adjacent streams are more abundant with reduced erosion. Practical natural capital starts to compound. Think of cattle as the combine for “harvesting” the value from this enhanced forage growth and upcycling it, or the grazing wildlife as the keepers of the preserve. 

The current ecological state of global grasslands is near breakeven. Interestingly, across all grasslands, net radiative forcing: i.e how much climate impact is absorbed by life in the landscape is close to neutral, while grazed areas have degraded very slowly since the 1960s. Part of the reason for this decline lies in reduced soil health from an inadvertent disinvestment from the soil food web. Misunderstanding graziers' keystone role in facilitating soil aggregation, and operational methods that ignored it became too commonplace.

Plant roots feed soil’s microbiology. Soil is like a digestive system for the earth’s vegetation, animal waste, and their carcasses. Healthy soil can intake what’s left - and like your digestive system needs to have the right inputs. The role of microbial communities in the formation and decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM) can’t be underestimated and requires a symbiotic function from grazing animals for ideal performance in grasslands. Further interruptions to the soil food web, like synthetic fertilizer application, overstocking, and pesticide can undermine soil’s microbiological communities.

Since soil organic carbon (SOC) is a large, dynamic reservoir composed of a complex mixture of plant and microbe derived compounds it can be tricky to measure.  Hidden carbon pools that may not be easy to inventory with traditional methods.  Technology is being strengthened for the purposes of assessment, including here at Kateri. 

Diagram Credit Vern Smith and Dr. Elaine Ingram at Kateri’s Livingston Workshop 

One thing is for sure. The complex interactions among climate, soil types, and management practices on grasslands can add up to serious climate impacts.

Investing in technology and practical implementation of regenerative grazing secures a sustainable future for land stewards.

Join us today in helping to generate carbon offsets from the world's grasslands.