Is it the Cow or is it the How?

Cattle and the climate

The food system is an underappreciated source of our climate woes. Popular attention is taken up by the fossil fuel industry and the plight of transitioning away from coal and cars towards solar and subways. Emissions from fertilizer off-gassing or rice paddy methane production are all too often pushed to the sidelines of climate work.

The major exception to this is cattle. Emissions from cattle-sourced methane, an inevitable consequence of how their ruminant digestive system functions, are a well-known consequence of beef and dairy consumption. Many vegetarians cite these issues as the source of their dietary proclivities, and for me, it’s a major motivator for my reducitarian diet.

But this conventional wisdom is increasingly being challenged by producers, researchers, and others who say that cattle themselves are not to blame for their methane-laced burps. Instead, it’s how they are raised. This ‘is it the cow or is it the how’ debate has peppered most discussions surrounding food system emissions reduction. Gaining some clarity on this issue is essential for understanding the possible futures for ruminants on our warming world.

Bovine apologetics

Anytime the greenhouse gas emissions of ruminants are called into question, one of the first lines of questioning focuses on the physical differences between methane and carbon dioxide. Methane, while causing 80 times the immediate warming as equivalent volumes of carbon, decomposes far more quickly in the atmosphere. Despite the intense warming it causes, some argue that methane’s relatively short residence time caps its potential for ecological harm.

Because of these differences in duration, various metrics have been developed to translate the warming caused by methane into carbon equivalents, with this basket of formulas being termed ‘Global Warming Potentials (GWPs).’ GWP can be expressed on assorted timescales, with GWP100 documenting the warming caused by a gas over a 100-year time frame, and is the current standard used by climate governance bodies. Over the 100-year time span, levels of warming associated with methane drop to around 28 times that of carbon (IPCC, 2021). While less damaging than 80, the gas and its ruminant emitters are still implicated as a serious threat to temperature stability using this metric.

In recent years, however, a new methodology has emerged that seeks to further correct how the physical attributes of methane impact its atmospheric effects. GWP* (pronounced GWP Star) takes the same inputs but adjusts the accounting. GWP100 treats newly emitted methane as a new batch of gas, whereas GWP* instead measures the total volume of methane in the atmosphere, only reporting changes in warming or cooling when the size of that pool changes (Cusworth et al., 2023). Thus, GWP* functionally attributes warming to cattle only if the size of global herds grows. Since methane decomposes so quickly, this is claimed to be a more accurate way to understand cattle’s emissions profile

The issue that GWP* enables is that, by focusing on fluctuations, the metric grandfathers in past methane emissions. Even though cattle methane emissions are presently flat, the pool of atmospheric methane has grown significantly due to herd expansions during the 20th century. Just because methane doesn’t accumulate like CO2, the artificially high levels maintained by ruminant herds still lock in a degree of warming. In fact, because methane degrades so quickly, cattle production is one of the only sectors where immediate suspension of activity would have immediate drops in temperatures. But since GWP* centers fluctuations, historic methane emissions aren’t emphasized by how the metric presents data, redirecting focus away from total amounts of warming by centering relative changes. But the sector still needs to be held accountable for these historic increases in methane, even if bovine-caused warming is presently plateauing.

Another common argument holds that new technologies could diminish methane production in cattle stomachs. Feed additives that inhibit methane production, like 3-NOP or Bromoform (a red seaweed derivative), can reduce methane production from anywhere between 30 to 90% (Hegde, 2025). However, there are trade-offs with these technologies. 3-NOP is expensive and uneconomical without subsidies, and its effectiveness diminishes in animals that are heavily grazed or during some lactation stages, precluding its use on a large segment of animal herds. Bromoform, meanwhile, can build up in milk and meat, which isn’t good, as the compound is a probable carcinogen. New inhibitors may come along that are more cost-effective and safer, and we should absolutely pursue that research. But current technologies are nowhere near commercial viability, and policy should not rest upon their potential.

So at present, from both an accounting and technological perspective, methane emissions can’t be handwaved away. It’s an issue of serious concern that the industry must contend with head-on. But that doesn’t mean we have to completely forgo beef and dairy production. Perhaps there’s an ecological solution to preserve our cheeseburgers and save the planet in the process.

Can we reverse cattle’s carbon hoofprint?

Much ink has been spilled positioning cattle, not as a climate problem, but as a solution. The root of this idea is in the evolutionary history between grass and grazers, which co-evolved over millions of years to the point that grazing activity stimulates plant growth, which, the thinking goes, results in grass cycling more carbon into the soil. Additionally, it’s thought that intensive animal activity over a short period of time breaks up the ground and incorporates manure and plant litter into the Earth, invigorating microbial communities and sequestering more carbon. Alan Savory, one of the popularizers of this idea, claimed in his 2013 TED Talk that applying his methods of ‘Holistic Management’ on half the world’s grasslands “can take us back to preindustrial levels” of atmospheric carbon (Savory, 2013).

Now, Savory’s methods are a bit overstated. Estimates of maximal grassland sequestration rates are about 8 times less than what they would need to be to put a dent in industrial emissions (Briske et al., 2013), thanks to arid conditions limiting plant growth and existing upper limits on how much carbon soils can actually store. So, as a silver bullet solution to climate change, ruminant-based land regeneration at its best plays a mild role. But it’s theoretically possible for well-managed sequestration to balance out ruminant methane emissions. So, what does the evidence tell us?

There is a modest body of literature showing that net-zero or carbon sink situations can be achieved in ruminant grazing systems. One study of a rotational grazing system in the Midwest (which used GWP 100 to calculate CO2 equivalents) found that during the finishing stages of cattle production, rates of soil carbon storage not only offset the total emissions from the system, but sequestered more carbon than the system emitted (Stanley et al., 2018). It’s worth noting, however, that the system required twice as much land compared to a standard feedlot setting (and would likely require much more land in drier regions). In Ontario, a similar study found that sequestration decreased emissions by 65% (though the system only reduced the carbon hoofprint; it didn’t eliminate it) (Mehre et al., 2024). Finally, a rotational system in the Southeast showed that sequestered carbon tends to accumulate in highly stable forms, likely brought about by the abundant nitrogen cattle manure provides, allowing carbon to form tight associations with soil minerals (Mosier et al., 2021).

However, on a wider scale, these best-case scenarios appear to be difficult to achieve, questioning the notion of relying on them as a strategy across wide landscapes. One analysis of 30 studies investigating the intensity of stocking rates and length of grazing (including comparing rotational and contiguous grazing) found negligible differences between these treatments in improving soil carbon rates (McDonald et al., 2023). However, the study did indicate that smaller herd sizes, along with high-turnover rotational grazing (10+paddocks), can increase carbon stored in grasslands by leaving more grass intact, allowing carbon to remain captured in plant tissue. However, rotational grazing only displayed a benefit in temperate regions with sufficient rainfall. The authors conclude by noting that, while grazing in certain contexts can improve certain carbon storage processes, there is limited evidence that these practices actually result in improved rates of long-term sequestration. Just because more carbon is entering the soil doesn’t mean it’s staying there.

Another global analysis of 64 grazing systems indicated that the introduction of ruminants, along with practicing rotational grazing1, can drive greater rates of soil carbon accumulation, but these can vary wildly by local climate and soil qualities (Byrnes et al., 2018). However, overstocking is always a risk and can be deleterious to soil carbon. In China, excluding grazers from grasslands increased rates of soil carbon accumulation in non-arid regions (though there wasn’t any delineation between grazing methods) (Xiong et al., 2016).2

Now, these studies should be taken with a grain of salt. While I’m normally inclined to use meta-analyses as gold standard lines of evidence, there are some issues with these sorts of evaluations in the context of grazing systems. They often lack standardized definitions for practices such as rotational grazing, which makes robust comparison between systems difficult (Stanley et al., 2024). In general, they try to aggregate patterns across different soil types and climates, but because of the diversity in how these practices are defined and implemented, there are limits to how much these studies can tell us about the upper limits of what’s possible. Maybe rotational grazing can sequester more carbon in more places than these studies imply, but researchers and practitioners are not rotating enough to see those benefits. It’s very difficult to elucidate a clear signal from all this variation.

It should be noted that one prominent study evaluating Latin America’s biggest beef producers found that the region’s low-density grazing practices allow it to sequester large volumes of carbon (Viglizzo et al., 2019) and could be used to offset emissions not only from cattle production, but from other sectors as well. However, a notable critique of this study holds that the paper’s authors overapplied observations from a few exceptional cases to the region as a whole, discounting variation in soil characteristics and land management practices and overstating its capacity for carbon storage (Villarino et al., 2020). Experimental evidence seems to bear this out, finding that the southern portion of this production region does not act as a carbon sink (Alvarez et al., 2021).

Furthermore, some systems that report sequestration can still fail to offset emissions from methane production, undermining any benefits created from cattle’s presence on the landscape (Meier et al., 2020). In a similar vein, Byrnes (2018) offers a tempered assessment, stating that changes to grazing practices offer “opportunities to minimize negative consequences” of beef production and stresses that more data is necessary to verify whether cattle can sequester enough carbon to meaningfully impact rates of warming. The fact is that a truly massive amount of carbon would have to be sequestered to remediate the damage from ruminant-origin methane. Depending on the region, carbon stocks need to increase anywhere between 25-2000% to offset these emissions (Wang et al., 2023).

Fundamentally, soil carbon sequestration is a very difficult thing to associate with individual practices. Soil carbon stocks are defined by a soil’s physical qualities, types of vegetation, and the region’s climate. Experimental results are all over the place, with some studies implying aggressive sequestration rates and others that are quite dour (Godde et al., 2020). And these swings are front-loaded and reversible in ways that are not controllable by ranchers. Rates of carbon sequestration hit a ceiling as soils become saturated, and drought or warming temperatures can easily release carbon that was meant to offset past beef emissions, functionally compromising the entire program of carbon-smart grazing (Godde et al., 2020; Jordon et al., 2024). Supply chain emissions add additional wrinkles that are often ignored in evaluations (Lajtha and Silva, 2022), and there are always the opportunity costs of alternative land uses or investments that could result in even more sequestration (Godde et al., 2020).

These opportunity costs are critical considerations when determining the role of cattle in our long-term land use strategies. Rewilding grasslands to their historic natural fauna, for example, might end up being better for the climate than cattle production. Wild bison, for example, emit less methane than farmed cattle herds (Kelliher and Clark, 2010), and possess more traits that improve prairie functioning than cattle, such as fur that is more amenable to seed dispersal (Rosas et al., 2008). Their longer tenure on North American grasslands makes them more amenable to driving improved ecosystem functions, and this broad superiority holds for native ruminants on other grassland habitats the world over. Cattle are often presented as evolutionarily designed to fit within grassland ecosystems, and while that is true, there are often species better suited to the biomes where cattle are not native.

Cattle grazing can be a useful tool in land restoration and improvements (Helzer, 2026), and pastoralism and similar practices can be a tool in a broader rewilding strategy while preserving traditional cultures and people groups around the world (Wagner et al., 2025). I just don’t appreciate the notion that because cattle can perform these services, they or other farmed ruminants should be the default option. Widespread, full restoration of wild and unmanaged species on grasslands should be on the table or at least treated as a benchmark.

Additionally, raising cattle on marginal land, with the argument that keeping the land in some sort of economically profitable use will prevent it from falling into more destructive uses like cropping or home development, strikes me as a cop-out. We absolutely should consider what the carbon sequestration potential looks like on a fully rewilded landscape when determining what the optimal land use should be (Carter, 2025). Yes, financial matters and program durability should be considered, but these vulnerabilities should not completely take conservation options off the table.

As an agroforester, I also wanted to touch on silvopasture, the practice of integrating trees into grazing systems. Silvopasture is the only livestock-based practice labeled as “highly recommended” by Project Drawdown, and with good reason. In pastures in wetter regions, especially those that historically had higher tree cover, such as savanna and woodlands, reintroducing trees can be a great way to lock carbon away. Much of this added storage happens in tree biomass, not in the soil itself (Orefice et al., 2025), as pasture grasses are generally able to maximize potential carbon storage in the soil pools that trees have access to. Overall, while silvopasture helps drive further emissions reductions, with the added benefit of reducing herd sizes in some locations as a result of shade-induced reductions in forage production, it likely does not fully offset methane emissions (Badzmierowski et al., 2026).

In the end, grazing is provably involved in various processes that can drive carbon into the soil. Grazing often boosts plant biomass, resulting in more carbon being captured from the atmosphere and moved into grassland ecosystems. Slower rates of plant decomposition can also reduce carbon loss. And the nutrients cattle introduce coalesce to speed up belowground processes that create organic matter (Stanley et al., 2024). These relationships are indisputable. But how timing, frequency, and duration of grazing impact the volume and tempo of these processes across diverse landscapes is largely unknown. And translating these relationships into a consistent framework that can measure and predict rates of durable carbon sequestration across large regions is simply impossible, given the available data. Ideally, one day we will have a land management framework that considers the complex interactions between ruminants, plants, and soils, allowing us to reliably manage cattle in the lowest carbon way possible, and this framework MIGHT tell us that we can reliably produce beef and dairy in a way that completely offsets their methane emissions (Stanley et al., 2024). But aside from some case studies in specific places, it appears that most systems of cattle production, even highly rotational and regenerative, are net emitters of methane.

To summarize, cattle can invigorate processes associated with carbon sequestration. But the idea that they serve as a major carbon sink appears unsupported by the current science. Successes in specific contexts don’t extend to broad geographies. And it’s very difficult to be confident that a landscape is storing enough carbon to offset grazing emissions.

Overall, my thoughts on practices like rotational grazing, stocking reduction, and silvopasture are the same as Project Drawdown director Jonathan Foley: “Regenerative grazing is overhyped as a climate solution. We should do it anyway.”

Improved practices can help to restore degraded land, enhance biodiversity, boost the functionality of grassland ecosystems, and strengthen resilience to environmental shocks and stressors. Given the dicey nature of the evidence regarding carbon storage potential, centering these benefits of regenerative ruminant systems is a better path forward for improving sustainability. No, such a framework won’t unlock new carbon markets for ranchers, but it serves as a better anchor for understanding ruminant roles in ecosystem improvements.

A Bovine Powerdown

Given the twin facts that cattle-produced methane remains an issue for the stability of our climate and that pastureland absorption of carbon likely can’t fully offset these emissions, some level of global herd reduction is necessary if we are to maintain a stable climate.

But what approach we take is up for debate, and considerations surrounding nutritional security and the livelihoods of rural people must be considered. Cattle are raised in diverse contexts, and we can be strategic about where reductions are directed. Given that food security and economic situations vary widely between the developed and developing worlds, strategies should be tailored around these differences.

In countries like the U.S. and Australia, the beef and dairy industries are incredibly important. The sector is crucial to the economies of numerous states and cities with large ranches, dairy farms, and meatpacking plants. The devastation of losing these industries will be immense, and in some towns, their suspension would be a death blow. However, developed countries are aided by the fact that the removal of ruminant production has limited nutritional implications. Alternatives exist in the marketplace for protein, iron, and calcium-rich foods. Although beef and dairy may offer more bioavailable forms of some of these nutrients, it’s still easy to sustain proper nutrition through other means. Given that beef is normally the most expensive source of these nutrients in the marketplace, curtailing its availability should have minimal impacts on the availability of protein.3

From the consumer side, a reducitarian approach that minimizes, but doesn’t eliminate, beef in diets seems favorable. Shifting to more occasional beef consumption, rather than treating it as a staple, allows us to maintain beef-centric culinary institutions, such as barbecue and steakhouses, while prioritizing planetary health. Soft policy programs, like removing beef from school lunches or subsidizing meat and dairy alternatives, are suitable levers we can use to begin trimming consumption.

On the producer side, a dietary transition is a more challenging proposition. Beef production is the only industry in many regions, and in others, pasturing is an ecologically additive practice, and its absence could usher in more destructive land uses, such as mining or crop farming. Policy should prioritize preserving forms of beef production with the highest potential for carbon sequestration and land restoration while phasing out large-scale, grain-fed feedlots. Of course, this would still represent a hit to grazers, since calves are raised on pasture before heading to the feedlot, but maintaining production models that keep cattle on pasture throughout their entire lives would maximize ecological benefit.

Basically, herd reductions should come first from eliminating high-input, low-output production models. Subsequent herd reductions should come from right-sizing more ecologically compatible pasture-based models to maximize carbon sequestration and better matching stocking rates to local carrying capacities. Since lower stocking rates, higher rotational turnovers, and planting trees in pastures all result in improved carbon sequestration, the propagation of more sustainable practices naturally functions to reduce headcount and further cut methane emissions. This mixed elimination-improvement strategy would maximize methane reductions while minimizing damage to ranch economies by moving more of the value chain away from feedlots and back onto the ranch.

While we normally treat herd reductions as a guaranteed revenue loss for producers, there are scenarios where it could have little impact on the fortunes of producers. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy put out an interesting report last year that argued falling herd sizes naturally result in higher prices for beef and dairy, meaning a program of reducing beef output could transition producer business models from one of low margins & high volumes to one that’s high margin & low volume (Lilliston, 2025). Beef becoming more of a premium product under this scenario would bolster the financial prospects of producers even while shrinking herds, a win-win for the economy and the climate. There’s a certain level of synergy between consumer and producer adjustments to reduced cattle herds. Consumer propensity to treat beef as a luxury fosters new premiums that producers can harvest to weather the economic harm of selling fewer cattle.

The report notes that breaking up meatpacking monopolies alongside restricting beef imports is a precondition of this policy working, as packing companies would otherwise use their market position to absorb any premium, and importers would undercut attempts to limit the size of the market. I would add that the potential for land expansion could also undermine successes. If cropland gets transitioned into grazing, this could potentially have benefits, but if conservation land gets brought into grazing, it would be a blatant negative.

Obviously, the politics of attempting to make beef MORE expensive isn’t exactly an easy sell, but if it were paired with the mass commercialization of plant-based alternative products, having “real” beef become more of an occasional luxury food might be easier for voters to stomach. Additionally, meatpacking companies and towns that rely on large plants will undoubtedly bear high costs and possible economic collapse. While regional lockers (which generally have better working conditions) would likely pick up more processing business since they’re better positioned to handle lower carcass volumes, total employment in the sector will fall. Industrial policy to stimulate alternative industries (potentially siting new plant-based alternative production facilities in these communities) is necessary, but this represents more of a strategy of harm reduction. Unfortunately, meatpacking towns are the one segment of the sector worth caring about that would face guaranteed damage from a dietary transition.

While the main considerations in the developed world are the health of cattle economies and consumer contentment, in the developing world, ruminants are integral to nutrition and wider economic development in a way that is simply not comparable to the developed world. In some nations, like Sudan, the elimination of cattle would be a humanitarian crisis resulting in explosions of malnutrition and destitution. Different contexts beget different approaches.

In these regions, herd growth that addresses local deficiencies in protein or iron intake is a worthy trade-off for the necessary climatic damage. Livestock can utilize resources, like grass, that otherwise do not contribute to local diets, so programs like those operated by Heifer International that provide livestock to food-insecure families should continue. However, herd expansion efforts should not be directed to developing commercial markets, especially export markets, to ensure that investments focus on humanitarian concerns and prevent the development of entrenched commercial enterprises that would lobby against future herd reductions once humanitarian concerns are resolved. Additionally, traditional pastoral communities should be shielded from herd reduction efforts so they can continue their traditions in the modern world, as these are some of the best examples of human-animal relationships in our world today (as documented by Ilse Kohler-Rollefson’s excellent book Hoofprints on the Land). Adapting to climate change should not mean the surrender of our cultural heritage.

I have seen some truly fantastic ruminant systems, including regenerative ranchers in Kansas and silvopastoralists in Missouri, and have read countless accounts and studies of prosperous landscapes maintained under the affectionate cattle and doting ranchers. Many ecosystems thrive with cattle, and I want to see the ingrained relationships between hominids and bovids continue long into the future. But we need to be strategic around planning this future. The fact remains that every reduction in headcount translates to an improvement in our climatic prospects, and no land management strategy will offset emissions at scale enough to reverse that fact. It’s both the cow AND the how. Herd reductions will be necessary to mitigate food system emissions. Reductions should come disproportionately from high-input, low-output systems, but across the board, each segment of beef production will need to bear reductions if we are to maximize soil carbon sequestration while putting a serious dent in atmospheric methane concentrations. This can be done while minimizing impacts on the economic vitality of rural communities, the rich culinary cultures surrounding beef and dairy, and the nutritional status of the world’s eaters.

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