As of: March 26, 2024, 4:37 p.m
By: Tom Otto
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The climate policy benefits of pasture management and the “performance” of cattle are often underestimated.
Hay milk farmers take advantage of this by raising free-range cattle.
©Otto
Last week, the organic model region (ÖMR) Oberallgäu Kempten took a stand for beef eating at “Rapunzel”, the large Allgäu producer of vegetarian and vegan food.
Legau/Allgäu –
The idea for this event has been around for a long time, Beate Reisacher from the ÖMR told the Memminger KURIER.
But now it is time to move out of your own “bubble” into the critical, vegetarian and vegan scenes.
The project was a success and around 80 interested people followed the ÖMR invitation to the “Rapunzel World”.
During her welcome, Veronika Schmölz from the host “Rapunzel” emphasized the company's great interest in the controversial discussion.
When it comes to questions about sustainability and food security, they want to promote regional organic products – like the ÖMR.
“Not a climate killer”
Speaker Ulrich Mück is an agricultural engineer and has been working for Demeter for over 30 years and as a freelance consultant in organic farming.
He has been working on cattle farming and its connection to climate issues for around ten years.
For a good hour and a half he gives the audience mostly little-known facts and sources to digest.
The entire usable land area on earth, of which around 95 percent feeds humanity, consists of a quarter of arable land and three quarters of grassland.
In the Allgäu, grassland is even more represented at 85 percent of the area.
Mück asks the question of who is helping to turn these grassland areas into food.
While grassland is considered “non-edible” land, arable land directly produces edible food.
Cattle and others, such as sheep and goats, are highly efficient at converting “inedible” grassland into meat and milk.
Pigs and poultry, on the other hand, convert “edible” land into meat and eggs very inefficiently because they themselves are fed on the crops.
The so-called food efficiency of the “grassland animal” cattle, both in terms of the energy content and the protein content of the food, is many times higher than that of the “arable animals” pig and chicken.
What does this have to do with the climate?
According to the agricultural engineer, there is two to three times as much humus in the permanent grassland soil as in the adjacent fields, and the entire grassland on earth stores five times more carbon in the soil than all fields.
Fields and forests have a significantly higher risk of carbon loss due to storms, drought, pests or wet snow.
Fields release CO2 due to humus degradation at higher temperatures and lose fertility.
With a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees, 30 percent more organic fertilizer is needed in the field to maintain humus.
Grassland is very resilient to rapidly changing weather conditions.
Arable land, on the other hand, is not because it is significantly less resistant to late frost, overwintering, hail and drought.
Heavy rain events do not affect grassland.
It protects against floods.
Fields on slopes are at high risk of erosion and the entire harvest is at risk of spoilage.
Permanent grassland stores and retains carbon better and has a higher retention strength.
“Grassland protects the climate,” says Mück.
Cattle are leading animals in the creation and maintenance of humus.
Grassland and cattle thus enable animal nutrition without competition from the production of other foods.
Fields and arable crops bear a “climate debt”, but grassland does not.
Farming as full pasture saves over 90 percent of farmers' fossil energy use compared to feeding in stables.
When it comes to organic diversity, full-pasture farming also performs best.
Using the example of alpine meadows and their high biodiversity due to cattle farming, many beef eaters are needed; 500 grams of beef must be consumed annually for every 100 square meters of grassland area.
Hay milk farmers in the Allgäu recognized this early on - such as the Lerf dairy farm near Ottobeuren, which used biodiversity as an outstanding argument.
The accusation that “cattle need too much land” turns into the opposite when a distinction is made as to which land is needed, whether arable land or grassland, according to the speaker.
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Agricultural engineer Ulrich Mück advocates more beef consumption and less meat consumption from “arable animals” such as pigs and poultry.
©Otto
Clear recommendation for nutrition
Pigs and chickens turn “edible” farmland into meat and eggs.
Cattle, on the other hand, convert “inedible” grassland into meat and dairy products.
Mück also shows which animals we eat in Germany: In terms of slaughter weight, it is mainly pigs with 63.5 percent, followed by poultry with 19 percent.
This means that grain eaters account for 82.5 percent of total animal food consumption, while grassland eaters of beef (14.8 percent), game (1.6 percent) and sheep and goats (one percent) only make up 17.5 percent of the total people are eaten.
Ulrich Mück asks: “How would the people of Europe have to eat so that 100 percent organic farming and more organic diversity are possible?” His answer is clear: fewer animal products overall.
Specifically, from a social perspective, he recommends 70 percent less poultry meat, 50 percent less eggs, 60 percent less pork and 30 percent less milk.
The consumption of beef and sheep meat, however, would have to remain the same.
What about the methane gas?
The question about this came at the end from the audience - Ulrich Mück pointed out the net balance of greenhouse gases and the advantage of CO2 binding in grassland.
(Editor's note: Although only three percent of global methane gas emissions are released by cows, this has given them the image of "climate killers." A good third of global methane emissions are currently produced by gas production during fracking in the USA released. These figures were given by Josef Wiedemann, former managing director of “BBV-LandSiedlungs GmbH” at an event hosted by EU MP Ulrike Müller in the Swabian Open Air Museum in Illerbeuren in June last year.)
By the way, Rapunzel employee Veronika Schmölz confessed that there is also one day where meat is eaten in the Rapunzel canteen: Wednesday is “meat day” there;
The beef there comes from the farm of one of the company founders.
“Organic” of course.
Maybe after this event there will be more beef in the canteen in the future.
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